The most important factor in the success of an NFL team will always be the players. However, coaching does matter, especially for fantasy football purposes. We’ve seen several highly regarded offensive coordinators become great head coaches.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Liam Coen will get his first head coaching opportunity with the Jacksonville Jaguars. He’ll almost certainly improve the offense, but by how much? Let’s find out.
Fantasy Football Impact of Liam Coen as Jacksonville Jaguars Head Coach
The 2024 season was Coen’s first in Tampa, Fla. He immediately turned the Bucs’ offense into one of the best in the NFL. They ranked third in PFN’s Offense+ metric, a huge leap from 2023’s 22nd-place ranking.
It’s hard to imagine the Jaguars not improving offensively in 2025. They ranked 18th in PFN’s Offense+ metric in 2024, earning a C- grade. The metric only dates back to 2019, but the Jaguars have never earned a grade higher than C+, which came in 2022 — the only year they finished better than 14th.
Jacksonville is not without talent on offense. Fantasy managers should be cautiously optimistic that Coen can turn this offense into a top-10 unit, improving the fantasy outlooks of just about everyone.
Trevor Lawrence
Under Coen’s tutelage, Baker Mayfield posted one of the best seasons in team history. He ranked eighth in EPA per play after finishing just 14th in 2023. Mayfield averaged a career-high 22.1 fantasy points per game, finishing as the overall QB4. His previous high was 17.9 points per game in his rookie year.
Trevor Lawrence has never been a consistently good quarterback. He had one of the worst rookie seasons in NFL history. Lawrence’s QB+ rating as a rookie was a D-, but the real story was the overall ranking in the database. Of 223 quarterbacks ranked, Lawrence’s rookie year came in at 198th. It was truly horrific. Of course, he also had arguably the worst head coach in NFL history directing things, which certainly didn’t help.
Lawrence has improved since then, but he’s still never done better than 17.9 points per game. But his 2022 season did earn a C+ grade in QB+, the ninth-best of the year.
While Lawrence is obviously nowhere close to a top quarterback, a turnaround would not be totally unprecedented. We just saw Kevin O’Connell help Sam Darnold put up a top-12 season.
Given how poorly Lawrence has played over the first four years of his career, there’s no chance he’s expensive in 2025 fantasy drafts. It wouldn’t be a total shock if he were this year’s Darnold, emerging from the depths of ADP to post a QB1 season.
Brian Thomas Jr. and Christian Kirk
How much better can Brian Thomas Jr. get? Saddled with awful QB play from Lawrence and Mac Jones, the rookie still averaged 16.7 fantasy points per game, finishing inside the top 12 WRs. Simply put, Thomas is awesome.
To put into perspective how amazing Thomas’ rookie year was, look no further than his yards per route run. Thomas averaged 2.46 yards per route run. Among all rookie WRs dating back to 2011, that ranks eighth. Look at the players in the top 12 — that is some pretty good company.
Thomas looks like he will be elite no matter what. If Coen can help turn Lawrence’s career around, Thomas has a legitimate top-five upside at the position.
While Thomas is obviously the main star of the Jaguars’ offense, where Coen can really make his impact felt is with the WR2. In 2023, Chris Godwin had one of the worst seasons of his career, averaging 12.3 points per game. What happened? He ran just 32% of his routes from the slot.
In 2024, Coen arrived, and his first order of business was to move Godwin back to the slot, where he lined up 57% of the time. A devastating knee injury ended Godwin’s season after just seven games, but he was averaging a career-high 19.7 points per game at the time.
Early in his career, the Cardinals misused Christian Kirk, operating almost exclusively on the outside. In 2022, he moved to the slot more and had the best season of his career. In 2023, he had a 67% slot rate and another solid 12.5 points per game season. Last year, he was victimized by Thomas’ arrival and the poor quarterback play, but he was still in the slot 77% of the time.
Expect Coen to utilize Kirk heavily in the slot, which could propel the veteran wide receiver to at least high WR3 status.
Travis Etienne Jr. and Tank Bigsby
This is a tougher one to figure out. Coen didn’t make Bucky Irving — the rookie did that by being really good at football. Any positive impact Coen has on the running backs will likely be a product of the offense improving as a whole.
The Jaguars scored just 32 offensive touchdowns in 2024. Nineteen of them came through the air. Although 13 were on the ground, Travis Etienne Jr. and Tank Bigsby combined for only nine.
The real issue is talent. Bigbsy showed flashes, with his evaded-tackles-per-touch rate inside the top five. However, he’s a zero in the passing game, earning just a 2.4% target share, which makes him incredibly reliant on touchdowns.
Etienne was solid as a receiver, earning an 11% target share. Unfortunately, that was about all he could do. He averaged 3.7 yards per carry and struggled to make defenders miss. Watching Etienne play last year was painful.
However, if the Bucs’ phasing-out of Rachaad White is any indication, Coen may have no qualms about turning the backfield over to Bigsby and/or a free-agent signee or a rookie if Etienne continues to perform below par. Suffice it to say, I have very little confidence that Etienne will ever be relevant in fantasy again.
Evan Engram
We saw Cade Otton have moments of elite TE1 production last year, but it’s hard to say Coen had anything to do with it. Mayfield leaned on Otton when Mike Evans and Godwin were both out. Otherwise, he was just a cog in the machine.
Evan Engram has much more of a track record than Otton. He will always be a key part of the offense — I wouldn’t expect Coen to just ignore him. After an injury-plagued season limited him to nine games and 9.9 points per game, Engram should rebound in 2025 — just don’t expect a return to the 13.6 ppg he averaged in 2023. Somewhere in the middle feels about right.
