Some people are fans of the Jacksonville Jaguars. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Jacksonville Jaguars. This 2025 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Jacksonville Jaguars.
That’s the Jags for you: never as accomplished as their opponent’s butt.
Your 2024 record: 4-13. Now that’s par for the course around Jacksonville, but as Leo Tolstoy famously said, “All happy families are alike; I have no fucking idea what the Khan family is doing.” This axiom was as true as ever a year ago. I now bring proof.
First of all, the Jags kicked off the 2024 campaign with a four-game skid. They lost at the gun to Miami on a 52-yarder from Jason Sanders, the kicker whom every Dolphins fan would like to see kidnapped. Their “franchise” quarterback got outplayed by Deshaun Watson in a loss to the Browns. At home. On a day when the Jags changed their name of their ballpark to TrEverbank Stadium. Why the name change? I’ll let the Associated Press handle it from here:
The Jaguars changed signage at EverBank Stadium to “TrEverBank” as part of a marketing promotion designed to highlight a collaboration between the popular quarterback and the Jacksonville-based financial services company.
Wow, what a fantastic event. It’s just like a homecoming game, only both of your parents die.
More awfulness: The Jags were predictably crushed by Josh Allen and Buffalo, then lost in Houston when C.J. Stroud threw a last-minute touchdown pass. They played a back-to-back games in their pretend second home city of London, one of which was a loss to Chicago in which Caleb Williams threw for four touchdowns (almost like he’s a real quarterback!). Then the Jags came back stateside and lost to the Packers, thanks to a last-minute field goal drive orchestrated by Malik Willis. Continuing their humiliation at the hands of the NFC North, Jacksonville then held Sam Darnold without a TD pass and still lost to the Vikings anyway. This is because their own offense was only able to muster 143 total yards all game long.
Mac Jones started that Minnesota game, by the way. In fact, due to a TrEverBank error in the rest of the NFL’s favor, Jones would end up starting seven games for the Jags. What did that look like? Well, it looked a lot like this.
Both the Jags and their head coach were dead meat from there on. Detroit hung a 50-burger on them. Aaron Rodgers—the 2024 vintage, not the good version—somehow passed for three touchdowns and hooked up with old flame Davante Adams for nearly 200 receiving yards as the Jets beat them in their own house. Then the Raiders beat the Jags to end a 10-game losing streak. Lastly, their season-ending loss to Indianapolis in Week 18 saved the jobs of both Colts GM Chris Ballard and head coach Shane Steichen. Even when you beat the Jags, you lose. Now ain’t that some shit?
Nothing about this team worked a year ago. They had a bottom-10 passing offense, and the second-worst yardage defense in football. So out went head coach Doug Pederson, and in came…
Your coach: (in the weakest possible timbre) Duuuuval?
That’s former Bucs offensive coordinator Liam Coen, who parlayed one highly productive season with Baker Mayfield into this job. What a get.
The funny part, at least to me, is that Coen never really wanted to work here. This is because while the Jags fired Pederson at the end of 2024, they still held on to widely despised general manager Trent Baaaaaaaaaaaaalke. Well, turns out that the best candidates to replace Pederson, Coen included, had no interest in working under a guy who once signed Tim Tebow to play tight end. Ben Johnson interviewed with Jacksonville and then passed (for a job with the Bears!). Coen did likewise, and told the Bucs he’d stay on as OC.
Once owner Shad Khan realized his incumbent GM was the management equivalent of a termite infestation, he fired Baalke and skulked back to Coen, all but begging the man to reconsider. So Coen went back to Duval for a clandestine second interview, reportedly telling the Bucs that he was taking his son to the hospital. Imagine Tampa Bay’s surprise when Liam Petrino here was magically christened Jags head coach a short time later. The Bucs got mad, and then Mrs. Coen got mad, and then everyone else got mad. This entire saga was then collectively forgotten a few days later, because what’s there about Jacksonville that’s worth remembering?
After settling in, Coen got to handpick his own general manager to replace Baalke. And, in a heartwarming turn of events, he landed on his own son for the gig:
OK, so that’s not Liam Coen II. That’s former Rams scouting director James Gladstone, who apparently evaluated prospects by attending college directly alongside them. And if you think that Gladstone looks like a character from Mountainhead, wait until you hear him speak!
“We’ll put the pedal to the metal on advanced forms of operation.”
I think that’s all I need to hear from Jimmy Neutron over here. Meanwhile, Coen was brought in to fix the offense, same as every other incoming Jags head coach. To aid in the cause, he recruited new passing game coordinator Shane Waldron, fired by the Bears at midseason last year. Then Coen robbed the cradle yet again to poach former Vikings assistant Grant Udinski as his OC. Grant Udinski is 29 years old. He’s supposedly one of those Sean McVay-type savants who can memorize a playbook on sight and juggle five oranges with one hand. I doubt any of that will mean anything, because of…
Your quarterback: Trevor Lawrence, who’s totally gonna do it this time, you guys. Lawrence missed the back end of last season thanks to a bum shoulder. He’s also never thrown for more than 25 touchdowns in a single season, is one of the worst deep passers in the league, and has all of one playoff victory to his name. That win came against the Chargers, so it probably shouldn’t even count.
The only reason that Lawrence is still QB1 here, and paid handsomely for the work, is because he’s a former No. 1 overall pick that got the hackneyed “generational talent” label coming out of Clemson. Fans looked past TrEverBank’s miserable rookie season because he had to work for Urban Meyer, and then looked past his underwhelming seasons thereafter because he had to work for Pederson, a man who won a Super Bowl with Nick Foles. So now you and I are supposed to believe that Coen, a dude who was Will Levis’s OC at Kentucky just two years ago, is gonna magically turn this slob into a Hall of Famer. I’ll believe that Floridians know basic addition and subtraction before I buy that shit. Trevor Lawrence is Blake Bortles with cool hair.
Your backup is newly acquired free agent Nick Mullens, who plays just like Steezy Trev but for a fraction of the price.
What’s new that sucks: Travis Hunter is your headliner here. I’ll go through all of Jacksonville’s other destined-to-fail moves in a second, but all anyone cares about in this space is that Gladstone sold the farm in April’s draft to take Hunter at No. 2 overall. Hunter was the best wideout and best corner in college football a year ago, and could potentially become the league’s first full-time ironman player in 63 years. Don’t think our man can hold up for 2,000 snaps every year? I’ll let Cybertruck here rebut that notion:
Here is where I disclose that I’m rooting for Hunter to pull it off. Everyone is. So you understand why we’re all concerned that he has to attempt to make history in Jacksonville. If there’s any franchise that is guaranteed to fuck up Travis Hunter’s career, it’s the Jags. It’s like giving Shohei Ohtani to the A’s. Feels all wrong.
As for the rest of this roster, the Jags put the pedal to the metal on advanced forms of operation during the offseason. True, they lost WR Christian Kirk (remember when people thought his contract was too big, and then they were like oh wait maybe he was worth it, and then were like oh wait no he wasn’t?), TEs Evan Engram and Luke Farrell, and S Andre Cisco. But those losses were easily mitigated by the arrivals of G Patrick Mekari, DE Emmanuel Ogbah, S Eric Murray, TE Johnny Mundt, WR Dyami Brown, and C Robert Hainsey, the last of whom lost his starting job in camp last year. Who’s embodying belief now, I ask you?
Meanwhile, the running back room is just a big wad of guys, which means this offense will again rely on Lawrence throwing hospital balls to Brian Thomas 30 yards downfield. You know how coaches always tell you that they don’t have any plays on the sheet for third and forever? Coen and Udinski better come up with a few.
The schedule is an easy one. Well, for a good team it would be.
What has always sucked: Jacksonville has had this team for 30 years and the city’s reputation hasn’t improved a lick. An NFL franchise is supposed to put your town on the map and give it a national profile. The Jaguars have accomplished neither of those tasks. Their greatest head coach is still Tom Coughlin, their greatest player is still Tony Boselli, their greatest QB is still Mark Brunell, and their smartest front office employee is still that one dude who robbed them. This team’s chief legacy is a stadium pool that has a higher concentration of herpes in it than a Sheen family bachelor party. I resent the Jaguars’ continued existence almost as much as I resent the continued existence of Florida itself. Good thing they’ll never win anything important.
Drafting Travon Walker was still a colossal fuckup. I don’t get Jaguars Junction and never have. Fuck Ron DeSantis with a burning textbook.
What might not suck: Thanks to Thomas and Hunter, those cutaways to Jags games on Sunday ticket will be 30 percent more enticing.
HEAR IT FROM JAGUARS FANS!
Sage:
I got married over the summer. My brother was my best man. As he walked down the aisle up to the altar, he embraced me and whispered in my ear, “Travis Hunter is going to tear his ACL.”
This team made the cover of Madden by getting posterized.
Masashi:
A part of me was hoping this new stadium deal would fall apart, and that the Jags would eventually become some other city’s problem. Would have saved me another 30 years of nonstop embarrassment and misery.
Zach:
I thought it was funny when we lost to the Eagles because Press Taylor called a back-of-the end zone pass to the shortest player on the team.
Andrew:
There are so few fans of this cursed team I know I can usually procrastinate writing this letter each year.
Hunter:
The GM is 12 years old. The coach can’t speak. The OC is also 12 years old. The owner’s nepo-baby-wannabe-Vince-McMahon-son is listed as the Chief Football Strategy Officer (WTF?). This is a fundamentally unserious organization.
Kenny:
That mustachioed shitbag and his doofus failson can both eat vinyl.
Shane:
We expect a rookie to learn the full offensive and defensive schemes, and then play 45+ minutes of every game, every week. Have you ever taken a jog outside in Northeast Florida in September? The heat index is 105+ and every breath feels like your lungs are filling with water.
Ryan:
To the extent that my favorite team exists in the public consciousness, it’s because the dumbest character on a sitcom nobody watched was a huge fan.
Many years from now, my family will take me off life support because I keep insisting this is the season Trevor finally becomes a true franchise QB. “It’s better this way,” they’ll say. You know what? They’re right.
Casey:
Lawerence is Tebow with the unsettling evangelical vibes slider turned slightly down.
Mike:
Over the last five seasons, the Jags have a 31%-win rate in the shittiest division in the league. This team is ass, full stop. The DOGE bros would have a wet dream if they were allowed access to the Jags accounts. Fuck Urban Meyer, and double fuck DOGE (who fired me twice in the span of 4 months).
Eric:
For my bachelor party last year I forced a bunch of friends to go to the Jags-Packers game. The Jags scored a game-tying TD with about two minutes left, and one of my friends from California said, “Wow, the Jags could actually win!” All us Jags fans looked at each other, laughed knowingly, and said, “Just wait.” Malik Willis then immediately completed a 51-yard pass to get Green Bay into FG range for the win.
To be a Jaguars fan is to know, in your heart of hearts, that your team deeply sucks and should never be taken seriously.
Richard:
I went to college in Jacksonville. No one ever talked about the Jaguars, games were always blacked out, and no one seemed to care. Much like the former Jacksonville sandwich chain Lubis, which would microwave their tin foil wrapped sandwiches, Jacksonville is a bad idea.
Braulio:
Trevor Lawrence spent the entire year getting cooked like a North Eastern WASP retiree in his first Florida summer.
At least the pro wrestling division of the Jaguars is good.
Billy:
Fuck Dave Caldwell, fuck Gene Smith, fuck Trent Baalke, and fuck Trent Baalke again.
Joey:
The jaguars are five years younger than I am, so I’ve been a fan both their entire existence and my entire conscious life. Even after we moved to South Carolina, my parents still have season tickets, because we were afraid that the team would go to London if we didn’t.
Since we drafted Trevor Lawrence, I’m now obligated to explain my fandom to random passerbys who assume I’m just a Clemson fan. This team is so bad that it is unfathomable to people that I would have rooted for them before Trevor arrived.
I have been on more than one yokel assed football podcast cause I’m literally the only jaguars fan anyone has ever met. Outside of South Carolina, the only thing people associate with the jags is Jason Mendoza and that one sad fan gif. Somehow we let Trent Baalke win like three power struggles while achieving nothing, and then still fired him in the most Jags way possible.
In 2020, I watched Gardner minshew throw for three touchdowns and beat the shit out of the Titans on Thursday Night Football. It was almost as good as watching the Braves win the World Series the following year. I immediately made Gardner Minshew my favorite player of all time. He’s a legitimate contender for best QB we ever drafted, and I’ll never forgive this team for cutting him just so that we could keep CJ Beathard.
Want to be part of Defector’s NFL previews? It’s simple: just email us here and tell us why your team sucks. Next up: Las Vegas Raiders.