NFL offseason power rankings: No. 16 Jacksonville Jaguars had a fun breakout and a very quiet offseason

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Liam Coen said exactly what you'd expect after his first season as Jacksonville Jaguars head coach resulted in a surprising 13-4 finish, a startling nine-win improvement from the season before.

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"We're not going to just stand here and say, 'Man, we're just going to re-do it all with all the same, same, same, same' because that got us 13 wins and knocked out of the playoffs in the first round," Coen said, according to the team's site.

And then the Jaguars decided to re-do it all with all the same, same, same, same, at least in terms of roster construction.

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When a team has a big breakout season like the Jaguars just did, with a quarterback like Trevor Lawrence having arguably his best season and improvement in practically every area across the roster, it usually gets aggressive the following offseason. It might be imprudent to ignore regression possibilities and push forward, but a taste of success is intoxicating. More is expected.

That's what made Jacksonville's offseason weird. No team was quieter across the NFL. The Jaguars signed a league-low six free agents. They spent $21.4 million on those free agents, while no other team spent less than $39.4 million. They lost some key starters in free agency too, like running back Travis Etienne Jr., linebacker Devin Lloyd and cornerback Greg Newsome II.

Jacksonville didn't have a first-round pick, due to last year's trade up to draft Travis Hunter with the second overall pick. It was especially odd for a team that was very active early in free agency last year and made a big, splashy draft day move for Hunter under new general manager James Gladstone.

"Quite a bit different than a year ago today," Gladstone said in the first week of free agency, via the team's site.

Part of it, Gladstone said, was recouping some draft capital through the compensatory pick formula, and perhaps use some of those picks to make trades as needed. That's logical. The approach seems prudent. It still might stall the Jaguars for the time being, after a huge growth season.

Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars are coming off an AFC South championship season. (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images)Michael Hickey via Getty Images

Sometimes when a team breaks out like the Jaguars, it's due to an inordinate amount of luck. The 2024 Commanders fit that storyline. While the Jaguars had some regression indicators — a 5-2 record in one-score games, ranking third in the NFL in turnover margin after recovering fumbles at the second-best rate in the NFL at 64.3%, and good fortune when it came to injuries — their 2025 season wasn't lucky.

The Jaguars were good in many key areas, including a defense that took a big jump up to the top 10 of the NFL. Jacksonville outscored opponents by 138 points. Maybe it looked like an illusion because of the Jaguars' recent poor history and a wild-card loss to the Buffalo Bills, but they were good throughout the season. And the Jaguars led that playoff game against the Bills until 1:04 remained.

The difficult part of figuring out what happens next is that every team was quantifiably more active than the Jaguars this offseason.

Coen seems to be a home run hire as a first-time head coach, and his work with Lawrence was commendable. A fairly young team could continue to make strides, and Lawrence could have a career year in his second season running Coen's offense.

It's not the worst thing to avoid impulsive decisions based on a surprising season, and trust that a 13-win roster is good enough to maintain that level of success. It's just not what almost every other team in that position has done.

It's impossible to say the Jaguars' roster is better, even if we count midseason trade acquisition Jakobi Meyers among the additions. The Jaguars' big free-agent addition was running back Chris Rodriguez at $10 million over two years, but he just helps replace the departed Travis Etienne Jr. Rodriguez has never produced as well as Etienne in the NFL and probably starts his Jaguars career behind 2025 rookie Bhayshul Tuten.

Edge defender Dennis Gardeck got $6.5 million over two years and no other free-agent addition was paid more than $1.3 million total. Linebacker Devin Lloyd left for Carolina after his breakout season. Cornerback Greg Newsome II and safety Andrew Wingard were two other starters who departed.

The Jaguars' only draft pick in the top 80 was tight end Nate Boerkircher, the 56th overall pick who never had more than 200 yards in a college season. He's a blocker, as the Jaguars join the multiple tight end trend in the NFL. Being patient isn't always a bad thing, and the Jaguars' salary cap situation will benefit over the long term from not chasing a bunch of high-priced free agents this offseason. But the Jaguars will have to improve from within to maintain their level from last season because very little help was added.

Grade: D

Trevor Lawrence has been frustrating at times. He came into the NFL as hyped as practically any prospect since John Elway but the results have been unsatisfying. His career passer rating of 86.3 is the same as Jameis Winston and behind players like Mac Jones, Mitchell Trubisky and Jacoby Brissett. The Jaguars were 16 games under .500 in his starts before last season. Prospects at Lawrence's level very rarely bust but there was worry he was on that path, or at least going to fall well short of stardom.

Last season was huge for Lawrence and the Jaguars. After an adjustment period early in the season to Liam Coen and his offense, Lawrence had perhaps the best stretch of his career. The Jaguars went 13-4 and Lawrence was a key driver in that. He had 4,007 passing yards and 29 touchdowns. There were still 12 interceptions but overall Lawrence played well.

A rally in the final minute to beat the Kansas City Chiefs seemed like a turning point in his career. In 12 regular-season games after that he had a 96.5 passer rating, which would have been the best in his career over a full season. Lawrence looked more confident and comfortable with the scheme as the season went on. He also rushed for 359 yards and nine touchdowns, which were both career bests.

Lawrence will turn 27 years old this season, so there's still time for him to reach the upper echelon of quarterbacks. Some might argue he reached it last season.

"We saw a huge uptick in his ability to go out and not even worry about the formation or motion anymore," Coen said, via the team's site. "It was like, 'Now I'm playing.' That evolution and development continue to refine. Now it's like, 'Dude, this is your group. Nobody messes with your group.'"

From Yahoo's Ben Fawkes: "It was a fantastic regular season for Jacksonville in 2025-26, going 13-4 (including ending the season on an eight-game winning streak) and hosting a playoff game as AFC South champions. A tight 27-24 loss to Josh Allen's Buffalo Bills is the lasting impression, though, including Trevor Lawrence throwing two interceptions.

"The Jaguars are underdogs in four of their first six games this season, so it's important to get off to a good start. Jacksonville is a slight favorite to make the postseason, but it'll need a much bigger contribution from Travis Hunter this season to do it again. After letting Travis Etienne walk in free agency, how well RB1 Bhayshul Tuten plays will also help determine Jacksonville's upside."

From Yahoo's Scott Pianowski: "It's common to see receivers struggle with a new team after a midseason trade. But Jakobi Meyers didn't read that memo, posting a solid 42-483-3 line after joining the Jaguars in early November. If you prorate Meyers' stats to a full season, we're looking at 79-912-6, which would make him a low-end WR2 or high-end WR3 in most leagues. He's priced for profit in early Yahoo drafts, slotted as the WR42."

Two seasons ago, the Jaguars were awful on defense. They were 31st in yards allowed, 27th in points allowed, 32nd in net yards per pass attempt allowed and also dead last in passing yards allowed, 31st in yards and points per drive allowed, 31st in DVOA, 31st in EPA (expected points added) allowed and 26th in success rate allowed. The startling improvement the Jaguars had on defense last season didn't get nearly enough attention.

The Jaguars were a top-10 defense in most metrics, including sixth in DVOA and fifth in EPA allowed per play. Trevor Lawrence's emergence got most of the attention, but Jacksonville's defense was better than its offense last season.

There was already talent on hand — pass rusher Josh Hines-Allen, defensive lineman Arik Armstead, linebackers Foyesade Oluokun and Devin Lloyd (who left in free agency) and safety Antonio Johnson all had excellent seasons — and it was brought together well by first-time NFL defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile. He got some head-coaching interviews but is back with Jacksonville, which was great news for the team.

The Jaguars got a fairly quiet season out of Travon Walker, the former No. 1 draft pick who had a combined 20.5 sacks in 2023 and 2024 but just 3.5 last season. There's no reason Walker can't bounce back to double-digit sacks, which would help a defense that was very good last season. It will be tough for the Jaguars' defense to replicate all that success, but that side of the ball is no longer a liability in Jacksonville.

The Jaguars justified last year's massive draft day trade up for Travis Hunter by saying they figured they were getting two players in one.

"In our mind, we got two second overall picks this year," Jaguars executive vice president of football operations Tony Boselli told The Athletic.

If Hunter isn't playing both ways, that trade looks like a massive overpay. There was a report in April that Hunter would be mostly a cornerback and limited on offense, though head coach Liam Coen said afterward that the plan hasn't changed and Hunter is "going to play both sides of the football just as we drafted him to do." The Jaguars have a much bigger need at cornerback, especially with Brian Thomas Jr., Jakobi Meyers and Parker Washington providing a deep receiver group.

Hunter played 67% of the Jaguars' offensive snaps and 36% of the defensive snaps before a season-ending knee injury suffered in practice on Oct. 30. Just before that Hunter had his first 100-yard game as a receiver, with 101 yards against the Los Angeles Rams in London. His rookie season was an adjustment period for the player and for the team figuring out how to utilize a unique athlete, but he was coming along.

How Hunter is deployed will be a huge story over the course of his career because the history of two-way players through modern NFL history is extremely thin. We should know more about the Jaguars' vision early this season.

The Jaguars looked like they could make a Super Bowl over the second half of last season. Jacksonville ranked ahead of Denver and New England — the AFC championship game participants — in DVOA last season (Jacksonville was No. 6, the Broncos were seventh and the Patriots were ninth). They got a tough draw with the Bills in the wild-card round and lost in the last two minutes, so we forget how good they were for most of the season.

The Jags' only losses after Week 2 were to the Seahawks, Rams, Texans and Bills, who all reached at least the divisional round of the playoffs. There's a good case to be made that Trevor Lawrence, with another year in Liam Coen's system and with a rare healthy offseason, can level up and perhaps make a push to win MVP.

There's enough talent around Lawrence in the passing game to help him make that leap. If that happens and the massive improvement on defense sticks, the Jaguars will be right back where they were to start last postseason as one of the prime AFC candidates to make a Super Bowl.

It's time to invoke the plexiglass principle again. A term coined by baseball analytics godfather Bill James, it states that a team that has a massive improvement (or decline) is bound to move to the mean the following season. That's especially true for the Jaguars' defense, which went from 31st in DVOA in 2024 to sixth last season. A team's defensive performance fluctuates far more than offense from year to year.

The Jaguars improved by nine games last season and did practically nothing to improve this offseason. While we can understand the long-term vision, the quiet offseason is a big reason why the Jaguars fall to the middle of the pack in these rankings. Trevor Lawrence is coming off a good season but he still has warts, the team lost key players on both sides and the AFC South is tougher than it has been in years.

It's not like the Jaguars are going to fall back to being that four-win team they were before Liam Coen arrived. However, a mediocre season while missing the playoffs, with Lawrence looking more like the middle-of-the-road quarterback he was before Coen arrived, would be a gut punch for a franchise that had just three double-digit win seasons this century before breaking through in 2025.

The Jaguars have roughly the same betting odds to make or miss the playoffs, with a projected win total of 8.5. We should use that as our guide. It seems like about a coin flip that the Jaguars come close to repeating their fantastic season. Regression is coming and the lack of activity in the offseason won't help fight that off.

Over the long term there should be excitement over where the Jaguars are headed. There's good young talent, Trevor Lawrence is just entering his prime years as he turns 27 and Liam Coen looks like the right fit. But this season will see a step back, and no playoff berth, as the Jaguars find their true level moving forward.

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