The Jacksonville Jaguars hired former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Liam Coen as their head coach over the offseason as a last gasp at salvaging the Trevor Lawrence era. Jacksonville got aggressive in the draft by trading up for Travis Hunter at the expense of next year’s first-round pick. The early results haven’t always been pretty, but they have been effective. The Jags were 2-1 with wins over the lowly Houston Texans and Carolina Panthers, and now they were facing an unbeaten San Francisco 49ers team that was getting starting QB Brock Purdy back.
The Jaguars dug deep and delivered another win with a 26-21 victory over the 49ers. Jacksonville ran the ball well all afternoon, with Travis Etienne Jr. ripping off 124 yards and a touchdown on 19 carries. The Jacksonville defense also picked off Purdy twice. No one was happier to get the win than Coen.
After the game, Coen had a message for 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh: “Keep my name out of your mouth.” It all goes back to something Saleh said to the press heading into the game. Watch Coen seek out Saleh after the game here:
Two days before the game, Saleh raised eyebrows when he said Coen had a “really advanced signal-stealing type system” along with a few assistant coaches. Saleh said that sign stealing runs in the family when it comes to the Sean McVay coaching tree. Here’s the full quote:
“Jacksonville, this is a very young but talented group. Liam and his staff, a couple of guys coming from Minnesota, they’ve got legally, a really advanced signal-stealing type system where they always find a way to put themselves in an advantageous situation,” Saleh said ahead of Sunday’s matchup, per the team transcript. “They do a great job with it. They formation you to just try to find any nugget they can. So, we’ve got to be great with our signals and we’ve got to be great with our communication to combat some of the tells that we might give on the field.”
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“They’re almost elite in that regard. That whole entire tree from Sean to Kevin O’Connell to all those guys, they all do it,” he said. “So, there’s challenges. They’re going to catch us in some situations where they have the advantage and we’ve just got to play good, sound, fundamental football and do our best to out-execute them.”
Coen shot down questions about the interaction after the game:
Coen obviously didn’t like the comment, and getting the win just a little bit sweeter.
