Five days out from Cleveland at Jacksonville, five Jacksonville outlets on a 13–4 football team, a stadium with its top deck in a skip, and a visiting head coach the whole country would like Duval County to be outraged about.
John Oehser, Senior Writer · Thursday, September 10, 2026
Let’s get to it…
Ryan from Orange Park, FL
Hey Zone! Week 1 at last. One question and you can answer it in one word. Are the Jaguars a better football team on Sunday than they were in January?
Yes.
Bill from Da Beach
So Cleveland is bringing a head coach with a YouTube channel into our stadium for the opener, and the entire country is going to spend three hours talking about him instead of talking about Trevor Lawrence. Tell me you find that as insulting as I do.
I don’t.
Rich from Jacksonville
Zone. Serious question. Do our coaches sit down and watch his old videos to figure out what he’s going to run?
No.
Mike from Nocatee
THIRTY-TWO SACKS. Thirty-two, Zone! With Walker and Hines-Allen and Armstead on the same roster! Cleveland is starting a rookie at center and a rookie at right tackle and if we do not get home on Sunday I am going to say things in front of my children. What is the one thing you want to see?
Interior pass rush.
Stephen from Sec 113 (Jacksonville via Pennsauken, NJ)
One o’clock kickoff in September and they took the roof off my section. I’m sixty-eight years old. Advice?
Hat. Water. Shade before you need it instead of after. I mean this one.
Gary from St. Augustine, FL
Let me get this straight. No 400 level. No pools. No Sky Patio. Cranes over the north end zone. Two home games shipped to England, all of next year in Orlando, and a construction fence where I used to park. Even when there is nothing left to take away from us, you still suck.
42,507, including 1,260 standing room. Thanks for writing in.
Tony from Middleburg
Straight answer, no jokes. Is Cleveland’s head coach a fraud, yes or no.
I don’t know what this means.
Jarrod from Fleming Island
People keep telling me the Cleveland guy got two first-round picks out of Pittsburgh for one cornerback. Has our general manager ever gotten two first-round picks out of anybody for a cornerback?
No.
Bill from Da Beach
Second email, I have calmed down. Everybody in America wants to laugh at Cleveland for hiring a guy off the internet. Ours stood at a podium in front of grown men and said “Game on.” Feel free not to print this one.
Printed.
Kathy from Ponte Vedra Beach, FL
Travis Hunter is a Jaguar because of a trade with Cleveland and Cleveland has been spending our picks ever since. Somebody on television is going to ask who won that trade on Sunday. What is the answer?
We got Travis Hunter.
Chris from Jacksonville
Between London and the construction, how many real Sundays do we get in this town this season?
Fewer than you want.
Wes from Kingsland, GA
Nine and a half. Is that a real number, or is that Las Vegas having a laugh at the expense of their head coach?
It’s a real number and most of it is their offensive line.
Frank from Ortega
Do these people have any concept of what one o’clock in September is here? I want them to find out the hard way.
They’ve been told. Visiting teams always get told.
Denise from Jacksonville
When does the canopy get finished? I keep reading the words “cooling structure” and I keep sitting in direct sun.
2028. The steel goes up this year. That’s what goes up this year.
Adam from Brunswick, GA
Weakside linebacker. Do we have one?
We’ll have one Sunday.
Leo from Jacksonville
You understand that if we lose this football game we are the punchline of the entire season, right? Right, Zone? Right?
Yes.
Wade from Yulee, FL
Score prediction. Come on. You owe us one a year.
No.
Sandra from Jacksonville
Hey Zone. First time writing. My son is nine and this is the first Jaguars game he is going to remember for the rest of his life. Is there anything he should watch for?
Cam Little warming up. Get there early enough to watch it from your seats. He’ll remember that part too.
Brent Martineau · Wednesday, September 9, 2026
JACKSONVILLE — Liam Coen spent about four minutes of his Wednesday availability on the Cleveland Browns’ offensive line, which is where the rest of the country has spent the week, and he did not sound like a man who thinks it is free money.
“They’ve got a rookie at center and a rookie at right tackle and everybody’s going to write that up like it’s a gift,” Coen said. “I’ve had rookies play really well in Week 1. I’ve also seen a good front make a veteran look like a rookie. We’re not talking ourselves into anything on a Wednesday.”
Anthony Campanile’s defense was first in the NFL against the run last season and set a franchise record with 22 interceptions. It also finished with 32 sacks, and Coen was asked again Wednesday whether Travon Walker will take snaps inside on obvious passing downs.
“We have a package,” Coen said. “I’m not going to walk you through it five days before we play.”
Cleveland’s head coach came up once, from the back of the room, and Coen went around it without any visible effort.
“Honestly, I’ve spent this week on their front seven and their two backs,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you one thing about anybody’s biography over there. That’s not me being cute with you, I just haven’t gone and looked at it. I’ve got Verse to worry about.”
The number the Jaguars have not stopped talking about since January is the one on early downs: the Jaguars were 31st in down-and-distance on third down last season. That came out of first and second down, not third, and Grant Udinski said Wednesday the fix is partly personnel and mostly finishing four-yard runs instead of one-yard runs.
Trevor Lawrence, who finished last season as the highest-graded quarterback in the league from Week 13 through the playoffs, was asked what he remembers about Week 1 heat and gave the answer he has given every September since 2021.
“It’s worse than they think it is,” Lawrence said. “It always is. And then it’s worse than that in the fourth quarter.”
Kickoff is Sunday at 1 p.m. on CBS. The forecast at kickoff is 91 degrees with a heat index in the low 100s on the field. EverBank Stadium will hold 42,507 this season with the 400 level closed for construction.
Dan Hicken and Jeff Prosser · partial transcript, 8:04 a.m.
Segment: kickoff temperatureJaguars notebook
Demetrius Harvey · Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Right guard Patrick Mekari and linebacker Jack Kiser were limited in Wednesday’s practice, the first of the regular season, and head coach Liam Coen said afterward that both are expected to play Sunday against Cleveland.
Offensive lineman Cole Van Lanen remains on the active/physically unable to perform list. Guard Emmanuel Pregnon, a third-round pick, was limited. Cornerback Christian Braswell participated in individual work only.
The competition to replace Devin Lloyd on the weak side has not been settled. Coen said the Jaguars will likely dress both candidates and that snap distribution may depend on personnel groupings Cleveland shows early. Lloyd signed with Carolina in March.
The Jaguars did not make Anthony Campanile available Wednesday. Trevor Lawrence, Josh Hines-Allen and Brenton Strange spoke in the locker room. Kickoff Sunday is at 1 p.m. at EverBank Stadium, where capacity is 42,507 this season during construction of the 2028 stadium project.
Gene Frenette · Thursday, September 10, 2026
Every network in America is sending somebody to Jacksonville on Sunday, and not one of them is coming to see the Jaguars. They are coming to see whether a man who spent his twenties making football videos on the internet can stand on an NFL sideline for three hours without it falling apart on television. That is the story, and it has not been dressed up as anything else. CBS put the game at one o’clock and started selling it in July.
I have covered this football team since it did not exist yet, and I have watched this city get told what it is by people who flew in Saturday and left Sunday night. We were the market that could not support a team. We were the market that shipped a home game to London and deserved to. We were the tarps. Every year there was a new sentence about us written by somebody who has never eaten a meal here.
So a national camera crew is finally pointing at EverBank Stadium and it is pointing over our heads at somebody else’s coach. Fine. I have been to a lot of Sundays here that nobody pointed a camera at, and I know which one I prefer.
Here is what they will find. A stadium with its entire upper deck gone, torn out over the summer, cranes standing where the sky used to be. Forty-two thousand people packed down low with nothing above them and nowhere to spread out, which is going to sound considerably worse for a visiting quarterback than eighty thousand spread over three decks ever did. A defense that led the league against the run and took the ball away twenty-two times. And a quarterback who played the best football of his life for the last two months of last season, in a city that spent four years being told he was a disappointment.
And they are going to find the heat. In 2018 the Patriots came here in September and it was 97 degrees at kickoff and 22 people went to the hospital. There is a canopy coming that is supposed to cool this place down. It arrives in 2028. Sunday, the steel is up and the shade is not.
I have no interest in the Cleveland Browns’ head coach one way or the other. He seems like a bright young man who got handed something enormous, which in this town describes our general manager, and ours said “Game on” into a microphone and then won thirteen games. Laughing at a stranger’s résumé is a luxury for cities that have never been laughed at.
What I want Sunday is simple and it has not changed since 1995. Come here. Sit in it. Sweat through your shirt in the second quarter like the rest of us. Then go home and write whatever you were going to write anyway.
