Jacksonville 7 · Cleveland 35 · Final
Liam Coen took eleven minutes and gave away none of it. Trevor Lawrence completed 15 of 20 inside a 28-point loss and said so out loud. Around them, a Monday morning in Duval County that pointed at its own general manager.
Sunday, September 13, 2026 · EverBank Stadium, Jacksonville, Florida · 4:31 p.m. ET
COEN: I’ll read you the numbers, you have them anyway. Two hundred and eighteen yards. Sixty-five rushing on twenty-three carries. Ten first downs. Four of ten on third down. Two turnovers. We got down there three times and scored one time.
That’s my football team and that’s my week. Go ahead.
Brent Martineau · Action Sports JaxThey converted eight of eleven on third down and had the football most of the afternoon. Where does that start for you?
COEN: First down. It starts on first down, the same as it started last year and the year before that.
Twenty-three carries, sixty-five yards. That’s two point eight. When you run it like that you spend the day throwing it on second-and-nine, and then you punt, and then your defense is back out there before anybody has had a drink. I stood at a lectern in January and told this city I was going to fix the run game. I had eight months to fix it.
John Shipley · Jaguar ReportFoyesade Oluokun had eleven tackles. Three for loss, a sack, two balls knocked down.
COEN: Foye was the best football player out there today. He was also out there a very long time.
John ShipleyOne penalty and one sack allowed. Those were two of your stated problems from last season.
COEN: They were. One flag in that heat and one sack for nine yards, and we averaged five point one a play. Those two go together.
Michael DiRocco · ESPNThirteen wins last season with most of these people and the same coaching staff came back. Coming out of the summer, was this football team what you thought it was?
COEN: No. I had it higher than that.
We won thirteen games. We lost a home playoff game by three. Then the win total came out at eight and a half and every man in that room heard about it in June, because people send it to them. I looked at it too, I’m not above it. And then we went out in the first week at home and did that.
National reporter · NFL NetworkCleveland finished with four hundred and thirty-four yards at eight point three a play and punted one time. What were they doing to you?
COEN: Running it, mostly, and we never had them in a down where they had to do something they didn’t want to do.
I had a plan for their run game that assumed we would be even with them in it. We were not even with them in anything once the second quarter ended, and I didn’t have another one written.
Hays Carlyon · 1010XLThe stadium was most of the way empty by the middle of the fourth quarter.
COEN: They sat out in that for three hours. I’m not going to hand them a sentence tonight.
Demetrius Harvey · Florida Times-UnionAnything on health?
COEN: Nothing tonight. Wednesday.
Brent Martineau · Action Sports JaxTwo fourth downs and you converted one.
COEN: The one we didn’t get is a call I put on the sheet Friday and never ran against that look in practice, and I called it anyway when we were already chasing. That’s a bad process.
“There are two answers and I don’t want either one of them printed.”
Liam Coen, asked about the man on the other sidelineDemetrius Harvey · Florida Times-UnionLiam, I’d rather ask this now than Wednesday. Does anything about how this afternoon reads change, inside this organization, because of who was standing on the other sideline?
COEN: No.
Demetrius HarveyThat’s the answer?
COEN: Ten first downs. Four of ten on third down. That’s how it reads.
Demetrius HarveyI’m not asking you to say anything about the man. I’m asking whether it lands differently in that locker room.
COEN: It might. That’s fifty-three men and I’m not answering for them, and I’m not going there on my own.
Let me say this one time and then it’s finished for the week and it’s finished in December. I’m not answering a question about him in either direction, tonight or any night. That isn’t something I came up with walking down the hall just now.
Demetrius HarveyCan you tell us why?
COEN: Because there are two answers and I don’t want either one of them printed.
One of them says my football team lost to somebody they should have handled. After the week they gave me I’m not putting that on them, and I’d have to be a coward to put it on them from up here while they’re sitting in there.
The other one is me having an opinion about a man I have spoken to one time in my life, for about forty seconds, at midfield, with my hat in my hand. I don’t hand those out about people I don’t work with.
So I’ll stay off it. Ask me Wednesday and I’ll stay off it Wednesday.
Hays Carlyon · 1010XLWhat was said at midfield?
COEN: Mansour said something to me about their tight end. I asked him what time they were flying.
Michael DiRocco · ESPNDenver, Sunday.
COEN: Four-oh-five at altitude. Staff meets at six tomorrow and I’ll have all of it by then.
(He picked up the sheet he had not opened and left.)
Brent Martineau · Action Sports JaxTrevor, fifteen of twenty for a hundred and sixty-two.
LAWRENCE: I know how that reads. It’s a clean line on a day we scored seven points, and it’s clean because I threw it where they were letting me throw it.
Take the ball to Travis out of it and I threw for ninety-six yards on nineteen attempts. That’s the afternoon.
Demetrius Harvey · Florida Times-UnionThe interception.
LAWRENCE: Mine. I had Tyson leveraged where I wanted him. Then the ball goes to his inside shoulder.
Throw that one away and Cam kicks three and we’re in a different football game for about ten minutes. That throw is going to be with me on the drive home.
Hays Carlyon · 1010XLYou ran it in with 9:45 left in the second quarter and the offense didn’t score again. Where did it go?
LAWRENCE: We didn’t have the ball. That’s most of it. We’d get it back, we’d play three snaps, and then we’re standing over there with a wet towel watching them run it again.
When we did have it we were in long third downs from the first series on. That’s a hard way to play down here at one o’clock and it’s the same thing we were doing in November.
John Shipley · Jaguar ReportOne sack allowed, nine yards, against that front. Given what was written about this offensive line all summer.
LAWRENCE: They were good. They were better than good.
I got put on the ground one time in a football game we lost by twenty-eight. If there’s anything to hand out in here tonight it goes to those five and I’d like that written down somewhere.
National reporter · CBS SportsTalk about their defensive front.
LAWRENCE: Verse. He never got me down and he was the reason for a lot of it anyway. Their two young guys inside held up better than we had them graded.
National reporter · CBS SportsDo you have any thoughts on their head coach, given everything that’s been made of it this week?
LAWRENCE: I’ve got nothing on that. They came in here and beat us by twenty-eight and I threw an interception in our own end zone.
“That’s what I said in 2024. It was right then.”
Trevor Lawrence, on what he tells the roomMichael DiRocco · ESPNSixth season, fourth head coach. What’s the message in that room tonight?
LAWRENCE: (pause) You tell them we come in Wednesday, we watch it, we say the true things to each other and we go play at Denver.
That’s what I said in 2024. It was right then.
Michael DiRoccoIs it harder to say the sixth time?
LAWRENCE: It’s the same words. (pause) I’d rather be somewhere else in my career than saying them in Week 1 again. We’ll be in Wednesday.
John Oehser, Senior Writer · Monday, September 14, 2026
Let’s get to it…
Bill from Da Beach
Zone. I wrote you Thursday to say I was insulted that the country was coming down here to talk about their coach instead of talking about ours. Print this: I am no longer insulted. I am something else now.
Understood.
Curtis from Mandarin
Eight point three yards a play. At home. Off a team that punted once all afternoon. Nine months ago you could not run a football on us, Zone, you could not do it, and yesterday they did it whenever they wanted to. One sentence. Explain it.
They ran it and we didn’t.
Alan from Neptune Beach
We let a running back and an All-Pro linebacker walk out of here in March and were told the room would be better for it. Yesterday we ran it twenty-three times for sixty-five yards. Is any of that connected?
Yes.
Denise from San Marco
My brother-in-law in Columbus sent me the screenshot of their coach on the headset and I have opened it nine times and laughed nine times and I want somebody to know that about me.
It’s a good screenshot.
Warren from Sec 122 (Jacksonville via Scranton, PA)
Sixty-eight years old and I stayed to the horn. There were about four of us left in my row. I would like some form of recognition.
You have it.
Ed from Riverside
Twenty-two years I have read you. This morning you wrote four hundred words about the offensive line giving up one sack for nine yards as if it were news. It was the only thing that went right in the entire stadium. And you still suck.
It was the only thing that went right in the entire stadium.
Sam from Macclenny
Straight answer, no jokes, I am asking you as a man. Does it read worse because of who was standing over there?
No.
Brent Martineau · Sunday, September 13, 2026
JACKSONVILLE — Liam Coen opened his postgame availability by reading Jacksonville’s own statistics into a microphone before anybody could ask him for them, and never once blamed a player, an official or the schedule across the eleven minutes that followed.
The number underneath the loss is the one this franchise has been carrying for a year. Jacksonville finished 31st in the league in third-down distance in 2025, and on Sunday the Jaguars ran it twenty-three times for sixty-five yards, which is 2.8 a carry, and converted four of ten third downs. Trevor Lawrence threw for 162 on 15 completions; the Jaguars finished with 153 net passing yards and 218 in total.
“I stood at a lectern in January and told this city I was going to fix the run game,” Coen said. “I had eight months to fix it.”
Lawrence, sacked once for nine yards behind a line picked apart all summer: “I got put on the ground one time in a football game we lost by twenty-eight.” The Jaguars are at Denver on Sunday at 4:05 p.m. ET.
Dan Hicken and Jeff Prosser · excerpt, 6:06 a.m.
Hicken: Monday morning. Thirty-five to seven. Everybody have a lovely day.
Prosser: Two point eight.
Hicken: Don’t.
Prosser: Twenty-three carries. Sixty-five yards. I ran that on my phone at halftime and then I ran it again because I assumed I’d hit a wrong button.
Hicken: You didn’t hit a wrong button.
Prosser: I know I didn’t. I wanted to have hit a wrong button. ET. Play the thing.
[ET plays the CBS audio from the second quarter]
Prosser: No.
Hicken: Again.
[ET plays it again]
Prosser: Dan.
Hicken: One more and then we do football.
[ET plays it a third time]
Prosser: You’re going to turn that into a drop.
Hicken: He turned it into a drop last night. He had it cut and levelled before I was out of the shower this morning. ET, what’s it saved as?
ET: It’s saved as “Sunday.”
Prosser: Take it off the board. Take the board off the wall.
Dave in Baymeadows: Fellas. Let me get this out of the way first. I’m not calling about their coach. Their coach is not my problem. We let Travis Etienne walk and we let Devin Lloyd walk and we were told that was the plan, and yesterday in our own stadium we ran it twenty-three times for sixty-five yards and had ten first downs in a football game. That is not a story about a YouTube channel. That is a roster.
Prosser: That’s a roster.
Hicken: Dave, thank you, and I’ll go further than you and I’ve been sitting with it since about two-fifteen yesterday. Every show in this country today is a segment about somebody else’s head coach and what he means for the Cleveland Browns. That isn’t what I watched. Ten first downs, four for ten, two turnovers, at home, in September, coming off thirteen and four with the same coach and the same coordinators. That says a great deal more about us than it says about them, and I mean it, and it will still be true in December whatever they do.
Prosser: Florida had a nice one Saturday and normally by now I’d have —
Hicken: No.
Prosser: No.
Hicken: Not today. Today we sit in it. — Eight-thirty we’ve got Shipley on. Denver Sunday at four-oh-five, a mile up in the air, fifty degrees, grass.
Prosser: We’re going to lose that one as well.
Hicken: We’re going to win that one.
Coen was at the lectern for eleven minutes and Lawrence for nine. Neither Anthony Campanile nor Grant Udinski was made available, and James Gladstone was there and did not speak. The Jaguars are at Denver on Sunday, September 20, at 4:05 p.m. ET. At six o’clock the grounds crew was still rolling tarps under the canopy steel, and the temperature had not moved.