Liam Coen is in town, and I am all-in on the Jaguars this season. It’s hard for me to find bad things to say about this roster, with Travis Hunter and Bhayshul Tuten joining the squad. They’re set to take a big step forward this season with Coen and these additional weapons, so let’s dive into my vote for Most Fun Team headed into the 2025 season!
Overdrafted:
Travis Etienne, Running Back (RB34, Pick 100 Overall)
My “Travis Etienne is Not Cooked” shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. Etienne spent his second-straight season under 4 yards per carry. He fell off a cliff, production-wise, because the Jags threw in the towel and took him from 15.7 carries and 4.3 targets per game, on 74% of snaps and 76% of opportunities, down to 10 carries and 3.5 targets per game, on 55% of snaps and 55% of opportunities.
In 2023, Etienne’s volume (top-seven in targets, carries, and routes run) hid his subpar production (outside the top-30 in yards per touch, yards created per touch, and true yards per carry), which is what elevated him to his RB7 finish. In 2024, everything fell apart. Among the 46 backs with at least 100 carries, Etienne ranked 27th in explosive run rate, 10th in stuff rate, 45th in missed tackles forced per attempt, 30th in yards after contact per attempt, 30th in juke rate, and 45th in yards per touch. He broke seven tackles last season after breaking 43 the season before.
Etienne continued his downward slide, but his offensive line did him no favors: both he and Tank Bigsby ranked in the bottom ten in yards before contact per attempt among those 46 running backs.
In the last nine games of the season (after returning from a two-game absence), he averaged 10 carries and 3 targets, for 55 yards per game. He ultimately finished with 52 targets, which ranked fifteenth, tied with Joe Mixon and D’Andre Swift, but his running game usage lowers his ceiling.
Etienne is a falling knife, and we saw last season that Liam Coen does not rehab his falling knife running backs: he replaced Rachaad White with Buccaneers’ Irving. However, White last season still had a role as a pass catcher after Irving took over. This is a path to fantasy relevance for Etienne, who could fit in as a PPR scam flex running back. But, finishing outside the top-30 in points per game at running back wasn’t exactly fruitful last season: Zach Charbonnet, Tyrone Tracy, Alexander Mattison, Ameer Abdullah, and Jerome Ford all finished between RB31 and RB36 in PPR leagues last season on a per-game basis (min. 10 games).
Underdrafted:
Travis Hunter, Wide Receiver (WR32, Pick 68 Overall)
Travis Hunter was a slam-dunk NFL prospect, drawing immediate comparisons to Stefon Diggs & Malik Nabers. He has crazy body control, exceptional hands, and a preternatural ability to get open. He’s also a YAC monster and constantly is looking past the guy he is already juking to make his way downfield.
He’s one of the wiggliest receivers I’ve ever seen, and his speed is nothing to sneeze at, but his small stature comes out big in two areas. First, he struggles with contested balls. He had some highlight catches, but he mostly uses his speed and athleticism to stack the defender into comebacks. Hunter rarely has an opportunity to high-point a football, and I could count his over-the-shoulder targets in 2024 on one hand. Second, he goes down to the first man to touch him. That’s not as bad as it sounds, because Hunter’s elusiveness makes him one of the hardest receivers to touch.
The biggest question about Hunter was his usage, and it’s something that we’ve learned as the offseason progressed that we shouldn’t worry about. Travis Hunter is going to force their hand by being too talented a receiver to ignore. He has the same upside as we saw with Brian Thomas Jr., last season. The sky’s the limit. Get him before his ADP adjusts.
Sleeper:
Trevor Lawrence, Quarterback (QB20, Pick 136 Overall)
Trevor Lawrence was the second coming in 2021, and things haven’t gone as planned so far. He had a lackluster rookie campaign, but put together respectable year two and three campaigns, pacing out to a 4,188-yard, 24-td, 11-pick campaign across those two seasons (with 325 rushing yards—more on that in a second).
Last year was a step back, however, with a 17-game pace of 3,785 passing yards, 21 picks, and 11 interceptions (if you remove the Aziz Al-Shaair game). He hasn’t been bad by any stretch of the imagination, but he hasn’t lived up to his “best prospect since Manning” billing. A former #1 overall pick, who hasn’t been a complete disaster, but who hasn’t lived up to expectations yet? Well, that sounds a bit like Baker Mayfield.
I won’t bore you with the details, but Liam Coen changed how the Bakerneers operated on offense in 2024, with Baker taking the short, easier passes over airing it out (Baker went from 5th in aDOT to 32nd) while giving the quarterback easier targets, including ones downfield.
I’ll be quoting a bunch of PlayerProfiler stats here, but please don’t accuse me of just copying his PlayerProfiler page. I also opened Excel.
Baker went from the bottom half of the league in true completion, deep ball, pressured, play action, and red zone completion percentages to top ten in all five statistics.
He still let Baker bake, however, as the gunslinger part of his game (money throws, pressure throws, danger plays, and interceptable passes) all stayed very similar to his 2023 numbers.
So, long story short, Liam Coen came in and did what so many pitching coaches do in baseball: tell him to focus on throwing the pitches that work, and eschewing the rest.
Should we see a Baker Mayfield-esque jump from Trevor Lawrence this season, and applying it to his 2024 campaign, we see: 4,356 passing yards, 27 passing touchdowns, 22 interceptions, 739 rushing yards, 4 rushing touchdowns.
Let’s hew off the edges a bit and call that 15 interceptions and 350 rushing yards (his career high is 339). That would have been QB6 last year.
