Are the Jaguars or Bears More Likely to Take a Step Back This Season?

Two coaches. Two opposite complaints. Same goal.

Liam Coen went on 1010 XL Radio and explained the single greatest advantage of coaching the Jacksonville Jaguars, which is that he never has to invent motivation.

"You don't have to make up telling your players stuff," Coen said. "It's given to us every day. It's a gift from the heavens. I just go pull up my phone, look at the NFL Network website, and pop up here. I think I'll see 40 pictures of Caleb Williams, and I won't see a single thing about any of our players on here."

Rich appreciated the shoutout to the NFL Network website, noting that his old default was to tell people to watch NFL Network instead of ESPN, and now the two are one and the same. Put down the bow and arrow. Same happy family.

The problem with Coen's complaint is that the guy he was implicitly needling has the exact opposite grievance, and it got back to him.

"Well, we're the number one regression candidates, so I think we got plenty of motivation ourselves," Ben Johnson said. "We talked about Caleb in the past. He's used to handling a lot of attention, so I'm not worried about that."

So one coach says nobody is talking about us. The other says everybody is waiting for us to fall on our faces. Both of them are selling the same thing to the same room.

It gets funnier when you check the actual odds. Jacksonville sits second in the AFC South behind Houston. The Bears sit third in the NFC North behind Detroit and Green Bay. Which is a strange place for Chicago to be, given who won the NFC North last season.

The Chicago Bears won the NFC North last season.

Rich, for the record, is picking both teams to win their divisions again. He is also not saying the Bears are regressing, and he freely admits he is not talking about Jacksonville as much. Coen has a point.

Coen also has a track record on this stuff. Rich brought up the sideline moment with Robert Saleh last year as evidence that you do not come at Coen without expecting it back. He says it with his chest.

The best part of the conversation was Rich's own story about how far this instinct goes. He was on the NFL Network set in Tampa for the Super Bowl between the Cardinals and Steelers. Ken Whisenhunt came walking up for a hit, sat down during the commercial break, looked him in the face and said, "I heard what you had to say about us."

Rich had no idea what he was talking about. Whisenhunt pressed. "Worst playoff team ever? Really?"

It took Rich a beat to realize Cris Collinsworth had said it, not him. He explained as much. Whisenhunt's response was a flat "Really?" as though Rich were making Cris Collinsworth up entirely.

"He was so in the nobody believes in us mode, it was everybody's catching it," Rich said. "God, I love this league."

Forty days to go, and the fodder is already flowing in both directions.

Rich did put one condition on his Jaguars pick, and it is a fair one. Win a playoff game. Do not pull one out after a first half so bad that people wonder whether you are benching your quarterback. He wants this Jacksonville team to show up the way the Bortles teams did, the ones that nearly beat New England in Foxborough before Stephon Gilmore saved the bacon.

That, he said, is what he wants out of the Trevor Lawrence Jaguars this year.

And next year? Leading the show with the Cowboys, obviously.