ESPN’s Jason McCourty: How Liam Coen Has Unlocked Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence

Jason McCourty has seen enough. The ESPN analyst told Rich the Jacksonville Jaguars are playing the best football in the AFC right now, and he is comfortable saying they will be the team in Los Angeles representing the conference in the Super Bowl.

Rich set it up with the résumé. The Jaguars, he said, are a team that pounces on any hole or mistake an opponent presents. They have five conference wins, with victories over New England, Cincinnati and now Baltimore, a team that was considered Super Bowl worthy coming into the season.

McCourty's answer started with the head coach. "I love watching them. I love Liam Coen. I think he does a tremendous job," he said. "He's going to challenge the guys, but also build them up."

He pointed first to Trevor Lawrence, and to how well Lawrence has played from late last season through the start of this one. McCourty got an inside look at how that happened. During OTAs, Coen invited a group of retired players to Jacksonville to sit in on about three practices, in meetings and out on the field. McCourty was there with Maurice Jones-Drew, DeMarcus Ware and Marcedes Lewis, among others, to watch and share some knowledge with the players.

One message kept coming through from Coen during that visit. "He loved his quarterback, and he wanted Trevor Lawrence to understand that you are the guy, and you have to believe that there's nobody better than you on the football field, no matter who you're playing against on any given Sunday," McCourty said.

"And that's what they look like right now," he added.

McCourty described an offense in which Lawrence is distributing the ball to weapons all over the field, with the run game in the mix. The defense is just as impressive to him. "They fly around and they hit you," McCourty said. "They blitz you, they play coverage, they do so many different things."

That combination is what separates Jacksonville in his eyes. "I feel like in the AFC, there's no team that's more balanced than the Jacksonville Jaguars," McCourty said.

He didn't hedge on where that leads. The Jaguars, McCourty said, are "the ones that are playing the best football in the AFC right now." And if he had to pick one team, "I feel really comfortable saying they're going to be the ones in LA representing the AFC in the Super Bowl."

It is a big statement for a team that, in Rich's description, is simply waiting for opponents to make a mistake. But coming from someone who sat in those spring meetings and heard Coen's message to his quarterback firsthand, it carries weight. The belief Coen preached in OTAs is now showing up on Sundays.