Rich on Trevor Lawrence & the Jaguars’ Chances to Win the AFC This Season

Liam Coen has coached exactly one regular season game in Jacksonville, and the quarterback he inherited already looks like the player the Jaguars drafted first overall.

That is not a small thing in a building where the last two attempts at this did not take. Rich walked the timeline without much charity. Urban Meyer came first, and Rich did not feel the need to relitigate it. "That was a disaster." Doug Pederson came next and got the team to the playoffs, but as Rich put it, "he's clearly not working for whatever reason."

Which left the Jaguars with the assignment every team in that position has. You have paid the quarterback. Now go find the coach who can do something with him.

"There's no doubt Liam Coen's done that," Rich said. "Trevor Lawrence finished fifth in the MVP voting last year for good reason. Some of those throws he was making yesterday, that was the number one overall pick. That was the guy at Clemson."

Lawrence threw four touchdowns in the opener. He is now the fourth player in NFL history with 100 or more passing touchdowns and 20 or more rushing touchdowns before turning 27. The other three are Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson and Cam Newton. Rich admitted he did not think Lawrence would get there last year, and he expects to be reading more numbers like it in the coming weeks.

The opponent matters here too. Cleveland's defense is not a soft landing. "The Browns defense, they're not pushovers, man," Rich said. "They're not by any stretch."

The final margin was the second largest Week 1 victory in franchise history. The only one bigger was a 38 point win over the Niners in 1999.

Coen's postgame framing explained the tone more than the score did. "We play at our best as a team here in Jacksonville when we're playing grimy, physical, nasty, and we're flying around with relentless pursuit," he said. "And that's in all three phases." He pointed to a roster that has been sitting with a bad taste since Buffalo. "You're trying to elevate the standard every single week."

Rich's read is that nobody is going to notice any of this, and that the Jaguars should be fine with that. Duval County, the AFC South, a 4:05 CBS window. "Let everybody not pay attention," he said. "It's only going to piss off Liam Coen more."

The schedule does not stay quiet for long. Denver next, then New England visits, then a trip to Cincinnati, then Philadelphia and Houston in London. Rich has heard the shrug that comes with international games and wanted no part of it.

"How does Philadelphia and Houston in back to back weeks hit you with this team that loves to hit you? I freaking love it."

Houston just had a pile of points put on them by Buffalo. Jacksonville is coming off a game where both sides of the ball were, in Rich's word, ferocious.

"They could take this division again," he said. "They could take this conference playing like that."