Jacksonville Jaguars' Liam Coen deep dive: Coach's inner circle helped shape NFL destiny

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Jacksonville Jaguars' Liam Coen deep dive: Coach's inner circle helped shape NFL destiny

Gene Frenette, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union · The Florida Times-Union

Wed, Feb 12, 2025 ·

18 min read

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Liam Coen was only 4 years old, sitting on the locker room floor after practice at South Kingston High in Newport, Rhode Island, when some coaches noticed him drawing on a chalk board.

They motioned to Liam's father, Tim, then the team's head coach, to look down at the floor. His only son, not yet in kindergarten, had correctly diagrammed the Rebels' wishbone offense with 11 players all properly lined up.

While Liam has no recollection of that moment from the 1990 season, that memory is a reminder to his father and others who watched the kid immerse himself in football his whole life of why they're not surprised he is now head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars .

"Liam hung with me when I drew up formations all the time," said Tim Coen, 71, a lifelong football coach at various high schools and one NAIA college in Rhode Island, including a four-year stint as Liam's prep coach at LaSalle Academy in Providence.

"I didn't know at such a young age he'd know where the players would be [in the wishbone] and draw it up," added Coen. "It was bizarre, but it was his thing.

"Football has always been his passion. He just loved it so much."

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Liam Coen, right, walks the Jacksonville Jaguars hallways with his father, Tim, after being introduced as the team's head coach. Tim served as Liam's high school football coach at LaSalle Academy in Providence, where the Rams went 32-3 with Liam as starting quarterback and won two Rhode Island Super Bowls.

At 39, Coen has become the youngest head coach in Jaguars history . He was hired after a successful one-year stint as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ' offensive coordinator to bring a sustained winning product to Jacksonville, something the Jaguars haven't experienced since the late 1990s.

Looking at the path Coen took during his formative football years and eventually ascending to an NFL dream job, you can expect him to lean on three longtime pillars of his inner circle whenever the need arises.

To get an idea of how Liam Coen evolved as a young quarterback and made it to football's highest coaching level, letting his father, his college coach at the University of Massachusetts, and his best friend tell their stories is a good place to start.

Dad: Football all over the family tree

Liam Coen (11) as a Pop Warner quarterback in Rhode Island.

The family DNA almost dictated that the only child of Tim and Elizabeth Coen, who passed away at age 46 of Lyme disease when Liam was in college, would have a working career in football.

Liam's paternal grandfather, Phillip, was a guard who served as a captain at Boston College in the early 1950s. He then went on to be head football coach/history teacher at Rogers High in Rhode Island, also serving as an assistant coach at Brown University before his death in 2020 at age 91.

Phillip's son, Tim, has coached at multiple Rhode Island high schools and was the first head coach for an NAIA startup program, Salve Regina University, from 1993-99. He led the Seahawks to a 53-12 record, then left to coach Liam at LaSalle Academy.

As Liam grew up and accompanied Dad to all those practices, games and film study sessions — beginning his 12-year journey as a starting quarterback with the South County Raiders in Pop Warner and becoming the most successful QB in UMass history — it only fueled his football addiction.

A 1992 Liam Coen trading card when he was 7-years-old.

"Liam didn't have a choice," said Tim Coen. "Football was in his DNA. He had to do it. I didn't have to make him do it. He liked it. Given his choice, he'd rather throw the football in the backyard or living room."

The kid was a shortstop-pitcher in Little League, played some junior high basketball and got talked into giving hoops one last shot as a senior at LaSalle, but those were mere hobbies.

All Liam wanted was to be a quarterback and wear No. 12, like his idol, Tom Brady , and sling the ball. Liam wore his father out with a constant demand to throw and catch passes.

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"He didn't watch Winnie the Pooh or play with trucks, Liam watched football film," Tim Coen said. "We'd sit in the living room and he'd ask me to throw pillows to him as he's running around. Not for five minutes, but 45 minutes.

"We would go in the backyard, each of us running in circles while he threw the ball. It was constant motion, learning how to lead the receiver. He was a super accurate passer."

By the time he got to high school, Liam was good enough to be the starting quarterback, but Tim — then in his first year as LaSalle's head coach after leaving Salve Regina — opted to keep him with his class on the freshmen football team.

Born to be a quarterback

Whenever Liam operated an offense, good things seemed to happen.

The LaSalle Rams went 32-3 with Coen as the starting QB, all three loses coming to then-powerhouse East Providence, either in their annual Thanksgiving clash or the Super Bowl, the name given to Rhode Island's state championship game that Liam won as a sophomore.

The night before the Super Bowl in Liam's junior year, star running back Lorenzo Perry came down with appendicitis and the Rams lost a 28-27 heartbreaker.

What Coen demonstrated throughout his prep career was a consistent pattern of putting his team in position to win, but that trait didn't sway many college recruiters.

That's because when Tim took his son to one-day summer camps at UConn, Maryland, Boston College and Penn State before his senior year, they weren't enamored with his 6-foot-1, 175-pound frame.

"Liam was real skinny and lean, he looked like he was about 12," said Tim. "But I kept telling these schools to give him time, 'He's an Irish kid with size 13 feet, what do you think is going to happen? He's going to grow.'

"But we were playing with house money because UMass had already offered him a scholarship. If he had gone to BC, he would have been playing behind Matt Ryan . We thought he might go to UConn, but they had already offered D.J. Hernandez [older brother of Aaron], so he decided to stick with UMass."

It turned out to be a smart call. Liam still owns all of the significant UMass quarterback records, including 11,031 passing yards, 90 TDs, 830 completions, 1,302 attempts, 63.7 completion percentage, 8.47 yards per attempt and a 150.7 passing efficiency rating.

UMass quarterback Liam Coen (12) and backup Scott Woodward (8) celebrate a Coen TD pass for UMass in 2006.

After a redshirt year, Coen replaced injured starter Tim Day (brother of Ohio State head coach Ryan) in the second half against Colgate in Week 2, throwing two TDs in the fourth quarter of a 17-14 loss. He went on to start the last 49 games of his UMass career.

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During his wonder years, all that film study with Dad and the relationships he built in college would ultimately lead to a bigger NFL payoff.

Liam's other father-son relationship

A man the Jaguars' head coach looks up to as practically a second father spent 43 years coaching at 11 different colleges, including two head coaching stints at UMass before his dismissal in November at age 69.

Don Brown made it in the coaching profession as a defensive mastermind, working under head coaches like Steve Addazio (Boston College, 2013-15), Jim Harbaugh (Michigan, 2016-20) and Jedd Fisch in 2021 at Arizona .

In his first head coaching tour at UMass, which encompassed Coen's entire college career, he rarely spent time with the offense. But his quarterback forged a bond with Brown that, two decades later, remains as tight as ever.

"Liam's leadership quality was ridiculously high," said Brown, who lives on Cape Cod and hopes to continue coaching. "When you say the name, 'Liam Cohen,' that's all I think about is him being a leader."

It didn't take long for Brown to pick up on that character trait. Sometime during his first season as the UMass starter, Coen had an unusual request for his head coach: Could they walk together to the locker room after the game ended?

Brown thought it was odd at first, but he complied, still wondering why a quarterback who could see his head coach at any time wanted to be with him during a three-minute walk after games.

"He used to wait for me to shake hands with the other coach, then I'd turn around to start walking and, bang, there's Liam, waiting on me," said Brown. "It was just a good conversation about the game, that's all.

"It became a weekly thing for his whole career, us walking off the field together. I looked forward to it because I got a view of the game from his perspective. If you ask me what I remember most from my coaching days [10 total seasons] at UMass, that's what I think of, those walks with Liam."

It turns out that Coen had a purpose in initiating that ritual. He was big on building trust, more than just coach with quarterback, because Coen felt strongly that it would lead to winning.

"We started doing that when I took over [as starting QB]," Liam told the Times-Union. "He was a defensive coach and I was the quarterback and a young one. It was just a sign of our symmetry, that we're on the same page.

"If he and I can continue to spread his message throughout the team and through the players, that's what mattered. Our conversations, our communication, the trust level, things have been able to progress since then. It really became more of a father-son relationship than coach-player."

Coen's leadership quality galvanized UMass

One common thread that emerges from people who know Coen is the importance of loyalty.

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The coach who recruited him to UMass, former head coach Mark Whipple, left before Coen arrived to be Hall of Fame quarterback Ben Roethlisberger 's position coach with the Pittsburgh Steelers (2004-06). But the two stayed connected and Coen never wavered in his commitment to the Minutemen.

Whipple, who won a I-AA national title in 1998, returned to UMass as head coach in 2014-18, and one of his first hires was Coen as passing game coordinator and QB coach. When Coen assembled his Jaguars coaching staff, he named Spencer Whipple, Mark's son, as his quarterback coach. Spencer was also on the UMass staff in 2014-15 as a tight ends and receiver coach, working closely with Coen.

But nobody was a bigger beneficiary of Liam's loyalty than Brown, whose UMass teams went 36-13 with Coen as the starter, the winningest four-year period in the Minutemen's 73-year history.

"Liam had really solid arm strength, and with his father bringing him along as a high school quarterback, he's one of those guys you don't have to worry about," Brown said. "When you're a quarterback and going to start 49 games, you better have your act together.

"You know when your heart beats and you s--t your pants because you're worried as a coach how your quarterback's going to react? You never worried about that with Liam. You knew he was going to make the right decisions. Was every play successful? No, but you knew there was going to be thought and execution and a chance for success."

One chaotic run to the I-AA national title game told Brown all he needed to know about Coen's makeup.

QB unfazed by freezing cold, sickness

No period in Coen's football life may have better defined his toughness than the last two games of his UMass sophomore season.

The Minutemen's only 2006 regular season loss was a 21-20 defeat at Navy. They never lost again until the I-AA national championship game, 28-17, against top-ranked Appalachian State.

Coen getting UMass to the finals might have been the signature game of his career. The No. 3-ranked Minutemen faced a road game at second-ranked Montana in freezing temperatures, complicated by the fact a sickness started going through the team.

"We're going to Montana for a night game on ESPN, and nobody gave us a shot," said Scott Woodward, then the UMass backup quarterback. "That team was supposed to beat the brakes off us.

"If you ask me the loudest stadium I've been in, Montana is in that conversation, and I've been at South Carolina at night. Everyone in that stadium had a water bottle full of nickels and was shaking them."

Coen overcame a second-quarter interception return for a touchdown, completing 21 of 33 passes for 234 yards in 18-degree temperatures, as UMass rallied for a 19-17 victory.

The following week against Appalachian State, it was Coen who went down with the flu the night before the game, catching it from Woodward. There was an uncertainty about whether he'd play as Brown's wife, Debe, a registered nurse, spent the eve and morning of the game trying to revive him with fluids and an IV.

"Liam was throwing up all day long and had diarrhea," said Tim Coen. "Debe saved the day taking care of him."

Despite fatigue and feeling weak, Coen was determined to lead his team in the biggest game of his playing life.

"There was no doubt in my mind I'd play," Liam said. "There wasn't too much that was going on to stop that. A lot of the team got sick that Montana trip and it was a carryover from there."

Coen played admirably, pulling his team into a 14-14 tie late in the third quarter on a 17-yard TD pass, but App State's ground attack proved too much in a 28-17 UMass defeat.

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Still, the resilience Coen demonstrated that day under physical distress was an indicator of how much football and winning meant to him. In Coen's first time as a head coach, the Jaguars are banking on that quality to lift up the franchise.

Coen's backup QB remains trusted friend

As with most coaches in the profession, there's a small circle of colleagues and friends they tend to rely on at decisive points in their career.

If you had to pick one person outside his father that the Jaguars' coach will pick up the phone to call as a sounding board, it's likely going to be Woodward.

Their connection is long and personal. Woodward was the backup QB for Coen's last four years at UMass. They coached together at their alma mater in 2015, then again at Kentucky (2021, '23). When Kentucky coach Mark Stoops allowed Coen to make one hire to help him with the Wildcats' offense, he enticed Woodward to leave Pitt, where he had been working with coordinator Mark Whipple.

In 2015, UMass quarterbacks coach Liam Coen, right, and graduate assistant Scott Woodward, shout instructions to the offense.

During their college days, Woodward, whose father was also his high school coach, constantly hung out with Coen at a place he shared with two offensive lineman and a tight end. They were also roommates for one semester. They both dated members of the UMass women's soccer team, then eventually married somebody else.

By 2006, one year into being teammates in the UMass quarterback room, they had become best friends and that bond remains.

Now as husbands and fathers, each with two kids, Woodward's connection with Coen is just as strong, though Woodward is further away now as a varsity high school coach at Middlesex School in Concord, Mass.

When Coen felt torn last month about whether to remain as the Buccaneers' offensive coordinator or pursue the Jaguars' job, he was in steady communication with his best friend to help him navigate that awkward situation.

"He called me throughout the process early on," said Woodward. "He was hemming-and-hawing, but I reminded him this was one of 32 head coaching jobs. He'd say, 'I know, I know,' but all his weapons in Tampa and the offensive line were coming back.

"I think it all came down to him telling me, 'Who knows if I get this opportunity again.'"

Reaching that happy place

It's not like Woodward, who picked Coen to be best man at his wedding in 2019, was angling to get a job on the Jaguars' staff, though that door might open in the future.

No, this was about two friends doing what they always do: looking out for one another and wanting whatever is best for the other.

Maybe Coen and Woodward work together again, but for now, his former backup QB is content coaching high school ball.

"I always say if there's one person in this world, who if he has a coaching job, I know I have a chance [to be hired]," said Woodward. "You got to know someone in the industry that you trust. For me, that guy was Liam. When he brought me to Kentucky, he knew I was someone he could trust and bounce ideas off in the building.

"We want to make sure it's the right situation. Since we've had families, we talk about where we can be the most happy. When he was at Tampa, that was the happiest he's ever been coaching football. This is the happiest I've been because, even though I'm not making as much money as I did at Kentucky, there's more time for family."

Asked if these best friends will coach together again, Woodward replied: "It won't be any time soon. Maybe some time down the line."

Jaguars find coach who connects with players

Woodward has been in enough position meeting rooms with Coen, made hundreds of Dunkin' Donuts runs with him in college, and exchanged more football ideas with him than just about anybody to know this: the Jaguars are getting a true leader.

There's almost nothing these two New England native QBs haven't talked about, be it fatherhood, marriage or football. Woodward is as dialed in as anyone about what Coen might bring to Jacksonville.

He saw how his coaching career began taking off when they were at UMass in 2015 when Mark Whipple and Shane Waldron, now the Jaguars' passing game coordinator, were there. After Waldron got hired two years later by Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay, he convinced his boss to later interview Coen, who was hired as an assistant receiver coach.

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Woodward has seen the evolution of Coen -- who had a brief fling with the 2010 Alabama Vipers in the Arena Football League before quickly pivoting to coaching -- from an insider's perspective. Like several other successful McVay disciples, among them Kevin O'Connell ( Minnesota Vikings ), Matt LaFleur ( Green Bay Packers ) and Zac Taylor ( Cincinnati Bengals ), he sees Coen as the right fit for the Jaguars.

"Liam is a great leader," said Woodward. "This pasty white kid from Rhode Island can mix it up with anybody. A great coach has to have long tentacles and an ability to connect with people. That's who Liam is.

"He likes to play the game with boosters and stuff. He used to yell at me, 'Hey, you got to play the game.' That's why he's such a great presence in front of a room. I know his first team meeting in Jacksonville, he's going to have the respect of the players because he's one of them, though not as a former NFL player.

"All those players care about is whether he can make them better. He has an innate ability to do that and convince his players he will."

Anyone who got a glimpse of Liam Coen, from the time he was little through when he started coaching, isn't surprised at his meteoric rise in the profession.

"Getting the Jaguars' job is the greatest thing that ever happened to him in football," said Tim Coen. "But it's not unexpected or something he didn't expect. He went back to Kentucky a second time [in 2023] because he wanted to call plays again. McVay couldn't bring himself to give that up.

"Everything he's done had a purpose of him knowing he was going to be in the NFL and a head coach one day."

Funny thing is, who knew all this would begin with a 4-year-old boy drawing up a wishbone formation on a chalk board?

Gfrenette@jacksonville.com : (904) 359-4540; Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @genefrenette

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Liam Coen mentors, inner circle helped lead him to Jacksonville Jaguars

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