Jacksonville Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski's daily commute offers a tangible reminder of a less-than-comfortable start to his football coaching career. When Udinski snagged a last-minute spot as a graduate assistant at Baylor in 2019, he didn't arrange housing in Waco in time for camp and briefly slept in his car.
"Certainly got a little bit hot at night in the Texas heat when I was down there, but waking up in a puddle of sweat never hurt anybody, I guess," Udinski joked.
Udinski's backseat slumbers mercifully ended when he moved in with then-Baylor defensive coordinator Phil Snow, who a year later took the same role on the Carolina Panthers and brought Udinski with him.
Seven years later, the Jaguars' second-year offensive coordinator
still drives the same Honda CR-V, much to the chagrin of some of his NFL colleagues.
"I get a lot of flak for it from the players and coaches," Udinski said. "They're not exactly the biggest fans of the Honda CR-V, but hey, it gets me A to B."
The 30-year-old Udinski has maintained that humility as he's risen up the coaching ranks to become one of the NFL's brightest young stars, pegged as a candidate for multiple head coaching positions last offseason.
His mentors include Matt Rhule, Phil Snow, Mike Siravo, Brian Angelichio and Kevin O'Connell. Players and coaches describe him as a savant, a characterization Udinski modestly rejects, and as a football junkie, which Udinski admits might be accurate. When he was 5, he sat in the kitchen and drew football plays. He said he knew by middle school that he wanted to coach someday, though he never imagined how far that dream would take him.
"I think it's just really one of those things where you feel like you're called to do this," Udinski said. "Or you love doing this so much, there's nothing else you'd rather do, so it makes it easy to kind of be obsessed in some ways."
When the Jaguars (5-2) play the Ravens (4-4) in this week's Thursday Night Football game at M&T Bank Stadium, Udinski will face off against another 30-year-old offensive coordinator, Baltimore's Declan Doyle.
Udinski and Doyle both started their NFL careers in the NFC South – Udinski as a Panthers coaching assistant from 2020-2021 and Doyle as a Saints offensive assistant from 2019-2022. This season, they are the two youngest NFL offensive coordinators.
Although they don't know each other personally, Udinski expressed admiration for Doyle's work.
"It's been a lot of fun watching what he's done with the offense there, of course all the success he had in Denver and Chicago," Udinski said. "You learn from everybody. You put on their tape, you put on tape from teams around the league, and you learn and are impressed with what they're able to accomplish."
Football lifer Udinski finds beauty in game's unglamorous moments
Growing up in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Udinski absorbed everything he could about football from a young age. Udinski's dad, uncles and two older brothers all played football, so there was never a doubt that he'd play, too. Udinski played one season of college football as a tight end at Davidson, then transferred to Towson and finished out his playing career as a defensive end before embarking on his coaching journey.
After one season at Baylor, Udinski followed Rhule and Snow to the NFL and worked as a Panthers defensive assistant for two seasons. In 2022, he joined the Minnesota Vikings, where over the next three seasons he worked his way up from assistant to head coach Kevin O'Connell, to assistant quarterbacks coach, to assistant offensive coordinator. In 2025, new Jaguars head coach Liam Coen hired Udinski as offensive coordinator.
Coen calls the plays in Jacksonville, but Udinski's fingerprints are everywhere. He often leads quarterbacks through extra sessions after practice and said his experience playing and coaching on both sides of the ball shapes his perspective. And perhaps it's no coincidence that the Jaguars have an electrifying two-way player in Travis Hunter, who has played cornerback and wide receiver this season.
"I definitely would not compare anything I've ever done to anything Travis Hunter has done from an athletic standpoint, other than I guess we both wear the Jaguars stuff and walk in the building," Udinski said. "But I think it gives you an appreciation for all that he's being asked to do because this is not an easy offense to play in. Our defensive staff does a phenomenal job, but people don't always realize the mental strain and demands of playing on offense or defense."
In Udisnki's first season as offensive coordinator, the Jaguars finished the 2025 regular season 13-4 and won the AFC South with the NFL's sixth-rated scoring offense. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence's 38 touchdowns set a franchise record and the Jaguars scored 25 points or more in 13 games.
Rather than just trying to replicate last season's success in 2026, Udinski and Jaguars coaches preach a forward-thinking "What now?" mindset. Udinski said his personal coaching style varies depending on the day and which players he's working with, but no matter what he tries to be as detailed and work as hard as he can.
He is process-oriented rather than results-oriented and finds beauty in unglamorous moments. Asked to identify his proudest achievement in Jacksonville, Udinski joked that was like being asked to pick a favorite child before pausing to consider his answer.
"You have guys picking up their teammates on the sideline, or a player makes an unbelievable effort to potentially get a block late in the play, or they execute something that was studied over and over again that was incredibly challenging, or even something as simple as a throwaway by Trevor in a certain situation that doesn't seem super sexy, so to speak, in the sense that it's not going to be on SportsCenter," Udinski said. "But I think when you spend as much time around these guys and know the work that they put in, and then to see them go out there and execute at a high level something that might seem really insignificant or little, but you know that it took a tremendous amount of effort and strain and study and preparation, those are some of the favorite moments."
Udinski among NFL's hot head coaching prospects. 'It's just a matter of time'
Udinski's approach made a lasting impression at his previous stop in Minnesota, too. At the NFL's annual league meetings in March, Vikings head coach O'Connell praised Udinski and predicted he wouldn't remain a coordinator for long.
"He's so unbelievably gifted in his ability to look at the game, study the game and then articulate it with not only his ideas, his imagination, but then how do we get those thoughts to the players to be able to take advantage of those things," O'Connell said. "His future's so bright and we're probably all going to be working for him eventually. It's just a matter of time."
Udinski interviewed with the Cleveland Browns and Buffalo Bills for their head coaching vacancies last offseason, but ultimately took himself out of consideration for Cleveland's job and returned to Jacksonville as offensive coordinator this season.
Udinski said the decision came down to his admiration for the people in the Jaguars' organization.
"I could go on and on and on about the people," Udinski said. "Regardless of the result, it's a special group that means a lot to me, and the opportunity to come back here is incredibly special."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: He drew up plays at 5. At 30, Grant Udinski is one of the NFL's hottest coaches
