For the first time this year at Jacksonville Jaguars training camp, Trevor Lawrence rushed for a touchdown.
Granted, Lawrence hasn’t had many opportunities to run the football this summer. Quarterback safety is a priority to begin with, and the NFL’s current practice rules don’t allow for many live reps, either.
“It’s extremely challenging,” offensive coordinator Grant Udinksi said following Wednesday’s joint practice with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “You can’t fully replicate [scramble situations] because
there’s no opportunity to get hit, there’s nobody chasing you in those, but we want to try to take those opportunities to practice those reps at full speed.”
“We’ll put together drills and try to build it into drills or team periods, but it’s really a different process when you know the scramble is coming versus when you have to instantaneously respond and you’re not thinking it and you’re not expecting it.”
The coaching staff can try to simulate game reps as much as they can, but there’s also responsibility on Lawrence to act as if the practice setting has higher stakes.
“It can be tougher in practice,” Lawrence acknowledged. “I just talked about this with Liam [Coen] and Grant, trying to make the reps in practice a little bit more real. When I do scramble, I think it’s easy in practice sometimes to get on the perimeter, take your time, wait wait wait, then you throw up a ball that you probably shouldn’t throw and maybe it gets picked or it’s in traffic.”
Lawrence is amid a career-long quest to be more consistent in every area of his game. Decision-making, both in and out of the pocket, is on the list. But most of his offseason training is devoted to the first 2.5 seconds of his dropback.
If Lawrence can mock broken plays with some degree of authenticity, his teammates will be better prepared when the time comes on gamedays.
“I’ve had a couple of those [overextended scrambles] this training camp. Just being smart, because those are really the only times you get to work it. And making those real reps where you get out of the pocket, even if it’s seven-on-seven, get out of the pocket and let the receivers see me do that so they can get used to reacting and getting open. Because if you don’t work it in practice and then Week 1, you want these guys to run around and get open off-schedule, and they haven’t seen it all training camp, it’s probably not going to happen. So, I need to do a better job of doing it more for these guys so we can be ready to roll.”
“We’ve had some really good ones in the redzone though, in team periods throughout all of training camp. But I think just taking every opportunity I can, because our defense—unfortunately for our offense, but fortunately for our defense, they covered a lot of stuff this camp where I probably could have scrambled a little bit more instead of trying to squeeze one into the backside or whatever. I think that’s something that I definitely want to continue to work on these next two weeks.”
It’s easy to remember the impact that Lawrence’s legs had on the Jaguars’ 8-0 run to cap their 2025 regular season. He ranked second among all passers in rushing touchdowns (5) and rushing 1st downs (20) in that span. His most memorable highlights were downfield heaves as he rolled left after evading the pocket.
Coen will continue to call designed QB runs in high-leverage situations, but there’s also a reliance on Lawrence to be a playmaker in a “backyard football” sense. Especially in scoring territory.
“When we got better in the red zone last year was when Trevor started using his legs,” Coen said after a productive day in the redzone last week. “It’s so hard to scheme wide-open or open receivers in the red zone. It’s so much tighter. There’s less vertical grass. And especially versus a three-man, four-man rush, it’s challenging.”
“You watch around the league of the top red-zone touchdowns every week, and 90% of them are off schedule. They’re just, ‘Hey man, you got to buy a little time. Find a window. Somebody’s got to make a little move and boom, touchdown.’ And it’s not exactly how you draw it up, but it’s football.”
Real, live football is still a few weeks away. As the Jaguars prepare for their September 13 season opener, they’re looking for any kind of stepping stone to smooth the transition and start on the right foot. This week’s pair of joint practices against the Bucs was a scramble in the right direction.
Notes & Quotes
- After injuring his shoulder on the first play of Tuesday’s joint practice, WR Brian Thomas Jr. wore an orange pinny and participated in individual drills on Wednesday. That’s very much a good sign, though his Week 1 status is still far from certain.
- With Thomas and WR Jakobi Meyers (hand) unavailable for team drills, the offense’s top target was WR Parker Washington on Tuesday, and TE Brenton Strange on Wednesday. He caught all 4 of his short-area targets. UDFA WR Trebor Peña also had a few receptions, including a touchdown in 7-vs-7 redzone drills, and WR/CB Travis Hunter played two or three snaps on offense for the first time in several practices.
- The play of the day belonged to WR Josh Cameron, who had a sick “and one” catch against Bucs CB Zyon McCollum way down the field in 7-vs-7 team drills. Lawrence leaked out of the imaginary pocket to initiate a scramble drill before quickly resetting his feet and launching the ball 40-plus yards to Cameron. The rookie wideout fought through pass interference to come down with the biggest catch of his young career.
- With my sights focused on the offense, I didn’t see as much of Jacksonville’s defense against Tampa Bay’s offense. But it sounded like a few second-year pros got their hands on the ball. According to SI’s John Shipley, DB Jabbar Muhammad made multiple plays in coverage, including an interception, and S Caleb Ransaw and OLB Jalen McLoud registered pass breakups as well.
- I believe I saw OL Cole Van Lanen, who was recently activated from the PUP list as he recovers from offseason knee surgery, play his first snap of training camp on Wednesday. It was with the second-stringers at right tackle. I’m not 100% certain that I identified the correct jersey number, but if it was indeed Van Lanen, even just one rep in team drills is a sign of progress.
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