When and where: Week 5 in London
Key additions: DT Ruke Orhorhoro, RB Chris Rodriguez
Key subtractions:
LB Devin Lloyd, RB Travis Etienne, DT Maason SmithLast season: New head coach won the AFC South with Trevor Lawrence, just like the last guy
The question for this team: How much of 2025 was real?
New head coach Liam Coen’s first year was a huge success by Jacksonville standards. 13 wins, which was second best in Jaguars history, and a division title for only the fifth time in franchise history. After
their bye they went 9-1, then lost to the Bills on a last minute Josh Allen TD. No shame in that.
But we’ve seen this story so many times: new coach arrives, does some good things that his predecessor wasn’t doing, beats up on a soft schedule, the team thinks it’s legit and doesn’t do much in the offseason, and then year two is a dud. The recipe is almost always the same: the team had a lot of things go right in the first year that can’t be counted on happening again; and they thought they had arrived and rested on their laurels in the offseason and it came back to bite them. Second part first, the Jaguars did next to nothing in the spring to improve their roster. If anything, they got worse, downgrading at RB.
The Jaguars 2025 season had some smoke and mirrors. Seven of those nine post-bye wins were against the Raiders (in OT), Cardinals (also in OT), Titans (twice), Colts (twice-the first with Daniel Jones getting injured early, the second with Philip Rivers at QB), and Jets. The defense had the second most takeaways, and had six games with at least three, four of them were the first four games of the season. Their non-divisional opponents this year are the AFC North, the NFC East, the Patriots, the Bears, and of course the Eagles. Some of those teams will be bad, but the Jaguars are almost certainly not playing six games against all of the teams picking 1 through 4 in April.
But there are also reasons to believe there isn’t a heat shield needed for the Jaguars regression to the mean. The 9-1 finish had some absolute hammerings: 41-7, 48-20, 36-19, and not just against filler: they beat the Broncos 34-20 in Denver, and the Chargers 35-6. The Jaguars had the 3rd best point differential in the league. They had a good but not unrepeatable record in one score games, going 6-4. They outgained their opponent in all but three games. They had good but not extremely beneficial health, 7th best in Adjusted Games Lost; or in penalties, they actually committed more than their opponents; and no one had a team carrying career year. In fact, most players didn’t have noteworthy seasons at all. Their leading receiver was Parker Washington, who caught just 58 passes for 847 yards. Travis Etienne was their leader in TD receptions. On the ground Etienne was just 11th in rushing yards, and 22nd in TDs. Brian Thomas looked like a star in 2024 with 1,282 yards and 10 TDs, he had 707 and 2 in 2025. Josh Hines-Allen had just 8 sacks, only one other player had more than 3.5.
That 9-1 run was also, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not coincidentally, without Travis Hunter, who tore is LCL in a non-contact injury in practice. Hunter was not effective as either a WR or a CB, which is not a surprise because he was, you know, a rookie, and he couldn’t practice fully as either. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not coincidentally, Hunter played a ton and got hurt. Hunter played 69 snaps per game, which over a 17 game season would be 1,180 snaps. That not only would have led the league, but since 2012, only 2 offensive players who weren’t OL or QBs, and 6 defensive players have had at least 1,180 snaps in a season.
Since the Jaguars have made London their second home in 2013, they have been mostly terrible. But London has been good to them, they’re 7-7 there, though 2-2 in seasons where they’ve had a winning record. The Jaguars definitely get a bit of an advantage in the institutional memory of making this trip every year for over a decade, but it’s not a decisive one. For the Eagles though, this is their first European trip since beating the Jaguars in London in 2018. Could be something.
Sidenote: London is the greatest city in the world. If you have the chance to go to this game and you’re on the fence about going, go.
