JACKSONVILLE – The Jaguars may be mostly backing up in future preseasons.
Liam Coen spoke this past week at the NFL 2026 Annual League Meetings, with the Jaguars’ second-year head coach saying he believes in a recent league-wide trend of playing starters and front-line players sparingly in preseason games.
Preparing for the regular season matters. But there are safer ways to do it than playing a team’s best players too early.
“I just have a hard time putting a guy in a game that doesn’t count technically,” he said.
Coen, speaking last week at the annual AFC Coaches breakfast at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Ariz., said ideally he will schedule “joint practices” against other teams in the future and allow starters to work extensively in that controlled environment.
“My preference would be to do joint and not play them [in preseason games],” Coen said.
The Jaguars last preseason – Coen’s first as head coach – scheduled just one joint practice, working one day with the Miami Dolphins before the teams’ Preseason Week 3 game in Miami. The starters played about a series in Preseason Week 1 against the Pittsburgh Steelers and about two in Preseason Week 2 against the New Orleans Saints. Jaguars starters did not play in the preseason finale against Miami.
“There are some different ways this is going right now,” Coen said. “Last year we were in a first-year spot, so we didn’t get a ton of juice and help on that front. We chose to play our players in preseason games, which was against my inclination. It was against my belief, let’s just put it that way. I have a hard time putting somebody in a game for an exhibition like that.