The new NFL season lies just around the corner, meaning the fantasy football news cycle cranks up and hype trains begin to leave the station.
The Jacksonville Jaguars have long served as a punchline in NFL circles with just four playoff appearances this millennia. After a string of questionable head coaching hires and disappointing seasons in the league’s proverbial cellar, the Jags finally seem like they’re on the right path after bringing in Liam Coen to take over the franchise. For once, there’s hope this offense can grow into an elite attack you can count on for fantasy football production — and perhaps even a playoff run in the near future.
Can Trevor Lawrence finally deliver on the immense expectations attached to his name? Will Brian Thomas Jr. continue to grow as a young star or will Travis Hunter take over as the new top wideout? Find all the answers below!
How will a new head coach impact the Jaguars?
This Jacksonville squad finished with a 4-13 record in 2024, a huge difference from the two seasons prior in which Doug Pederson led the team to a 9-8 record twice with an NFL Playoffs appearance in 2022. After the coaching veteran seemingly lost the locker room, the franchise decided change could answer their problems and dismissed Pederson over the offseason.
With a franchise quarterback locked down on a long-term contract, a breakout receiver entering his second year in the NFL and draft capital to work with, the Jaguars job earned quite a bit of interest. After a strange saga which involved Buccaneers offensive coordinator Liam Coen taking himself out of the running for the Jacksonville job and allegedly agreeing to a contract extension in Tampa Bay before a secret second meeting with the team, Duval finally found its next head coach. In hiring Coen, the franchise added a highly-regarded offensive mind who can potentially turn an underperforming offense into one of the NFL’s best.
The 39-year-old began his coaching career in the NCAA’s FCS and spent seven years with a handful of schools between 2010-2017. He then spent three seasons with the Los Angeles Rams as an assistant position coach before leaving to take the offensive coordinator job at Kentucky. After just one year there, he went back to the NFL and assumed the Rams’ OC job, though they vastly underperformed due to their Super Bowl hangover and an injury which sidelined quarterback Matthew Stafford for seven games.
After heading back to Kentucky in 2023, Coen then returned to professional football as the Buccaneers’ offensive coordinator last year. His body of work spoke volumes — Tampa Bay ranked third in yardage and fourth in points as Baker Mayfield saw his career revived with the franchise. Coen had plenty of elite weapons to work with in Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Bucky Irving, but the success his offense experienced can’t be overstated.
Not only did they score a ton of points and move the ball essentially at will, the Buccaneers did so efficiently with the third-best Y/A (5.25) on the ground and sixth-best NY/A through the air. Evans and Godwin both averaged career-high YPRR and Mayfield completed 71.4% of his passes for 4,500 yards, 41 touchdowns and a career-best TD% at 7.2%. The team’s third-down conversion rate of 50.9% also marked a new franchise-best and the 14th-highest percentage in NFL history. Those are some very impressive numbers, but can Coen create similar success in Jacksonville?
That drastic of a turnaround may take multiple years to achieve, but the Jaguars should see improvement at the very least on offense. After finishing 26th in scoring and 25th in yardage last season, the bar to get better doesn’t sit very high off the ground. Coen’s attack should clear that mark and does have most of the necessary pieces to finish in the top half of the league. After all, Trevor Lawrence led an offense which finished 10th and 13th in offense in 2022 and 2023. With the same halfback in place and possibly the best receivers of his career all seeing looks schemed by a bright offensive strategist, there’s tons of upside here.
Fantasy star fallout
Quarterback
Trevor Lawrence
Coming out of Clemson, Trevor Lawrence was supposed to be the chosen one. As one of the most highly-touted quarterback prospects of the last decade, the former No. 1 selection saw sky-high expectations which he’s still arguably yet to meet on a consistent basis in the professional game.
Lawrence’s best season came in 2022 as he led the Jaguars to a postseason appearance with 4,113 yards and 25 touchdowns to just eight interceptions, completing 66.3% of his passes in the process. He averaged 17.4 FPPG that year to finish as the overall QB8 and per-game QB14. Instead of building on that campaign, he declined over the last two seasons with nearly double the interceptions in 2023 before throwing for just 2,045 yards and 11 scores with seven picks last year. Granted, Lawrence played just 10 games, but completing just 60.6% wasn’t exactly a redeeming quality. He averaged just 14.5 FPPG, marking a QB27 finish both on the year and a per-game basis.
If Lawrence returns with a healthy shoulder — his non-throwing one at that — he should see the best tutelage and play-calling of his career. Coen turned Baker Mayfield into one of the NFL’s brightest stars last season and can certainly work some magic with his new signal-caller. He should see more opportunities in the short passing game where he excels, and the emergence of Brian Thomas Jr. and addition of Travis Hunter make for an excellent receiver tandem. It’s hard not to believe Lawrence can recapture his 2022 form, if not surpass it under the new staff.
Running backs
Travis Etienne
Groupthink in the fantasy football community can become a real problem sometimes, as can disregarding context around a player’s performance or situation. Both of these factors come into play when discussing Travis Etienne, who many managers seem to hate across a range of formats despite the upside he’s shown in the past.
The Clemson product produced 16.6 FPPG in 2023 with nearly 1,500 scrimmage yards and 12 touchdowns behind a poor offensive line. He finished as the per-game RB7 and overall RB3 that season but didn’t live up to the hype last season — Etienne totaled a shade over 800 scrimmage yards and just two scores on the year. He finished with just 8.7 FPPG as the overall RB35 and per-game RB41, but people tend to forget that he battled injuries which caused his decline and slide to the Jaguars’ RB2 role.
Now fully healthy and entering a contract year, there’s reason to take a bullish stance regarding the 26-year-old’s fantasy outlook. If nothing else, Etienne should take over the team’s pass-catching role in a productive offense since he’s caught 132 balls through his three active seasons. He’s shifty in the open field and brings breakaway speed, so Coen will find ways to put the ball in his hands. While not the most efficient runner on the ground, he still sees a great chance to handle ample carries in this backfield committee. Etienne can easily finish as an RB2 but brings an RB1 ceiling if he works as the primary back.
Tank Bigsby
Elsewhere in the backfield is Tank Bigsby, the 2023 third-round pick who supplanted Etienne for a time last season. The former Auburn Tiger saw the field very little as a rookie, garnering just 51 touches in 17 games behind the incumbent. However, he finally saw more of a workload last season and turned 168 carries into 766 yards and seven touchdowns on the ground for an average of 8.1 FPPG. Bigsby finished as the overall RB36 and per-game RB44, so his production didn’t surpass that of his backfield mate.
Bigsby saw just four weeks with a snap share greater than 50% and posted double-digit fantasy points only six times. Of those six games, only four of those earned him top-24 billing at the position that week. Sure, he was more efficient with his touches than Etienne, but Bigsby doesn’t bring the same upside in the receiving game with just eight career catches for 60 yards. Bigsby may play a role, but he feels like fool’s gold and doesn’t look like the guy you want to target in this backfield — which gets even messier thanks to a recently-drafted rookie mentioned later in this piece.
Wide receivers
Brian Thomas Jr.
The Jaguars rotated through their fair share of wideouts over the last several years in search of a legitimate top option. Christian Kirk looked good but felt like more of a WR2 than a lead guy, the Calvin Ridley experiment unfortunately failed, an aging Marvin Jones Jr. never panned out, and the D.J. Chark and Leviska Shenault era didn’t yield a star.
However, Jacksonville finally seems like the franchise found an alpha in Brian Thomas Jr. Outside of Ohio State, LSU probably takes the mantle of Wide Receiver University after producing numerous stars — Thomas is no exception. As a rookie last season, he earned targets at an elite rate with 133 on the year, hauling in 87 of those for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns. He flashed immense upside despite entering the NFL as a relatively raw wideout who many pundits said needed to develop his route-running ability. They were obviously proven wrong, and fantasy players quickly fell in love as Thomas averaged 16.7 FPPG to finish as the overall WR4 and per-game WR14.
What does year two hold for the big-bodied target? Well, Thomas Jr. should continue to earn targets at a high rate as the main option in Jacksonville, and it won’t be shocking to see him move around from the boundary into the slot with more regularity after finishing third in YPRR from the interior last season. Coen also loves to utilize motion with his wideouts, so Thomas Jr. may benefit from the addition of that wrinkle to the offense. Plus, the presence of another young talent in Travis Hunter should mean less defensive attention on the 6-foot-2 star. There’s a big year in store as the sophomore continues to develop under an improved staff.
Travis Hunter
Here’s the one everyone’s waiting for. There’s probably no larger question mark/X-factor in the entire NFL than Travis Hunter thanks to his ability and willingness to play snaps on both sides of the ball at wideout and cornerback.
The reigning Heisman Trophy winner is arguably better on defense than offense, but he’s an obviously-skilled receiver who paced the Big 10 with 96 receptions last year for 1,258 yards and a conference-best 15 touchdowns. Hunter’s route-running prowess needs a bit of refinement but he proved his ability as a game-changer on that end by also winning the Biletnikoff Award for best wide receiver. He brings great hands with an impressive catch radius and plays bigger than his 6-foot-188-pound frame implies. Plus, he’s a fantastic athlete who can break away from pursuers in a hurry. That’s something Coen should unleash in the screen game which he likes to utilize plenty, especially after the Buccaneers led the league in EPA per play on those concepts last year.
The Jaguars surrendered significant draft capital including the No. 5, No 36, No. 126 picks as well as a future first-rounder to move up to No. 2 pick and select Hunter. That trade make the franchise’s view of their new star exceedingly clear, but it’s tough to predict exactly how much he’ll play on either side of the ball. He’s listed as a first-string wideout and second-string corner on the team’s initial preseason depth charts, but the physical demands of playing both ways against NFL competition could take a toll. If he sees 70-80% of snaps at receiver on a given week, Hunter looks like a difference maker. If his snap share trends in the opposite direction or Jacksonville suffers an injury to a top cornerback, his fantasy value drops.
In short, the risk feels high but the reward feels higher.
Tight end
Brenton Strange
The Jags ran their offense through tight end Evan Engram over the last couple of seasons, but the veteran departed via free agency for the Denver Broncos over the offseason. That loss means Brenton Strange can assume the starting job after working in a depth role over the last couple of years.
A second-rounder in the 2023 NFL Draft, Strange barely played as a rookie but provided some fantasy-worthy weeks as a waiver-wire add in 2024. He caught 40 of 53 targets for 411 yards and a pair of touchdowns, averaging 5.4 FPPG and finishing outside the top-30 tight ends. Still, he flashed a hint of upside with 8.3 FPPG as a starter, 19th-best at the position, and he put up double-digit points in four games.
As long as Thomas and Hunter are on the field, Strange probably won’t truly pop as a fantasy football asset. However, one can do far worse with depth additions and the third-year pro could carve out a niche with red-zone work. He’s a name to keep an eye on throughout the year or take a flier on at the end of benches from the jump.
Fringe names to watch
Bhayshul Tuten
This backfield does look like one of the murkier ones around the NFL. The addition of Bhayshul Tuten in the fourth round of the 2025 NFL Draft only complicates matters. The 5-foot-9, 209-pound back spent four years in college football and broke out at the FCS level with North Carolina A&T in 2022. He rushed 208 times for 1,363 yards and 13 touchdowns while adding 31 catches for 342 yards and four scores, earning an offer from Virginia Tech.
With the Hokies, Tuten experienced a down year in 2023 but put up quite the effort in 2024 — he rushed for 1,159 yards and 15 TDs in just 11 games, averaging over 105 yards per contest and 6.3 yards per rush. He also caught 23 passes for 81 receiving yards and two more scores, flashing some pass-catching chops. He’s a real speedster with a blazing 4.32 40-yard dash and avoided 0.339 tackles per attempt in college, but he runs with an overly physical style for a back his size. He likely finds a role at the NFL level eventually and could take over his backfield with time, but if this becomes a three-man committee, that’s a tough look for fantasy relevance.
Dyami Brown
Once again, it’s time to hammer the Dyami Brown drum. The former third-rounder only played in a part-time capacity over his four-year career thus far but posted a career-best 30 catches for 304 yards last season with the Washington Commanders. He averaged just 4.2 FPPG but only saw seven weeks with a 50% snap share or higher, so he didn’t get all that many chances to produce in the first place.
The Jaguars handed Brown a one-year, $10 million prove-it deal over the offseason and should slot in as the WR3 alongside Thomas and Hunter, a role which could flirt with fantasy FLEX relevance given enough passing volume. However, the questions around the latter’s snap share mean Brown could see the field much more than anticipated, and if that’s the case, he’ll have a chance to put up lineup-worthy numbers. With a very cheap ADP in fantasy football drafts, he’s one of the best dart throws players can make in late rounds.
