The 2025 Jacksonville Jaguars are an NFL manifestation of some of the best moments in recent UK football history.
Manning the defensive front for the Jags — as he has since 2019 — is Josh Hines-Allen, one of the top defensive players in Kentucky history.
And calling the plays for Jacksonville is first-year NFL head coach Liam Coen, who served two one-season stints as UK football’s offensive coordinator.
Coen and Hines-Allen — two standouts from Mark Stoops’ tenure as the Kentucky head coach — now share the same sideline with the Jaguars. Jacksonville is off to a 1-1 start in Coen’s debut season as head coach following a Week 1 home win over Carolina and a last-minute Week 2 road loss at Cincinnati.
Hines-Allen, speaking with reporters last week just prior to being inducted into the UK Athletics Hall of Fame, said he was back in Lexington in late August for Kentucky’s season-opening win over Toledo. During that trip, Coen quickly became a talking point.
“Just the conversations that I had with people that he got brought up in, he was very loved here and very appreciated,” said Hines-Allen, who left UK in 2018, three years before Coen first joined Stoops’ staff. “So I went back and let him know that ‘BBN still loves you, man. They appreciate the time that you were here and they’re happy that you’re having a lot of success with me now.’”
Hines-Allen is the first former Stoops player to be inducted into UK’s hall of fame. The nod arrived seven years after Hines-Allen’s distinguished college career in the blue and white ended. He totaled 219 tackles, 43 tackles for loss and a UK career record 31.5 sacks across four seasons.
Kentucky went a combined 30-22 during Hines-Allen’s career, including a 10-win season in 2018 that culminated with a Citrus Bowl triumph over Penn State.
The 2018 National Defensive Player of the Year, Hines-Allen — then known as Josh Allen — went to Jacksonville with the No. 7 pick in the 2019 NFL draft. The Jags are the only team he’s played for in his NFL career, which so far has included two trips to the Pro Bowl.
“My goal was to always be the best defensive player to come out of Kentucky,” said Hines-Allen, who was a two-star recruit when he joined the Wildcats. “That’s really what I strived for every single year. Just now, to see my four years pass and come back, still being (in the NFL) and playing at that high level, seven years in, now I’m getting recognized as a hall of famer. It’s surreal.”
But Jacksonville has only posted a winning record in two of six seasons since taking Hines-Allen with a top-10 draft pick.
This hasn’t been Hines-Allen’s fault, though. His 10.5 sacks as a rookie in 2019 set a new Jacksonville record for sacks in a season by a first-year player. In 2023, Hines-Allen set a new overall single-season sacks record (17.5) with the Jaguars.
That is where Coen comes in. The former Kentucky offensive play-caller is already Hines-Allen’s fifth NFL coach in seven pro seasons.
Coen’s own resume is relatively light on NFL work. He’s worked in three different offensive coaching capacities for the Los Angeles Rams (assistant wide receivers coach, assistant quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator) along with one season as the offensive coordinator with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2024.
Notably, Coen had a messy exit from Tampa Bay earlier this year en route to becoming the head coach in Jacksonville.
Sprinkled among those coaching stops were the two seasons Coen spent in Lexington as Kentucky’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2021 and 2023.
Things went much better in 2021 for Coen’s Cats than they did in 2023. In 2021, future second-round NFL draft selection Will Levis piloted a prolific Kentucky offense to a 10-win season that included victories over Florida, LSU, Louisville and Iowa in the Citrus Bowl. (UK has vacated all 10 wins from that season as part of an agreement with the NCAA resulting from violations for football players being paid for hours they did not work in jobs at the university hospital.)
Two seasons ago, the 2023 Wildcats had an up-and-down campaign with quarterback Devin Leary under center, although that season was punctuated by a top-10 road win at Louisville to close the regular season.
Now, Coen finds himself at the controls of an NFL team for the first time. What has the experience been like for Hines-Allen so far under his new head coach?
“I love it man. He’s been an awesome leader,” Hines-Allen said. “(A) very stern leader. Demands a lot from our guys. But not kicking you while you’re down. It’s (like) ‘We’re going to challenge you, because I want the best from you.’ He demands it, not only from us, but from the coaching staff, as well as from himself.”
Hines-Allen’s lone NFL playoff appearance with Jacksonville came in 2022, when the Jaguars pulled off a 27-point comeback win in the wild card round before losing in the divisional round.
Now two ex-Cats are at the heart of Jacksonville’s effort to return to the postseason.
Hines-Allen, 28, is in the second year of a five-year, $150 million contract with Jacksonville. The 39-year-old Coen is reportedly on a five-year deal to coach the Jaguars.
“He’s just a great guy to be around. A great guy to lead,” Hines-Allen said of Coen. “And a great guy to follow.”