Dear Liam Coen:
I’m sorry.
This wasn’t an experiment I expected to embark upon. Like you, I was just minding my own business, finishing up the 2024 NFL season last winter. Then the Jacksonville Jaguars named you their next head coach in January, and my phone lit up with texts and DMs and screenshots of social media posts. At least 50 of those from that day until, well, the barrage never really lessened.
There were side-by-side comparisons (really). Athletic glory was compared (not really). Many made jokes about a career change and finally “doing something with your life.” Inquiries as to whether a brilliant offensive mind and a hack who often speaks to brilliant offensive minds had been separated at birth. My doctor asked about our apparent resemblance, as did NFL Insiders for various networks, one person in the league office, at least a dozen football coaches and every “friend” who couldn’t wait to say that you must be insulted by such comparisons.
I’m sorry about that, too.
I knew of you, of course. These comparisons forced a deeper dive. Your father was a football coach (same). You grew up around the game (ditto). You wanted to coach in the NFL. I wanted to write about the NFL. You toiled toward the top of your profession—Brown to Rhode Island, back to Brown, then UMass and Maine before the Los Angeles Rams called. I tried to do the same. Those who know you use passionate and emotional as descriptors. Those who know me use harsher synonyms for those very traits. You can be fiery. I’ve been told the same. You’re a UMass legend, for that 2005 to ‘08 stint as a starting quarterback who won 37 games. I covered a football clash at UMass. Once. I know Sean McVay. You know Sean McVay.
Here’s the weird part, Liam. You’re 39 years old. And, when I reached that age some time ago, I started to get stopped and asked if I was this person or that person. Perhaps we have a nondescript face of sorts or nondescript faces—hair parted the same way, from the left if facing a mirror; stubble or beard, always; sleepy eyes. Maybe we have different versions of a face that gives off a particular vibe: Overworked, middle-aged, White, dad, insomniac. That’s the future title of the memoir I’ll never write.
Stranger still: People I don’t know, around that time, started mistaking me for someone they know or have met or have seen on television.
Weirder than that, even: We’re often mistaken for the same people: Nick Foles, Aaron Rodgers, Dirk Nowitzki, Eric Violette. You might recognize the actor, Violette, from those FreeCreditReport.com commercials.
I’m gonna guess that writers spend more time on there than football coaches.
At least in football, you’re still considered young. You’re a boy genius (relative), just like McVay, arriving in L.A. one year after he did, in 2018. You’re nearly three months older than he is. I was at The New York Times by 27, but the next time anyone calls me a genius—or young—will be the first (ever or in years, respectively).
You’re the third-youngest coach in pro football and the youngest head coach in Jaguars history. You’ve designed schemes that have moved offenses and scored points and won games, whether in L.A., Tampa Bay or in college at Kentucky. And since nobody would stop telling me that I looked like you, an idea bubbled into a story pitch.
I’m still not sure if this was a worthwhile spark or a remarkably dumb one. But for Halloween this year, I went as … Liam Coen. And what I found spoke less to resemblances and more to what you’re building across the country—a Jacksonville Jaguars outfit that’s maybe, mercifully, finally … headed the right way.
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Halloween as Liam Coen began with confirmations. I reached out to four people who were prominent in your NFL journey and ran this idea by them. Two—McVay and Rams GM Les Snead—even responded. Snead asked for a side-by-side photo comparison. Upon receiving one, he sent back a pumpkin emoji, a flexed-bicep emoji and “Go for it.”
Next: Google laid out your game-day preferences: a hoodie vest, often teal; curved-bill hats, often black; Jaguars logos splashed all over. Concerned that Pacific Northwest fans (where I live) might not be uber-familiar with the head coach of a professional football team based 3,000 miles diagonally southeast across the country, the search expanded into creative territory. Yes, I saw, like the rest of the world, your introductory press conference in Jacksonville. Your meager, unsteady “Duvaaaal” chant was familiar to a writer with 45 years’ experience in mumbling and meekness in public settings.
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— The Coachspeak Index (@CoachspeakIndex) January 27, 2025
I’m sorry about that, too.
Ordered: one hoodie vest, teal; one Jaguars coaches’ rain jacket, black; one curved-bill cap with Jacksonville’s logo; one T-shirt, teal, featuring your face, that priceless expression and “DUVAAAAL” running away from your mouth; and three stickers of varying sizes with the same image/expression. I texted an agent who represents more than 100 coaches at various levels. He promised that a laminated play sheet would be delivered shortly.
The plan, then perfect, hit snag after snag. The T-shirt never arrived. Nor did the stickers. Nor did the play sheet.
Panic sent me deeper into the Liam Coen sphere. Yes, I watched tape of someone—a football coach—who spends half his life doing exactly that. I studied your mannerisms: fairly straight posture (relative to football coaches), arms folded, that right foot, often angled; an easy smile countered with more of a blank state than a glare.
I asked those same four people from your football life for tips. Not a lot came back. You were described in the same ways you’re always described—authentic, different, analytical and comfortable, above all else. Comfortable apparently, in our own skin. One person from Tampa Bay, where the offense you coordinated ranked in the top five in every major statistical category last season said that trying to embody you would mean embodying you less.
That’s why the Jaguars hired you, isn’t it? They went 4–13 last season, the latest sinker in a stretch that projected to lead to much more—of everything, but especially wins. In 2017, Jacksonville went 10–6 and made the AFC championship game. In every subsequent year, the Jaguars were tabbed as improving, ready to add to the franchise’s meager playoff history, with seven total appearances from 1998 through 2017. Only in ‘22 did Jacksonville even return to the playoffs.
I read what you told The Athletic back in August. That scheduling had been one unexpected-but-time-intensive task you hadn’t fully anticipated as a head coach. You mapped yours in great detail. I did the same for Halloween. Guided by Liam Coen, as Liam Coen.
What could possibly go wrong?
Halloween as Liam Coen started at an elementary school—my son’s school, to be specific. I volunteered to help at his second grade Halloween party. The other parents gave me second glances as I entered the classroom, clad in all the costume gear that did arrive in time, with a headset hanging from my neck and a play sheet affixed to my right wrist.
“Are you a parent?” one asked.
I’m Liam Coen, I responded.
*Blank stare offered in response.*
The kids didn’t even get “coach” from the ensemble. Instead of diagramming plays on the expansive white board covering most of one wall, I spent 50 minutes coloring with my son’s classmates.
The experiment needed the missing items. So off we went in search of anything teal that said Jaguars in the greater-Seattle area.
SI’s Greg Bishop was hardly recognized in his Liam Coen getup at his son’s school.
SI’s Greg Bishop was hardly recognized in his Liam Coen getup at his son’s school. / Courtesy Greg Bishop
At Dick’s Sporting Goods, the friendly staffer instantly recognized a poor man’s Liam Coen walking in. Alas, they didn’t carry any Jags gear. “You’ve got it all down,” he shouted as we halftime-walked-jogged back toward the car.
At Collector’s Corner NW, the best card and memorabilia shop in the area, half a dozen customers did not so much as glance our way when Liam Coen, Pacific Northwest Version, walked inside. I explained Travis Hunter, the Jaguars first-round pick last spring, when we spied his NFL rookie card.
The employee nearest us looked up and said, “I was wondering if we were playing the Jags this week.” He meant the Seahawks. They were not. But that resemblance!
We left with Pokémon cards rather than packs that featured football players. I asked my son what he knew about the Jacksonville Jaguars. “I know they’re not a good team,” he said. “I’m pretty sure.” Ouch!
We stopped by Bellevue Square mall next. At Champs Sports, another employee recognized the Liam Coen of it all. He asked (jokingly) about Hunter and usage and the knee injury that had sent the wideout/cornerback to injured reserve.
I dropped into character. Has anyone else noticed that when they speak to their children, they fall into a patronizing, deep-thought, high-urgency voice, while deploying “O.K.” like it’s the single-greatest word ever invented in any language? This made that easy.
“Well, we’ve gotta get him more involved, O.K.,” the response began. “Talented player. Loves football. We’re gonna get it right.”
Upstairs, at the Seattle Team Shop, they even had a Travis Hunter jersey. Jags swag in Bellevue, Wash.—this isn’t a small thing. It wouldn’t help the costume. But it did continue to reveal the main theme of Halloween as Liam Coen.
That night, after the kids drifted off into sugar comas, I kidnapped my buddy Steve and made another run at Liam Coen glory. We tried Legion—a restaurant/bar owned, in part, by two Legion of Boom members, Seahawks legends Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor—and found the crowd sparse. Tried Lucky Strike— too many young people willing to stand in line to get in. Tried sports bars—where only one dumbass adult wore a costume. The one intended to make him look like the Jaguars coach. Eventually, I forced Steve to drive to Steve’s Bar and Grill, if only so that someone might ask him what his costume was and he could say, “I’m Steve.” (We fight for every sentence over here, folks.)
This exercise sparked additional thought—about fathers and sons, coaches and coaching trees, watching game film instead of cartoons, football and significance. The night affirmed—through reporting and anecdotal evidence, slim as it was—two notions. That even in a suburb across Lake Washington from Seattle, those who work in sports or follow sports know of Liam Coen, the Jaguars and what they’re building, together. That’s significant; in part because it doesn’t resemble anything from recent seasons or any recent season. What Coen’s doing, the momentum he has culled, seems beyond, better, enhanced and more sustainable than the other false starts of the past decade.
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I tried the Jaguars a few times this week to see if Coen would entertain my experiment and talk through what he’s building. The team never responded. But Jacksonville’s comeback victory over the Las Vegas Raiders last Sunday said as much as he ever could. Without Hunter available, the Jags still moved the ball. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence spread passes all around. Cameras continued panning to Coen on the broadcast, perhaps (not really) aware of heightened interest in his specific look. Jacksonville surged back early in the fourth quarter. Went to overtime. Won. Improved to 5–3, reaching a victory tally already higher than last season’s count.
Liam, you went out after Week 9 and, instead of trading wideout Brian Thomas Jr., which was whispered as a possibility, you traded for Jakobi Meyers. This bolstered your offense and will make up for some of Hunter’s absence, through at least November.
This experiment, then, affirmed your brilliance, your offensive wizardry and the now-even-more-impenetrable notion that there’s only one Liam Coen. Keep it up. I’ve got some ideas. Maybe next Halloween, we go as twins.
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