JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Jaguars head coach Liam Coen and quarterback Trevor Lawrence have weekly check ins, where they talk about the previous game, the one coming up, what's going right and wrong, what they want to do better. It's essentially a miniature state of the union.
They did that in the days after the Jaguars blew a 19-point fourth-quarter lead against the Houston Texans in Week 10, and Coen gave Lawrence a directive for the rest of the season: Cut it loose.
The night before Sunday's home win against the Los Angeles Chargers, he gave the rest of the team the same message.
"Let's go out and cut it loose for four quarters, as a team, and see what happens," Coen said he told the players. "Let's just go cut it loose, man. I don't want to think about what could happen, what should happen, what happened on the play before, what's going to happen three plays from now. Just play in the moment, stay in the moment, pick each other up when something bad happens and let's move on as a team."
The Jaguars routed the Chargers 35-6 at EverBank Stadium by doing exactly what he wanted. Despite being down nine starters or key players because of injuries, Jacksonville delivered one of the more dominating victories in franchise history.
The Jaguars ran for 192 yards, held the Chargers to 135 total yards, sent quarterback Justin Herbert to the bench early in the fourth quarter, and were so good offensively they didn't punt all game for the first time since Week 2 in 2010.
Lawrence said guys were having fun, which was something they knew they needed.
"It's not about trying to convince yourself and all the rah-rah and hyping yourself up," he said. "It's about guys just knowing what they have to do, playing loose, playing free, playing confident. I think that's something that we did today. Guys just excited to be out there."
Nobody seemed to play more freely than Lawrence.
He didn't have great numbers against the Chargers -- 14 for 22 for 153 yards, a rushing touchdown, and a passing touchdown with one interception -- but he rolled through his progressions quickly and ran the offense efficiently despite not having his top three pass catchers (Travis Hunter, Brian Thomas Jr., and Brenton Strange).
"Trevor was playing really well, especially just [throwing] the ball accurately, especially going through a lot of progressions, getting to the number two or three or four read in the progression a few times," Coen said.
Lawrence took some shots downfield, though he failed to connect with tight end Quintin Morris and receiver Dyami Brown. But Coen was happy to see those attempts, because Coen has been urging Lawrence to trust what he sees, to not hesitate, and to get rid of the ball quickly.
"Trevor and I had a good conversation [last week] in terms of just, 'Hey man, cut it loose and let it rip when we do have some of those opportunities,' and, 'Hey man, yes, we don't want to turn the ball over. We want to turn it over on defense and we want to keep it on offense, but we can't be thinking about that or trying to play to not make a mistake at all,'" Coen said.
"... You don't need to be [Michael] Jordan. Point guards, facilitators, distributors, that's what we need, and that's what we talked about."
Lawrence admittedly hasn't been doing that this season.
"I feel like at times this year offensively we've just struggled to get in a rhythm and stay in a rhythm," Lawrence said. "... the biggest thing is knowing I can make every throw out there. I know what I'm seeing, so just trust it and go play and help us get in a rhythm faster and hit some of these throws down the field and open up our offense somewhere."
For the Jaguars (6-4) to have a chance at the playoffs, Lawrence has to play like he did in the second half of the 2022 season.
The Lawrence from Weeks 10-18 in 2022 was markedly different from the Lawrence we saw in Weeks 1-9. After completing 64.3% of his passes for 2,075 yards and 11 touchdowns with six interceptions and having a minus-2.9% completion percentage above expected in the first nine games, Lawrence completed 68.5% of his passes for 2,038 yards and 14 touchdowns with two interceptions and had a 1.7% completion percentage above expectations in the final eight games.
Included in that stretch was rallying the Jaguars from a nine-point fourth-quarter deficit at home against Baltimore with a 10-yard touchdown pass to Marvin Jones and a two-point conversion pass to Zay Jones with 14 seconds to play for a 28-27 victory. He threw for 368 yards two weeks later to help the Jaguars win their first game at Tennessee since 2013. The week after, he helped rally the Jaguars from a 17-point third-quarter deficit at home against Dallas for an overtime win.
That was the best stretch of Lawrence's career.
"He played the game that Trevor is capable of playing every week and we needed him to step up every week and he did exactly what the coaches called and what we needed at those particular moments and he delivered on every play that needed to be delivered on," defensive end Josh Hines-Allen remembered of that stretch.
Running back Travis Etienne Jr., who played with Lawrence at Clemson for three seasons, described it this way:
"He was just locked in," Etienne said. "He was just playing free, just playing for the love of the game."
Lawrence's 2025 season is like the first nine games of 2022: 59.8% completions, 2,151 yards, 11 touchdowns, eight interceptions, and a minus-5.6% completion percentage above expectation.
But unlike in 2022, injuries have battered the team's top receivers: Hunter is out for the season (knee), Thomas Jr. has missed the last two games with an ankle injury, and Parker Washington is dealing with a hamstring injury.
The Jaguars did trade for Jakobi Meyers at the deadline, and while he is still learning the offense, he poses as a deep threat with steady hands. He had 65 yards on five receptions against the Chargers on Sunday.
If Lawrence can build a connection with Meyers and "cut it loose," the Jaguars will be in a better situation as they try to remain playoff contenders.
"You look at just overall being a little bit more aggressive when we have some opportunities down the field," Lawrence said. "I think that's something that this year maybe [we] haven't taken as many shots. So that's something I know I can do well, and I know our offense can do well."
