JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The best game of Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence’s NFL career included what is arguably his best throw.
It was so good that longtime teammate Travis Etienne Jr. needed to curse to describe it.
On a third-and-10 play in the second quarter of the Jaguars’ Week 15 game against the New York Jets, Lawrence had to evade pressure, roll to his left and unload a deep throw as he was getting hit by edge rusher Will McDonald IV.
When Lawrence released the ball at his own 32-yard line, wide receiver Parker Washington was on the hash marks at the Jets’ 32. He made a sliding catch at the 17 just a few yards from the sideline — 51 yards in the air, all arm, and dropped over two defenders.
“He kind of just stopped and just [said], ‘S—, Parker’s down there somewhere,'” Etienne said after the Jaguars’ 48-20 victory over the Jets. “He launched it and Parker made a great catch.”
Jaguars coach Liam Coen described the throw as Lawrence “being special. That’s him being a football player and making a play.”
Lawrence made a lot of plays against the struggling Jets that day, throwing for 330 yards and setting career highs in passing touchdowns (five) and QBR (96.0). It was part of the best stretch of football in his five-year NFL career. In the final eight games he had 24 total touchdowns, 19 touchdown passes and five interceptions and helped the Jaguars average an NFL-best 33.6 points per game. The Jaguars won eight consecutive games to close out the regular season and win the AFC South title before a wild-card playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills ended the season.
Lawrence, 26, had to overcome challenges to get there, including changes to his footwork, learning his third different offense, dealing with injuries and inconsistencies at the receiver position, and focusing too much on avoiding turnovers.
It took more than half the season, but once Lawrence and the Jaguars figured it out, he played at a level that earned him MVP consideration.
As the Jaguars look toward 2026, one question lingers: Is that version of Trevor Lawrence here to stay?
San Francisco quarterback Mac Jones, who was Lawrence’s backup in 2024 and started seven games in his place, saw a difference in his former teammate.
“I feel like he’s always been the top guy, but he does have a chip on his shoulder, especially recently,” Jones said in the final weeks of the 2025 season. “I feel like even [in 2024], he had a bunch of injuries and stuff and obviously I got a chance to play because of it, but I feel like he wants to prove people wrong. He was the first pick in the draft, but he still has that underdog mentality.
“… He’s had a lot of extra motivation this year and I feel like you can see it on the tape, like the way he’s throwing the ball, and even in his interviews, he’s having fun with it and celebrating with his teammates. So yeah, I definitely see things that he’s done throughout his career, but he’s very consistent this year.”
‘Let it rip’
One of the main reasons the Jaguars hired Coen was because of the work he did with Baker Mayfield on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2024, helping the 2018 No. 1 pick produce the best season of his career.
Owner Shad Khan wanted the same with Lawrence, who struggled to live up to his No. 1 pick hype after being dubbed a generational prospect coming out of Clemson.
His rookie season was underwhelming and overshadowed by dysfunction under coach Urban Meyer. Then multiple injuries and turnover issues outweighed sporadic spurts of elite play under coach Doug Pederson from 2022 to 2024.
In preparing for the 2025 season, Coen and Lawrence started from the ground up — literally. Coen noticed his quarterback’s feet were too often not in the right position, so they flipped his left foot in front of his right. Lawrence also worked on manipulating defensive backs with his eyes.
But one of the biggest pieces of advice from Coen came in Week 10.
Following the Jaguars’ Week 9 loss to the Houston Texans, a game in which the Jaguars blew a 19-point fourth-quarter lead, Coen had a message for his quarterback: Quit worrying about making mistakes.
“‘Hey, man, cut it loose and let it rip when we do have some of those opportunities,'” Coen recalled telling Lawrence. “‘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.
“… Just go cut it loose, let it rip and see what happens.”
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In the nine games before that conversation, Lawrence had a 41.4 Total QBR (50 represents an average QB), 222 passing yards per game, 10 touchdowns, seven interceptions, 172 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns. The Jaguars went 5-4.
In the eight games following, Lawrence ranked third in the league with a 77 QBR and was fifth in passing yards (2,009) and second in passing touchdowns (19) with five interceptions. He also had 187 yards and five touchdowns rushing, which ranked third and second, respectively, among quarterbacks. The Jaguars won every game to secure the AFC South.
“These last few weeks everyone’s seen him playing really well and that’s who he is, that’s what he’s about,” center Robert Hainsey said in Week 18 after winning the division title. “But for us, the calmness at the line of scrimmage, I think handling some of those protection checks, there’s like five or six unbelievable examples in the Colts game of him getting to different plays, getting to the checks we need to get to, then beating the blitz, making the play. Those things are very hard to do.
“That’s high-level ball and he’s done an excellent job at it.”
Broncos tight end Evan Engram, who played three seasons in Jacksonville with Lawrence (2022-24), noticed a difference from afar.
“He’s standing tall in the pocket, making tough throws,” Engram said. “You can just see the confidence in him.”
The Jaguars’ addition of receiver Jakobi Meyers at the Nov. 4 trade deadline was a big help, too. Meyers earned Lawrence’s trust quickly and helped offset the loss of wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter to a season-ending knee injury.
“It’s not anything necessarily that’s changed about anything that we’ve done with him,” Coen said. “I think he’s just starting to feel more and more comfortable within the system and within the guys that he’s playing with.”
Coen’s advice to stop worrying about making mistakes was instrumental in that, Lawrence said.
“He just gave me all the confidence to know that he had my back,” Lawrence said. “And I think that’s one of the best things as a quarterback: to know that the people around you believe in you, they’ve got your back, and he just gave me that freedom, just cut it loose.”
Is it sustainable?
Consistency has always been one of Lawrence’s biggest issues in the NFL.
The last time he was playing like a top NFL QB was from Week 12 in 2022 to Week 12 in 2023. Lawrence ranked top 10 in completion percentage, yards per attempt, QBR and passing yards while throwing 24 touchdown passes to nine interceptions. More importantly, the Jaguars were 14-4.
In his five-year career, the Jaguars are 19-2 in regular-season games in which Lawrence has a Total QBR of 70 or better. However, he has had nearly as many games in which his QBR was 30 or worse — and the Jaguars are 1-17 in those games.
There’s optimism around the franchise that Lawrence can spend more time in the first category going forward, for various reasons.
First, Coen’s offense is QB friendly. One season after Mayfield set a career high with 41 touchdown passes with Coen as his offensive coordinator, Lawrence set career highs in touchdown passes (29) and total touchdowns (38, a franchise record) in Coen’s first season as the Jaguars’ head coach.
Lawrence said his relationship with Coen, his understanding of Coen’s offense and the way they’re on the same page in game planning are indications that the offense should only improve in their second season together.
“How we see the game and kind of what we’re expecting to get out of certain plays and just how I’m seeing it, we’re very aligned,” Lawrence said. “So that’s gotten better and better as the season’s gone on. That preparation continues to elevate and get better as we fine-tune our offense and we get more comfortable.”
Second, Lawrence also will have continuity among his receiving corps. Five of the team’s top six pass catchers are under contract for 2026, including Meyers (who signed a three-year, $60 million extension in December), Washington, Brian Thomas Jr. and Hunter.
Lawrence said after the trade that he liked throwing to Meyers because he could tell exactly where Meyers was going to be. In the eight games before Meyers’ arrival, Lawrence’s off-target rate was 16.2%. In the nine games after, Lawrence’s off-target rate dipped to 13.8%.
“He knows where everybody’s supposed to be [and] puts us in the right position to win,” Meyers said during the season. “He protects us [receivers] across the middle and he’s just taking care of the ball. I am proud of him. He’s definitely been playing great. I think he deserves a lot more recognition for what he’s doing.”
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Washington, pressed into a bigger role after Hunter’s injury, posted career highs in catches (58), yards (847), average yards per catch (14.6) and touchdowns (five) in 2025, and Coen said late in the season that Washington has earned the right to be a major part of the offense.
Thomas didn’t follow up his standout rookie season with big numbers, but he rallied from a tough training camp, early-season struggles and an ankle injury that cost him three games. He averaged 15.9 yards per catch in the six games following his return, nearly 2 yards more than he did in the eight games before the injury (14.0).
After Lawrence’s growth in his first season under Coen, the expectations for Lawrence and the offense — despite playing a first-place schedule in 2026 that includes six teams that made the playoffs in 2025 — are higher in 2026.
“The idea that teams can be built over the course of an offseason is true, but the good ones, the great ones, they evolve over the course of the regular season and you saw that evolution in Trevor over the course of the regular season,” general manager James Gladstone said. “There was a clear uptick in command, control, comfort, playmaking. All that stuff jumped out in a real way and I look forward to being able to have him carry that momentum into the offseason.”
There seems to be agreement on that with at least one defensive coordinator who has previously faced Lawrence.
“I always thought he was a good quarterback,” said the coordinator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Personally, the system works for him. It’s a West Coast system. It’s good for most quarterbacks with talent. Look at Sam Darnold, same thing. Over time, he got embedded in it.
“[The Jaguars] have the talent to go with the built-in answers. They aren’t stressed to have to go through all the progressions. Allows them to go play fast. There are answers to it. Trevor’s benefited from it.”
If that’s the case, Year 2 in Coen’s offense — especially for Lawrence — could be special, Etienne said.
“Coach [Coen] is a great motivator,” Etienne added. “He knows what buttons to push, and I feel like [Coen] just has a way of just bringing that dog out of you. I feel like he’s been tapping into that with Trev, and it is just awesome to see just the swagger, the confidence.”
