The Jaguars are heading back to Denver with a familiar label attached, and this time they’re wearing it like a badge.
Last December, Broncos coach Sean Payton described Jacksonville as a “smaller market” while discussing the Jaguars, and that line quickly took on a life of its own. It became fuel for Jacksonville fans, and it gave Liam Coen and his team something extra to point at when they went into Denver and beat the Broncos 34-20, snapping Denver’s 11-game winning streak.
That win was no accident. Jacksonville was 10-4 and riding a five-game run at the time, though three of those victories came against teams that would eventually hire new coaches in the offseason: Arizona, Las Vegas and Tennessee. Still, Payton’s comment landed as a challenge, even if it was meant as a quick assessment of a team that hadn’t been on a lot of national stages.
Coen made sure to lean into it after the game.
“Just thankful that a small-market team like us can come into a place like Mile High and get it done,” Coen said.
When asked if that was really a rallying cry, Coen didn’t dodge it.
“You know … yes. Yeah,” he said.
The moment turned into a kind of calling card for the Jaguars, and it gave Coen an early stamp in Jacksonville. He was standing up for the team, and for the city, in a way fans clearly appreciated.
Now the storyline has circled back. At a Sept. 16 press conference, Coen was asked whether anyone had been assigned to keep track of Payton’s comments this week for bulletin-board purposes. Coen smiled, clearly understanding the setup.
“I talked to Sean at the (league) meetings (last March) and he gave me a little love for it, but he said, ‘We’re coming; I’m coming for you this year,’” Coen said. “It’s great. It’s all in competition.”
And Coen made clear there’s no real hostility underneath it all.
“I’ve learned so much football from Sean Payton,” Coen said. “When we’re at the owner’s meetings, you just listen to the stories and a lot of it is insightful. You can learn something from every conversation with him because of his experience and a lot of the ways that I’ve typically modeled calling plays stems from what I learned from him.”
So the setup is simple enough: the Jaguars, still carrying that “smaller market” tag, are back in Denver, facing a Broncos team led by a coach who helped create the fire in the first place. Coen respects Payton.
Payton respected the answer. And Jacksonville gets another chance to prove the point on the field.
Jaguars 27, Broncos 20.
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