Well before Liam Coen was done playing football, he had plans to coach it.

At the tail end of a UMass career defined by gaudy quarterback stats and big victory totals, Coen had hoped to get a shot at the NFL. He knew the odds were against him. He was a Championship Subdivision-level quarterback, who wasn’t very big, not especially mobile and played a position where roster spots were limited.

His hope was that someone would give him a chance and that he could show off his elite football I.Q. enough to stick around. But he knew if that chance never came — and it didn’t — that he planned to put his lifetime’s worth of football knowledge to work on the sidelines.

Liam Coen always planned to play as long as he could and then follow in his father’s coaching footsteps. Tim Coen, who coached at Salve Regina and La Salle Academy, likes telling stories about his son mapping out plays with chalk before Liam turned 5.

An NFL camp invite might have helped Coen gain contacts early in the process. But while he watched his roommate Victor Cruz become an overnight sensation with the Giants, Coen played Arena Football briefly before trading his cleats for a clipboard.

After Sixteen years and 11 assistant coach and coordinator gigs along the way, Coen, 39, is the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

“I am pumped that Liam is accepting the challenge and opportunity to build the winner that Jaguars fans and partners fully deserve,” Jaguars owner Shad Kahn said in a team statement. “I know our players feel the same.”

Khan became just the latest to be glad to have Coen on his side.

Former UMass coach Don Brown said Coen had an instinct for leadership and culture building even as a player. After he took over as the starter in the third game of his freshman season in Amherst, Coen approached Brown, who was in his first season as the Minutemen’s head coach.

The 19-year-old quarterback knew that Brown was widely viewed as a defensive coach. Even as the head coach, he was still the play-caller and focused on that side of the ball. To eliminate any questions about unity within the team, Coen had a simple suggestion.

“He said, ‘Coach, if it’s O.K., I want to walk off the field with you after the games so people know that even though you’re a defensive head coach, you and I are tied at the hip,’” Brown recalled. “I thought that was really mature on his part. Regardless of what happened. He’d always wait for me.”

For the rest of that season and the three that followed, Coen and Brown walked off the field together.

Even after both had walked off the UMass field for the last time together in 2008, they stayed in touch.

“I kind of knew the guy was on a journey. He’s just a bright guy and loved football,” Brown said. “His intangibles were solid. You never worried about his judgment or how he was going to carry himself in front of the team.

“He’s a special dude. His success is not a surprise,” Brown continued. “He’s a solid guy, a solid ball coach. He’s just getting it going. Good things are ahead for sure.”

Fittingly, Coen’s coaching career started in his native Rhode Island where he sandwiched two stints as Brown University’s quarterbacks coach around a year at URI. He then went back to UMass for two seasons with Mark Whipple as pass game coordinator & quarterbacks coach.

At the end of his first stint with the Minutemen, Whipple recruited Coen to play at UMass, but left to become an assistant coach job with the Pittsburgh Steelers before he could coach him. But they stayed in touch too as Whipple moved around the NFL.

When Coen was an assistant at Brown, he visited Whipple, who was coaching the Cleveland Browns quarterbacks, and watched practice, absorbing everything he could.

“That’s when I knew he was going to have a bright future,” Whipple said. “He was in our quarterback room and on the field. His love for the game really shined through. When I went back to UMass, I hired him right away.”

Coen spent two seasons on the UMass staff in Whipple’s second stint at UMass before Maine hired him as its offensive coordinator, giving him a chance to call plays for the first time.

After a season with the Black Bears, he first accepted a job at Holy Cross, but before he started, he got a chance to interview with Sean McVay to be the Rams assistant wide receivers coach. The move from Orono to Los Angeles was life-changing. In addition to weather improvement, he jumped from the Colonial Athletic Association to work in the NFL and one of the league’s brightest young coaches.

It fast-tracked his career. At the end of Year 1, he coached against the Patriots and his idol Tom Brady in the Super Bowl. After Year 2, he was promoted to assistant quarterbacks coach.

From there he bounced back and forth between the Rams and the University of Kentucky, raising his profile each time. A chance to be a head coach seemed inevitable. The question became whether Coen’s first crack as a head coach would be in the NFL or college football.

The 2024 season proved critical. In his first year as the offensive coordinator of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he proved he could thrive in the NFL away from McVay. He helped Baker Mayfield have the best season of his career as Tampa won the NFC South. The offense finished in the top five in yards per game (399.6), scoring (29.5), passing yards per game (250.4) and rushing yards per game (149.2).

In a league that values young offensive innovators, Coen was suddenly a commodity. He initially turned Jacksonville down to return to Tampa with a new contract as the NFL’s highest-paid coordinator. But when Jacksonville fired general manager Trent Baalke on Thursday to give Coen the ability to find a personnel chief he’d be comfortable with, he was interested. By mid-afternoon on Friday, they’d officially reached a deal.

“Becoming the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars is an opportunity of a lifetime, and one that I am going to run with to instill a championship culture and winning tradition here in Duval,” Coen said in a statement. “This doesn’t happen without the support and opportunities that my family and I have been afforded throughout my career, especially during this past season in Tampa Bay.”

Whipple, who gave him one of those opportunities, and coached under Bill Cowher, Andy Reid Pat Shurmur in the NFL, thought Coen was ready for the job.

“He’s smart and he’s taken things that he’s learned,” Whipple said. “He’s worked hard. He deserves it.”

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