Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence has grown tremendously in his first two seasons, going from a struggling rookie to a projected dark horse Most Valuable Player candidate.
As the Jaguars prepare for his third season under center, Lawrence is viewed as a key leader for the offense and a source of relief for the defense.
“His voice carries a lot of weight,” Jaguars quarterbacks coach Mike McCoy said. “When he speaks up, whether it’s in practice, whether it’s in a meeting, whether it’s on game day, everybody listens.”
This year, Lawrence doesn’t have to learn a new offense for the first time in his young professional career. Lawrence knows all the details of the offense, McCoy said, so he needs to communicate with his teammates if something is off.
McCoy said Lawrence had to work to learn the new system early on. He improved from the first day of the 2022 offseason to the first regular-season game in Washington to the final game of the playoffs in Kansas City, McCoy said.
Senior defensive assistant Bob Sutton said Lawrence proved himself as a “really good quarterback” last season and said the team got better as he improved.
“We played really good team football, complementary football,” Sutton said. “Anytime you have a quarterback like that, there’s a feeling like, ‘OK, just get him the ball one more time.’”
Lawrence and the offense have enough talent to give the defense hope in crucial moments of games, Sutton said.
“You never really get totally down,” Sutton said. “You just say, ‘Hey, we gotta go to work, we gotta make these stops,’ and this guy’s got a chance, and he’s got some really good people around him as well.”
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