Dear Liam Coen:
I’m sorry.
This wasn’t an experiment I expected to embark upon. Like you, I was just minding my own business, finishing up the 2024 NFL season last winter. Then the Jacksonville Jaguars named you their next head coach in January, and my phone lit up with texts and DMs and screenshots of social media posts. At least 50 of those from that day until, well, the barrage never really lessened.
There were side-by-side comparisons (really). Athletic glory was compared (not really). Many made jokes about a career change and finally “doing something with your life.” Inquiries as to whether a brilliant offensive mind and a hack who often speaks brilliant offensive minds had been separated at birth. My doctor asked about our apparent resemblance, as did NFL Insiders for various networks, one person in the league office, at least a dozen football coaches and every “friend” who couldn’t wait to say that you must be insulted by such comparisons.
I’m sorry about that, too.
I knew of you, of course. These comparisons forced a deeper dive. Your father was a football coach (same). You grew up around the game (ditto). You wanted to coach in the NFL. I wanted to write about the NFL. You toiled toward the top of your profession—Brown to Rhode Island, back to Brown, then UMass and Maine before the Los Angeles Rams called. I tried to do the same. Those who know you use and as descriptors. Those who know me use harsher synonyms for those very traits. You can be fiery. I’ve been told the same. You’re a UMass legend, for that 2005 to ‘08 stint as a starting quarterback who won 37 games. I covered a football clash at UMass. Once. I know Sean McVay. You know Sean McVay.
Here’s the weird part, Liam. You’re 39 years old. And, when I reached that age some time ago, I started to get stopped and asked if I was this person or that person. Perhaps we have a nondescript face of sorts or nondescript faces—hair parted the same way, from the left if facing a mirror; stubble or beard, always; sleepy eyes. Maybe we have different versions of a face that gives off a particular vibe: Overworked, middle-aged, White, dad, insomniac. That’s the future title of the memoir I’ll never write.
Stranger still: People I don’t know, around that time, started mistaking me for someone they know or have met or have seen on television.
Weirder than that, even: We’re often mistaken for the same people: Nick Foles, Aaron Rodgers, Dirk Nowitzki, Eric Violette. You might recognize the actor, Violette, from those FreeCreditReport.com commercials.
I’m gonna guess that writers spend more time on there than football coaches.
At least in football, you’re still considered young. You’re a boy genius (relative), just like McVay, arriving in L.A. one year after he did, in 2018. You’re nearly three months older than he is. I was at by 27, but the next time anyone calls me a genius—or young—will be the first (ever or in years, respectively).
You’re the third-youngest coach in pro football and the youngest head coach in Jaguars history. You’ve designed schemes that have moved offenses and scored points and won games, whether in L.A., Tampa Bay or in college at Kentucky. And since nobody would stop telling me that I looked like you, an idea bubbled into a story pitch.
I’m still not sure if this was a worthwhile spark or a remarkably dumb one. But for Halloween this year, I went as … Liam Coen. And what I found spoke less to resemblances and more to what you’re building across the country—a Jacksonville Jaguars outfit that’s maybe, mercifully, finally … headed the right way.
