Jacksonville Jaguars offensive coordinator Press Taylor called plays on a limited basis during the 2022 season before taking the duties full-time in 2023. And just as the Jaguars offense is full of young players trying to find steady improvement, the 35-year-old coach is hoping to do the same.
“I feel like each week I’m getting a little more comfortable, I’m just trying to grow and get better every single thing,” Taylor said Thursday. “Learn from every single call we make, the one thing I’ve learned just talking with Doug [Pederson], talking to people that call plays around the league, you really can’t have any regrets. You can learn, you can look back and learn from it.
“I don’t really have a lot of regrets in a lot of the calls that have come and I just want to continue to learn. I want to be better for this team in Week 10 than I was in Week 8 just like our players and what we ask of them.”
With the Jaguars often stalling out on offense, Taylor has been the frequent subject of criticism during his first season calling the plays full-time. Pederson has defended his offensive coordinator, though.
“Sometimes it’s not about the plays,” Pederson said after a loss back in September. “I learned a long time ago that the players — you know, players play this football game and coaches coach. … We’re going to evaluate everything and make sure that we’re putting our guys in the right places. But I thought Press did a nice job today.”
Jacksonville scored at least 20 points in all five games during their October winning streak and now rank 10th in the NFL with 24.1 points per game. Taylor is hoping to see those numbers get even better in the second half of the season.
“I think everybody understands one of the things we’ve been saying is we’re getting better, but we have to get better,” Taylor said. “That’s something of the approach we’ve all had, as a coaching staff, as players, as an individual unit, or as individual positions within our unit, that’s a big thing for us.
“We got to continue to get better, but we make no bones about it, we want to win games. If we can contribute to winning, we’re proud of that fact but we need to play better as this thing continues to grow and in Week 10, we need to be better than we were in Week 8.”
The Jaguars’ record for points in a season was set in 2017 when they scored 417 (26.1 per game). In 2022, the team averaged 23.8 points.
