Liam Coen: We want respect, but it's ours to take

The Jaguars experienced something on Monday night that they had not experienced in a long time.

Their win over the Chiefs was their first on Monday Night Football since the 2011 season and it was also just their third appearance on a Monday night since that year. That speaks to how rarely the Jaguars have been in the NFL’s spotlight, at least for positive reasons, and the larger meaning of the win came up at head coach Liam Coen’s press conference on Tuesday.

Coen was asked if winning on Monday night in the manner they did against a team on the other end of the spectrum in terms of national attention represented a statement game for his team.

“The opportunity to play on primetime is definitely something that you want more of it as an organization,” Coen said. “As a team, you want to be able to play in those moments and have those stages to perform. We’re really not as concerned about the rest of the league in terms of how they view us. We obviously want respect, but that’s ours to take. You want to have pride in what you do as a team, as an individual, as a coach, as a player, as a staff member. You want to have pride in what you do. Ultimately, I think, when you go out and win those type of games, you can have pride in how you walk and how you talk and how you parent and how you father and how you do everything. Our players right now have confidence. There’s still a lot to clean up, but there’s a lot of confidence in this building right now.”

Winning leads to more national television exposure, a bigger place in conversations about the state of the league and other things that lead to the kind of respect that Coen was talking about on Tuesday. The Jaguars are doing their part so far with a 4-1 start and more of the same will ensure a higher profile than they’ve grown accustomed to in Jacksonville.

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