Reading the New Defense: Jacksonville Jaguars

Reading the New Defense returns for its third season at Footballguys.com. The column investigates how new defensive coordinators impact individual defensive players' fantasy prospects for the looming season.

Eleven NFL defenses have new coordinators in 2024. While three of them offer general scheme consistency year over year, eight more promise significant changes to their new environs in 2025. Two of these coordinators' track records suggest they will change between even- and odd-front nomenclature.

Previous installments: Falcons | Saints | Bears | Cowboys

Baalke Balked

The Jaguars looked like a team on the rise in 2022. They finished 9-8 and completed the third-largest comeback in NFL playoff history. They finished 9-8 again in 2023 due to a brutal season-ending loss to the Titans in Week 18.

The Jacksonville defense finished in the bottom half of the league in both seasons. The defensive coordinator and his staff took the fall.

The team replaced Mike Caldwell with Ryan Nielsen. The former Falcons' coach coordinated a 4-3 defense that played as much man coverage as anyone. Nielsen remains the only coordinator in recent years to use man coverage in front of two high safeties with any regularity.

Nielsen asked his edge defenders, Josh Hines-Allen and Travon Walker, to add weight to make the transition from Caldwell's 3-4 defense to Nielsen's 4-3. Nielsen's fronts often rely on defensive ends to set the edge from a tighter alignment relative to a typical 3-4.

Arik Armstead refused the 49ers' request that he accept a pay cut in the spring of 2024. The Jaguars paid him the money he had been due, a starting defensive tackle's contract. Due to a shortage of capable personnel, Armstead was pressed into service at defensive end, where he backed up Hines-Allen and Walker.

Darnell Savage was Trent Baalke's second significant addition to defensive personnel in 2024. The inconsistent safety signed a 3-year $21.75 million contract and then, like Armstead, played a rotational role on starter money.

Baalke further signed journeyman cornerback Ronald Darby. After playing part-time for two years, Darby was to pair with Tyson Campbell. Campbell was lauded for his performance in Caldwell's frequent zone coverages, but zone coverage is Campbell's strength.

A Blank Slate

Head coach Liam Coen will lead the offense after coordinating Tampa Bay's offense in 2024. Anthony Campanile, who's been a defensive assistant to Brian Flores, Vic Fangio, and most recently, Jeff Hafley in Green Bay, will coordinate Jacksonville's defense.

Campanile was the co-coordinator of the 2018 Boston College Eagles' defense alongside a more senior coordinator. Campanile has not installed a defense since he coached high school in 2009. NFL beat reporters are not permitted to convey player alignments in practice. This column must rely largely on personnel decisions, player accounts, and generalizations offered by coaches in interviews about how Campanile's defense will look and function in 2025.

Scheme Differences That Matter

Almost all NFL defenses utilize a 4-2-5 nickel subpackage for the majority of their defensive reps. Unlike Tom Landry's 4-3 Flex defense, the defensive ends of the current-day 4-2-5 line up wide of the offensive tackles. Twenty-first-century NFL defenses differ from one another in three primary ways that impact IDP statistical output.

Zone Vs. Man Coverage

Zone coverage by a defense significantly improves the inside linebackers' rate of tackling per snap. A coach's historical tendencies and the personnel available to him for the upcoming season empower us to make educated guesses as to how often a defense will use zone coverage and, to an extent, how efficiently the inside linebackers will make tackles.

Ryan Nielsen called man coverages as often as anyone, nearly half the time in 2024. His personnel were exposed. New head coach Liam Coen confirms that the team's approach will rely much more often on zone coverages this year.

This column covered Ryan Nielsen's scheme last summer. It explained that the near-consensus overall top IDP ranking of Foyesade Oluokun was a mistake. Quite simply, a player with his back to the line of scrimmage will make fewer tackles.

#FFIDP - Most efficient coverage schemes for LB tackling in 2024:

Cover-2: 15.8%
Cover-6: 15.7%
Cover-4: 14.9%
Cover-3: 14.5%

AVERAGE LB TKL EFFICIENCY: 13.1%

Cover-1: 10.4%
Cover-0: 7.9%
2-MAN: 7.5%

Reminder: Zone-heavy defenses are a cheat code for IDP while man-heavy ones… https://t.co/FXZdUm3Jdd

— Jon Macri (@PFF_Macri) June 9, 2025

One High Vs. Two High Safeties

Two-high coverages have received disproportionate attention from mainstream media in this decade. Only the Vikings showed them more than half the time in 2024. Two-high coverages have, however, grown in use over the past ten years and made volume tacklers at the safety position harder to spot. Reduced competition from safeties in the middle of the field marginally improves inside linebackers' tackling prospects.

Meanwhile, a team that plays predominantly one-high coverages can infuse one of its two safeties with a statistical uptick if it deploys one, typically the strong safety, close to the line of scrimmage more frequently than the other. For reference, Pro Football Focus collects tackle efficiencies for safeties by alignment in the defense. PFF's Jon Macri reports the data as follows.

#FFIDP - Most efficient coverage schemes for LB tackling in 2024:

Cover-2: 15.8%
Cover-6: 15.7%
Cover-4: 14.9%
Cover-3: 14.5%

AVERAGE LB TKL EFFICIENCY: 13.1%

Cover-1: 10.4%
Cover-0: 7.9%
2-MAN: 7.5%

Reminder: Zone-heavy defenses are a cheat code for IDP while man-heavy ones… https://t.co/FXZdUm3Jdd

— Jon Macri (@PFF_Macri) June 9, 2025

2024 proved lucrative for fantasy gamers chasing strong safeties in one-high defenses. The in-season version of this column closed by debriefing this phenomenon.

Rush Strategy

Some teams ask their pass rushers to mush rush or two-gap, while select linemen on other teams have the green light to get upfield with reckless abandon. The former duties are integral to run defense, wherein the defender must account for more than one running lane. Green-lit defensive tackles, meanwhile, can shoot one gap and have higher sack upside.

One of Ryan Nielsen's favorite sayings is, "Mass kicks ass." He asked his defensive tackles to stymy the offensive line and prevent his edge defenders from being double-teamed.

Maason Smith gets himself a Sack, pure power from the middle pic.twitter.com/er3ulQ7vnH

— Fitz (@LaurieFitzptrck) December 22, 2024

Jaguars Defensive Tackles

Arik Armstead has confirmed that he's moving back inside to start at defensive tackle. He and second-year tackle Maason Smith both indicate they'll be asked to penetrate and disrupt more regularly in 2025.

Maason Smith says the new defensive scheme allows him to play more freely. pic.twitter.com/QdkoOdCsQJ

— Jamal St. Cyr (@JStCyrTV) May 27, 2025

Through organized team activities, Armstead is starting alongside Davon Hamilton. Smith is the first tackle off the bench and is the third interior defender in Campanile's odd fronts.

Campanile described his defensive front as most other defensive coordinators do: "multiple." He elaborated that he'd use a 4-3 with some 3-4 spacing while noting that all NFL defenses are in a 4-2-5 subpackage half the time.

Jaguars Edge Defenders

"4-3 with some 3-4 spacing" means that Jacksonville's defensive ends can expect to play wider than they did in 2024. Josh Hines-Allen and Travon Walker are losing weight to play faster from the wide alignments. Hines-Allen reports that he played at 285 last year, at Ryan Nielsen's behest, and it slowed him down, both on the field and in box scores.

Jacksonville signed Emmanuel Ogbah and Dawuane Smoot to back up Hines-Allen and Walker. Both players offer inside-outside flexibility, which could contribute to penny personnel – a five-man front with five defensive backs on the field. Penny personnel would help an attacking front expected to get off blocks to defend the run with wide-set edge rushers.

Jaguars Linebackers

The Jaguars used their first two draft picks on defensive backs, including Travis Hunter. Two of their top four unrestricted free-agent signings are defensive backs. These additions, together with new coaching, put pressure on Devin Lloyd.

The Jaguars declined the fifth-year option for Lloyd, their 2022 first-round draft pick. His passer rating allowed when targeted is 101.3 for his career, according to Pro Football Reference.

Ventrell Miller will start opposite Lloyd in a part-time role with Foyesade Oluokun in the middle. Oluokun will again play full-time and relay signals. He's a bounce-back candidate in a scheme that will play the zone coverages that helped elevate him to top overall IDP fantasy finishes from 2021 to 2023.