The Jaguars made three trades on Monday, but their deal for safety Jessie Bates was the only one that was completed when head coach Liam Coen met with reporters on Monday.
Coen called it a “no-brainer” to make a trade for a player who has shown the “ability to see things before they happen” on the field while also serving as a team captain in the locker room. Bates has been honing those skills for nine seasons, so he’s gained quite a bit of experience but Coen said it will still be “definitely a curve” in terms of getting him acclimated to the Jaguars defense on the fly.
“You’ve seen it done so many ways, right? So many different examples of it being done,” Coen said. “I know he’s pretty intelligent, and he’ll be able to understand a lot of that. It’s more the checks and balances right in between plays, the communication from two by two to three by one, the motions, the checks. Like our verbiage where I would imagine three, cover three, cover four, you know, like the coverages, he’ll understand and know and be able to play those, line up and play. It’s more of the checks and balances and things that go into each play that we’ll have to work through. We’ll take it one day at a time, see what happens.”
Defensive tackles Jordan Davis and Davon Godchaux are the other new members of the Jaguars defense and the team’s staff will be working overtime this week to make sure all of them are up to speed in time to face the Titans on Sunday.