Jaguars Clips
The Browns will be continuing their second round of interviews on Friday.
According to multiple reports, they will be meeting with Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski. He is the third candidate to meet with the Browns a second time.
Their own defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz and Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken are the others who have interviewed twice. Rams pass game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase is expected to have a second meeting with the team after the NFC Championship Game and the Browns still need to satisfy the Rooney Rule requirements before they can move forward with a hire.
Udinski, who just wrapped up his first season running the offense in Jacksonville, is set for an interview with the Bills on Sunday.
Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski is scheduled for an interview with the Bills for their head coaching job.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that Udinski is set to meet with the team on Sunday. The Bills fired Sean McDermott in the wake of last weekend’s 33-30 overtime loss to the Broncos in the divisional round of the playoffs.
Udinski is also in the running for the head coaching job in Cleveland. He’s slated for a second interview with the Browns on Friday.
Udinski was hired by the Jaguars after Liam Coen took over as the team’s head coach in 2025. He worked with Coen to construct an offense that helped the team finish sixth in the league in points scored and win the AFC South.
As part of the announcements for all AP award finalists, the NFL has revealed the five athletes who are up for comeback player of the year.
Patriots receiver Stefon Diggs, Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey, and Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott are the five up for the award.
Diggs suffered a torn ACL midway through the 2024 season, but started all 17 games in 2025, catching 85 passes for 1,013 yards with four touchdowns.
Hutchinson suffered a season-ending leg injury in October 2024, breaking his tibia and fibula. He posted a career-high 14.5 sacks along with 14 tackles for loss, and 35 quarterback hits in 17 games for Detroit in 2025.
Lawrence started only 10 games in 2024 after dealing with multiple concussions last season. But he helped pilot the Jaguars to the postseason in 2025, starting all 17 games and passing for 4,007 yards with 29 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
After playing only four games due to multiple injuries in 2024, McCaffrey led the league with 413 touches to help the 49ers reach the postseason. He took 311 carries for 1,202 yards with 10 touchdowns and caught 102 passes for 924 yards with seven TDs.
Finally, Prescott returned from a hamstring avulsion to start all 17 games, finishing the year with 4,552 yards, 30 touchdowns, and 10 interceptions. He led the league with 404 completions.
The coach of the year field has been narrowed to five. That’s the relatively easy part.
The hard part is narrowing it to one.
Of course, that happened more than two weeks ago, when the 50 AP voters (whose names and votes will be disclosed after the awards are announced in two weeks) submitted their ballots on the day after the end of the regular season.
The five finalists, as announced by the NFL, are (in alphabetical order): Jaguars coach Liam Coen, Bears coach Ben Johnson, Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, and Patriots coach Mike Vrabel.
Fortunately, none of the five finalists were among the 10 coaches who are no longer with their teams.
The most obvious omissions from the list are Broncos coach Sean Payton, whose team secured the No. 1 seed in the AFC, and Rams coach Sean McVay, whose team was arguably the second best in the NFC, seeding notwithstanding.
But putting them in the top five would require removing one of the others. Good luck with that exercise.
The two favorites, in our view, are Coen and Vrabel. We’ll find out in 14 days who gets the fancy trophy. Vrabel surely hopes he won’t be able to attend the NFL Honors ceremony, because he’ll be preparing for the far more important prize. Especially as it relates to a coach’s legacy.
The NFL has announced the finalists for this year’s most valuable player award.
Patriots quarterback Drake Maye and Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford have been seen as the two favorites for the award for some time and both men make their expected appearance on the list of five finalists. The award will be handed out at the NFL Honors event during Super Bowl week.
If Maye and Stafford both lead their teams to wins this weekend, they’ll square off in the Super Bowl days after finding out if they were named this season’s MVP. Stafford beat Maye out in first-team All-Pro voting and that’s usually predictive of the MVP vote. One exception came last year when Bills quarterback Josh Allen won MVP after Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson was voted All-Pro.
Allen is a finalist again this year. Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence and 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey round out the group of finalists.
The Cardinals are getting closer to finding their new head coach.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, Jacksonville defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile is flying to the desert to have his second interview with Arizona on Thursday.
Campanile, 43, just finished his first season as the club’s defensive coordinator. Jacksonville finished No. 8 in points allowed and No. 11 in yards allowed in 2025.
The Ravens and Dolphins have also shown interest in Campanile as a head coaching candidate, though Miami has since hired Jeff Hafley.
Jonathan Gannon was fired earlier this month after three seasons with the club.
The list of Bills head coaching candidates is growing longer.
Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reports that they have requested an interview with Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski. He joins Colts defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady, former Giants head coach Brian Daboll, and Commanders running backs coach/run game coordinator Anthony Lynn on the early list in Buffalo.
Udinski is also scheduled for a second interview with the Browns this week. Cleveland is the only team that Udinski has interviewed with at this point in the cycle.
Udinski was a Vikings assistant for three years before joining Liam Coen’s staff in Jacksonville for the 2025 season. He was also a coaching assistant for the Panthers for two seasons.
If former Bills coach Sean McDermott had concerns about the talent on the Buffalo roster, he kept it to himself. For the most part.
After the division-round loss to the Broncos, McDermott focused on the fateful decision (without replay review) to transform a key catch by receiver Brandin Cooks into an interception by cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian. McDermott continued his commentary on the ruling and the handling of it by calling Jay Skurski of the Buffalo News from the team plane back to New York.
Cooks was a post-trade deadline acquisition the Bills made after a failed effort by the Saints to make his contract less attractive on waivers. The Bills were one of the teams believed to be lurking for Cooks in free agency, if no one submitted a waivers claim.
McDermott may have been eyeing another in-season acquisition at receiver: Jakobi Meyers. The Bills had been linked to Meyers before he was traded to the Jaguars. And, in the days preceding Buffalo’s wild-card game at Jacksonville, McDermott made a comment that went largely unnoticed at the time.
“Well, I thought one of the moves that’s made, you know, a difference for them offensively is adding Jakobi Meyers,” McDermott said, via Alex Brasky of SI.com. “Good pickup for them. Probably a guy that’s, quite honestly, been undervalued in his career, but going against him in New England, ton of respect for his game.”
Brasky viewed the comments after they were made as a “veiled shot” at G.M. Brandon Beane for failing to close the deal for Meyers.
McDermott’s privately-communicated concerns about the quality of the roster also put the decision to make 2024 second-round receiver Keon Coleman a healthy scratch for multiple games after the trade deadline in a different light. Most assumed McDermott and Beane were on the same page regarding the need to not put Coleman in uniform for multiple games. Maybe they weren’t.
The Jaguars weren’t the only team to make an impactful deadline deal at receiver. The Seahawks picked up Rashid Shaheed from the Saints — and Shaheed had a direct hand in helping Seattle secure the No. 1 seed in the NFC with a game-altering punt return against the Rams in Week 16 and a tone-setting kick return for a touchdown to start Saturday’s playoff win over the 49ers. Maybe the Bills targeted the wrong Saints receiver.
For his part, Beane seems to have contempt for the trend toward trades for young General Managers, deriding it last January as “fantasy football.”
The reality for the Bills is that McDermott took the fall for the failure of the team to achieve the fanbase’s longstanding fantasy to win a Super Bowl. And it places under an electron microscope all moves made and not made by the Bills in the offseason (and during the 2026 regular season) to put more weapons around quarterback Josh Allen.
Mike McDaniel won’t be the Browns’ next head coach, as McDaniel withdrew from the search on Tuesday. But the Browns are getting closer to hiring a replacement for Kevin Stefanski.
Chargers defensive coordinator Jesse Minter will interview with the Browns on Thursday, Albert Breer of MMQB reports, with Jaguars offensive coordinator Grant Udinski interviewing on Friday.
The Browns talked with their own defensive coordinator, Jim Schwartz, on Monday and Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken on Tuesday.
Rams passing game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase also remains in the mix in Cleveland.
The Jaguars’ recent home playoff loss to the Bills had an official attendance of 70,250. If the Jaguars host a playoff game next season, there will be far fewer fans present — and not because the team will have reverted to the days of tarps on the upper deck.
Via Garry Smits of the Florida Times-Union, $1.4 billion in upgrades to EverBank Stadium will limit capacity in 2026 to 43,000 fans.
Only the lower bowl at the stadium will be open. And, as Smits explains it, the cabanas and the pool in the stadium likely will be closed for all of 2026, too.
The ongoing work will require the Jaguars to play elsewhere in 2027, with Orlando’s Camping World Stadium the likely (but not yet official) location.
And so the Jaguars won’t return to a complete home-field advantage until 2028, when the fully-renovated Everbank Stadium opens its doors.
Until the next time it’s renovated, that is.
