Michael DiRocco, who covers the Jacksonville Jaguars for ESPN, came up with a list of five Jaguars players with “something to prove in 2025.“

Among those players “under pressure to raise their level of play,” DiRocco writes, are two former Clemson stars – quarterback Trevor Lawrence and running back Travis Etienne.

First, here’s some of what DiRocco wrote regarding Etienne, who is entering the final year of his rookie contract in 2025 after being selected by the Jags with the 25th overall pick of the 2021 NFL Draft:

After losing his rookie season to a Lisfranc injury, Etienne rushed for 2,133 yards and 16 touchdowns and caught 93 passes for 792 yards and one touchdown in 2022-23. Last season his production dipped significantly — 558 and two rushing touchdowns and 39 catches for 254 yards — as second-year player Tank Bigsby became the team’s top back (766 yards and seven TDs).

Part of Etienne’s decline could be attributed to the way he was used over the past two seasons in former head coach Doug Pederson’s offense. In 2022, 25.4% of his carries came outside the tackles and he averaged 8.3 yards per rush. Those numbers dipped in 2023 (23.2%, 3.7 yards per carry) and 2024 (21.3%, 3.0 yards per carry).

Etienne is at his best when he’s on the edge and in space, and he likes that new head coach Liam Coen’s offense seemed to put him in those spots a lot during the spring.

“He’s been getting me a lot in space,” Etienne said. “I love me one-on-one with anybody and just being able to make that first man miss and being able to get the extra yards. I feel like Liam has a great knack for getting the players the ball. It’s more so players than plays with Liam and he has a great feel for the game.”

With the emergence of Bigsby in 2024, there was thought that Jacksonville could move on from Etienne, and that buzz only grew louder when the Jags took a pair of running backs – Bhayshul Tuten and LeQuint Allen – in this year’s NFL Draft.

However, new Jaguars head coach Liam Coen likes what he’s seen from Etienne so far and recently shut down the speculation that Jacksonville might trade Etienne away to another team.

“He’s done a great job,” Coen said. “I don’t really understand some of the stuff I’ve kind of seen out there. That’s absolutely inaccurate.”

“Every day, everything we’ve asked him to do, he’s done at a good clip for us,” Coen added. “I mean, the ability in the screen game, to hand him jet sweeps. His vision, so far, in the run game has been good. He’s done everything we’ve asked him to do, and more. There’s been a consistency.”

As for Lawrence, who is now entering his fifth NFL season, here’s what DiRocco wrote about Lawrence as another player with something to prove this year:

Lawrence isn’t in danger of going anywhere: He signed a five-year, $275 million extension with $200 million guaranteed last June, but he has yet to play at a high level over a full season and has battled six separate injuries over the past two seasons, including two concussions in an 11-month span.

Making things more difficult is that he’s learning his third offense since the Jaguars drafted him first overall in 2021.

Lawrence has been chasing the success he had between a 17-game stretch from Week 9 in 2022 to Week 8 in 2023, when he completed 69% of his passes (second-best in that stretch to Justin Herbert’s 69.5%) for 4,208 yards and 24 touchdowns with six interceptions (third lowest among QBs who started 10 or more games). The Jaguars went 13-4 over that period.

That’s a pretty good stretch, but the expectations for the player once tabbed a generational prospect are higher, especially when it comes to touchdown passes and turnovers. Lawrence has not thrown more than 25 in a season (2022) and he leads the NFL in turnovers (68) since he entered the league despite playing seven fewer games than Josh Allen (67 turnovers), who is the only other player with 60-plus turnovers.

There is optimism that Coen will be the coach to finally get a big season out of Lawrence, especially after Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield threw a career-high 41 TD passes and a career-high 4,500 yards in 2024 in his lone season with Coen as his offensive coordinator.

Coen has completely reworked Lawrence’s footwork, which he said is vital to Lawrence being able to operate the offense effectively.

Over his first four NFL seasons, Lawrence has completed 63.3 percent of his passes for 13,815 yards and 69 touchdowns with 46 interceptions in 60 games. He earned Pro Bowl honors back in 2022, when he led the Jaguars to the AFC South division title, as well as an incredible comeback victory over the Los Angeles Chargers in the AFC Wild Card playoffs.

Meanwhile, Etienne has rushed for 2,691 yards and 18 touchdowns on 637 carries over his first three NFL campaigns, while catching 132 passes for 1,046 yards and another score. Prior to the 2024 season, he rushed for more than 1,000 yards in each of his first two NFL seasons in 2022 and 2023, after the season-ending Lisfranc injury he suffered in the 2021 preseason.

–Photo courtesy of Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images