How Jon Gruden Helped Jaguars Land Rookie QB

The spotlight never left Travis Hunter, but someone had to throw him his first NFL passes on a practice field. That someone might end up making the roster.

Undrafted rookie quarterback Seth Henigan is the son of a football coach, just like Liam Coen. And the Jaguars’ head coach was impressed by what he saw from Henigan on Saturday.

“You can definitely see the coach’s-kid mentality,” Coen said following his team’s second rookie minicamp practice. “He did a great job of calling the plays and having the command. We weren’t just out there calling one play. We were canning plays, two play calls. He was handling all that stuff well. So, time will tell, but definitely a good guy to start off with.”

Starting off with Henigan wasn’t something Coen envisioned a month ago. In a moment of transparency, the head coach said Saturday that not only had he not gotten to know Henigan just yet, he also hadn’t watched much tape on the quarterback until after Jacksonville signed him April 26.

As the seventh and final round of the draft wound down and Henigan appeared likely to go unselected, Coen got a text from another coach’s kid.

“Jon Gruden actually hit me up about him,” said Coen. “Shot me a text. I think they spent some time together during the offseason.”

That they did. The former head coach of the Raiders and Buccaneers, who won a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay, invested one-on-one time with Henigan last month at Gruden’s QB Class.

“Not only did Seth Henigan’s mind impress me, but there aren’t many throws he can’t make with his arm,” Gruden tweeted in April.