HEAD COACH LIAM COEN
MEDIA AVAILABILITY
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2025
(On the status of LB Foye Oluokun and if he expects him to play Sunday) “I do. Yeah, I do.”
(On the status of CB Montaric Brown) “Still working through that one right now. It’s a great
day for him to be able to get an opportunity and continue to see what that looks like and still
got really two days, three days actually.”
(On S Eric Murray’s approach and professionalism) “Eric’s a guy that really when he speaks
it means something. He knows how to talk to everybody, like all walks of life he can
communicate with. He’s not necessarily an overly chatty person, so when he does have
comments and points to make, I think most people are really paying attention. He’s been
very diligent about his preparation and ownership of the back end in terms of the
communication and then man, he played physical and opportunistic as well. I was really
pleased. He had a couple things he’s got to clean up, but I’ve been very pleased with Eric.”
(On how Murray, CB Jourdan Lewis and their communication on the back end of the defense)
“Absolutely, those two were definitely guys that we wanted to target early in the process and
have those areas of improvement that we were looking for, have showed up. They’ve showed
up since they both got here. It was immediate in a lot of ways but ultimately, your teammates
and everybody are going to truly trust you and believe when you put it on tape actually on a
Sunday, ball game. So, I think both of those guys making plays on Sunday only helped their
cause.”
(On CB Tyson Campbell) “Yeah, a guy that has embraced everything around here in terms of
the way that’s he’s tried to go about working in the offseason program, his conditioning, he’s
just been in great shape. Obviously, he’s been battling and that’s the one thing about Tyson
is when he plays with confidence and he trusts and believes in his abilities that he has, he
can be dominant. He can be dominant. It’s just continuing to have that belief, go get your
hands on people, go use your length, go use your traits, to go play physical and take the fight
to them, that is going to be key and critical this week. Obviously, not just for Tyson but for our
whole unit in the back end especially, but I do think that Tyson has continued to do this
[upwards motion] and now this is a great challenge for him against quality opponents.”
(On if there was a coach he worked with previously who stressed the importance of the run
game and physicality) “Well, I threw the ball as a high school quarterback for my dad like 10
times a game, so it started young where it was instilled for sure. Then as you go throughout
the process and the coaching profession, I was really fortunate in college, as a player, to play
for [former UMass Head Coach] Don Brown, who was a defensive head coach, was so in
college it was then also brought to me that way. Then obviously when you go and work for
Sean [Rams Head Coach Sean McVay], you think of him, I guess a lot of people, as this
[throwing motion], Star Wars, the balls going all over the place, but he was a tight ends coach
in Washington before he became a coordinator. So, a lot of the run game, details, mindset
mentality, do come from that. So when I got there, I learned pass concepts are pass
concepts, you learn a lot about the details in the NFL versus maybe where I was at Maine but
the plays were similar. The detail in the run game and his ownership of the run game as an
offensive head coach, I thought that was what made him different and I learned so much
about, more so about the defense, than just the offensive scheme. It’s like, okay, how did
these blocks or these motions affect the defense and mastering that. So, he’s always won.
We ran the ball really well in 2018 when we went to the Super Bowl. It’s always been on top
of mind for him. And that’s a lot of it. Kind of the detail of the run game came there, the
mindset probably started at a younger age.”
(On having belief in RB Travis Etienne Jr.) “It was, but I had an opportunity throughout that
process after I got the job, I went back to ‘22, ‘23, a lot of ‘22, ‘23 I watched and man, you saw
a guy get involved in space and make people miss and hit the holes hard. And sometimes his
timing and circumstances happen and the way that he was portrayed coming off of a tough
year, coming into a new setting, everybody’s got a fresh op here, really. He took advantage of
it the way he – it took some time early on in terms of understanding the demands and the
standards. Once he really got on the same page, it’s been doing this [upwards motion]. So,
I’ve really appreciated his preparation of the system, his knowledge and the way that
obviously he played on Sunday.”
(On if trading RB Tank Bigsby was difficult) “Yeah, absolutely. No question. It was a luxury to
have, where you’re sitting there just because you really don’t know until you get into a game
and not that one game is the expectation. He set a high standard in week one, which is
awesome to expect the 140 [rushing yards] whatever it is each week but I’ve just been
pleased with the way he has gone about it and he obviously proved it on Sunday.”
(On the challenge of preparing for Bengals Defensive Coordinator Al Golden’s defense with
only one game of NFL tape) “It’s definitely, you look at especially short yardage, goal line,
certain specific situations and you don’t have a lot of inventory. So, you do have to have an
idea of Notre Dame, what they did, situational calls, two-point plays, got to have-its, all
those. You don’t really have a ton of evidence from Cleveland this past week. So, we’ve had
to dive into it, which does make it challenging for sure, where there’s just an unknown, almost
like going back into a week one game a little bit where you’re like, we could definitely see
some unscouted looks here, some things that we did not see from last week. Alright, what
could those be and how do we adjust to those in game? Those are the conversations we’ve
had all week. More about like what could come up that showed up in Notre Dame that maybe
didn’t show up against Cleveland, but they played salty, they played hard. I’ve got a ton of
respect for Coach Golden and obviously Zac [Bengals Head Coach Zac Taylor], but they
played hard, they played physical, a lot of man coverage too, so we’ll have to see how they
adjust and how we can adjust from there.”
(On if he talked to LB Jack Kiser about Notre Dame’s defense) “Yeah, we did.”
(On if it is challenging to be physical in back-to-back weeks) “I think we’ll see. I think we’ll
see. It’s definitely an expectation. It’s something that we have preached and talked about
pretty relentlessly. So, you’re hoping that that’s becoming a part of your DNA and a part of
your identity, but I think in the NFL with the amount of games that these guys play, it’s
definitely challenging to go out and do it week in and week out. Like some games, the pass
game is going to have to come really alive for us to go win. Like there’s some games where
the run game carries you. There’s some games that the pass game carries you. You want
balance. We all want balance, to say that you’re going to execute perfect balance each week
is why the defensive guys get paid. So, that’s where the balance though comes in to create is
once we get good at both, well, if they’re stopping one, you get to deploy the other and still
have success. Within a game, you want to sit there and say, yes, we rushed for 200 yards and
we threw for 225 a game. Like that’s the ideal, that’s the goal but some games may change
who part of the group gets deployed more just based on how we’re doing and how the
defense is doing.”
