Big Cat Country
Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, we’re doing something we’ve never done before — giving a Secret Superstars award to a coach. That’s just how much of a difference new Jacksonville Jaguars defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile has made for a defense that was an abject disaster in 2024, and is now one of the NFL’s best.
The 2025 Jacksonville Jaguars’ defense has improved drastically in all respects.
And if you say you saw that coming, you’re fibbing.
The 2024 Jaguars, under defensive coordinator Ryan Nielsen, finished 31st in Defensive DVOA, opponent passer rating allowed, and EPA per play allowed behind only the Carolina Panthers on all counts. They were 26th in points allowed, 25th in yards allowed, dead last in EPA allowed per passing attempt, 29th in EPA allowed per rushing attempt, and 29th in quarterback pressure rate. No matter the metric, the 2024 Jaguars defense stunk on ice, and the tape backed it up.
The 2025 Jaguars, under defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile, currently rank 16th in Defensive DVOA, first in opponent passer rating allowed, and tied for third in EPA per play allowed with the Detroit Lions and the Denver Broncos. They are 10th in points allowed, 15th in yards allowed, third in EPA allowed per passing attempt, 19th in EPA allowed per rushing attempt, and 23rd in quarterback pressure rate. No matter the metric, the 2025 Jaguars defense has proven that it’s an entirely different beast.
And Campanile, the man in charge of this turnaround, has never been a solo defensive coordinator at any level of football before. The closest Campanile came to that was when he served as Boston College’s co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach in 2018. Since then, he’s been Michigan’s linebackers coach (2019), the Miami Dolphins’ linebackers coach (2020-2023), and the Green Bay Packers’ linebackers coach (2024) before elevating to his current position.
Who is this 43-year-old native of Fair Lawn, New Jersey (you can tell from this EXTREMELY NSFW video from his time with the Dolphins, which is pure Silvio Dante) who has had such an effect on an NFL defense out of nowhere? Motivational speeches with multiple F-bombs are nice and all, but that stuff tends to vaporize pretty quickly if there’s not some weight behind it.
Well, Campanile isn’t tied to a particular coverage concept, which tends to be the way for most of the better defensive shot-callers in today’s NFL. The 2024 Jaguars under Nielsen played man coverage at the NFL’s second-highest rate (41.3%), and the results proved that they didn’t have the personnel to do that — 136 completions allowed on 230 attempts for 1,868 yards, 11 touchdowns, two interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 97.5 when playing Cover-0, Cover-1, or 2-Man.
The new guy is far more flexible — though the trend is far more to zone coverage — and it’s...
