JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Anywhere. Anytime. Anybody.
That was Jacksonville Jaguars coach Liam Coen’s message to his team months ago. He wanted to establish a tone for what could be the most daunting stretch in NFL history.
The Jaguars (1-0) will play 28 of their next 33 regular-season games away from home, beginning Sunday at Denver (0-1).
“Drop us off in a plane and we’ll go play,” Coen said.
Because of an ongoing, $1.4 billion renovation to EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville, the Jaguars will play two of their eight home games this season in London. They will play the entire 2027 schedule outside the city, with nine homes games spread between Orlando, London and potentially another international site.
It’s far from ideal, but hardly a concern for a team that believes it has the talent to compete in any venue and against any opponent. And Coen chose to embrace it.
“If you’re a part of this organization right now, this is the reality,” Coen said. “This is our truth; this is our reality. And nobody in this league and in this fanbase is going to care at the end of the day. Like, nobody.
“It’s not going to be an allowed excuse or an allowed reason because the results are what they are at the end of the season. Your record’s your record, and nobody’s going to look at it and say, ‘Oh, well, they had to go play a lot of games away from home.’”
Coen addressed the team’s future with players and coaches before training camp. Now, it’s become a version of “trauma bonding,” center Robert Hainsey said.
“He definitely made it our mentality,” Hainsey said. “Like, literally, drop us off anywhere, put the ball down and let’s play. That’s how we got to prepare. That’s who we got to be. This is the NFL. It’s never easy. It’s just one more thing that’s going to make it maybe a little bit tougher.”
The Jaguars return home on Sept. 27 against New England, and then they are away for an entire month — at Cincinnati, two home games in the United Kingdom, followed by a bye week. After another home game on Nov. 1, they have three straight road games.
The Jags requested “a little bit of a donut in the middle of the schedule” to allow construction teams to get work done inside the stadium, team president Mark Lamping said.
Jacksonville also closes the season with four of its final six on the road.
“In your head, you’re kind of feeling sorry for yourself, ‘This sucks, blah, blah, blah.’ But I know everyone next to me is doing it, too," Hainsey said. "Yeah, we’re going to complain about it, but it’s a little bit of an outlet and we have fun with it. And then, when we bring it back, it’s like, ‘Let’s go play.’”
The Jaguars played well on the road in 2025, finishing 6-2. Their biggest win: at Denver a few days before Christmas.
“Like coach says, ‘Anytime, anyplace,’” cornerback Jourdan Lewis said. “We want to play to our standard regardless of where it is.”
Coen, whose team is coming off an AFC South title, is always looking for motivation to keep his guys playing with an edge. The team’s less-than-ideal stadium situation could help.
“When you go on the road, especially the West Coast trips that we did have last year, those are longer trips,” Coen said. “You’re together a little bit longer. … You can get a little bit more rest and less distractions.
“As much as I want to go see my family on a Saturday after we have our work done here, it is good for us. It’s good for us to be connected. It’s good for us to be around each other and to keep learning and growing together.”
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Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Liam Coen walks on the sidelines during the second half of an NFL football game against the Cleveland Browns, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026, in Jacksonville. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
Jacksonville Jaguars defensive end Josh Hines-Allen (41) celebrates after sacking Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson in the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026, in Jacksonville. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A motorist was arrested on murder charges after authorities say she slammed her SUV into a city bus in Los Angeles, killing at least two people and injuring six others in a prelude to a second deadly tragedy: the fiery crash of a TV news helicopter that was covering the collision.
Bailee Lynn Rios, 36, of Simi Valley, was arrested Tuesday night and was being held at a Los Angeles jail with bail set at $4 million, police said Wednesday. The case is being forwarded to the district attorney's office, which will decide whether to file the charges in court or pursue different ones. Information on a lawyer who could speak on her behalf was not immediately available.
The helicopter, which was used by NBC and Telemundo, crashed about two hours after police say Rios drove her 2004 Ford Expedition the wrong way down a busy avenue, ran a red light and struck a vehicle before hitting the bus. One passenger was fully ejected from the bus and another was partially ejected, police said.
Rios’ mother, Cindy Rios, said she was shocked and saddened by the string of events. She said she had not spoken to Bailee Lynn since her arrest and had not been contacted by law enforcement.
“It’s just horrible,” Cindy Rios told The Associated Press in a phone interview Wednesday. “The fact that my daughter was involved and was the cause of it is just extremely disturbing.”
“If anything, I’m sorry for the other families,” she added. “My daughter’s alive. People lost their lives.”
The two people who died in the bus crash were identified as Gage Weida, 31, and Daniel Castillo, 46, of Los Angeles. No city was given for Weida, but according to his Facebook page, he also lived in Los Angeles.
NBC4 Los Angeles reported that two people aboard the helicopter — reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw — were killed when the chopper went down Tuesday in the Chatsworth neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley north of downtown.
A person on the ground, identified as 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, died in a parking lot, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office said. He was from Guatemala, the country's consulate confirmed.
The crash happened as news crews were reporting on the collision involving the SUV that slammed into the bus.
There were no immediate details on what caused the helicopter crash, but an alarm could be heard sounding inside the helicopter's cockpit as it lost altitude in the final seconds of video the crew broadcast before the crash.
Just after the beeping noise starts, a woman’s voice says “uh oh.” The helicopter moves quickly away from the bus crash site and starts losing altitude. The woman says “You can’t pull up?” before the video stops as the chopper nears the ground.
“That video is probably the most important evidence that we have discovered so far,” National Transportation Safety Board investigator Fabian Salazar said Wednesday at a news briefing.
Salazar said the sounds were consistent with the helicopter's engine changing speed, as well as what he said were likely advisory tones for the pilot. The NTSB said it is also investigating the bus collision.
The helicopter, a Eurocopter AS350, went down near a large storage facility. At least four cars and two storage containers burned after the helicopter caught fire. NBC4 reporter Robert Kovacik was at the bus scene and saw black smoke and rushed to the helicopter crash site.
Moreno was a familiar voice for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 during the station’s aerial coverage. She and Marciniw were both were employees of Angel City Air, which operated the chopper for the station.
Moreno, born in Orange County, joined Angel City Air in 2010, the same year she earned a broadcast journalism and political science degree from Chapman University. She reported for several news outlets and began flying with Marciniw in 2023, the NBC4 website said.
Marciniw grew up in Southern California and graduated from Burbank High School in 1974.
“I think a lot of us are still trying to process what happened, this terrible loss,” NBC4 reporter Lauren Coronado told viewers early Wednesday as she stood near the crash site. A hazmat crew was cleaning up jet fuel, she said.
In a tribute to Moreno and Marciniw, the newscast referred to them as “the team in the sky,” saying Moreno would often post videos from her job and was in awe of the view. Anchor Lynette Romero held a colleague’s hand and wiped away tears after hearing Moreno’s voice when one of her posts was played.
In an interview with the station, Esteban Jimenez, a pilot, said he had known Marciniw since the 1990s. He said Marciniw had been his instructor.
“I just talked to him on Sunday. We were talking about the aviation business and retiring,” he said.
Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the alarm sounding in the helicopter’s final video sounds like the low rotor RPM warning horn that signals the main rotor is no longer spinning enough to keep the helicopter in the air.
“It just has all the earmarks of a potential loss of engine power and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed,” said Guzzetti who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and FAA.
Guzzetti said the pilot appeared to be trying to perform an emergency maneuver to use the wind to force the rotor to spin again much like a breeze turns a windmill. Doing that can create a bit of lift that could help cushion the impact, but Guzzetti said there would have been little opportunity to do that because the helicopter had been hovering at a low altitude beforehand.
There are risks to news helicopters particularly in a major city like Los Angeles where multiple helicopters respond to an incident, but the pilots all coordinate closely over the radio to ensure they maintain a safe distance from each other. The industry also shares best practices to help keep these news flights safe.
“It’s a very unique form of flying. And the community is very good about lessons learned,” Guzzetti said. “And so because of that, you don’t hear about too many of those accidents. So they’re rare, but they do occur, just because the mission is a risky one.”
The station said this is the second aviation tragedy in its history.
In 1977, a KNBC news helicopter crashed when it ran out of fuel while returning to the station after covering a wildfire in Santa Barbara, killing the pilot and camera operator. The pilot, former U.S. Air Force officer Francis Gary Powers, had been in the news years earlier when he was shot down and captured while flying a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union for the CIA, an ordeal portrayed in the movie “Bridge of Spies.”
There have been at least eight fatal crashes involving news helicopters in the U.S. since 2000, killing 16 people, according to a review of federal accident records and news accounts.
They include a 2023 crash in a New Jersey forest that killed the pilot and a photographer aboard a helicopter used by Philadelphia station WPVI and a 2022 crash beside a Charlotte, North Carolina, interstate that killed a pilot and meteorologist during a training flight for WBTV.
A 2007 midair collision in Phoenix of two TV news helicopters that were covering a police chase led the NTSB to recommend that news helicopters have at least two people in the cockpit so the pilot can focus on flying while the reporter focuses on the story.
This story has been updated to correct that Marciniw, not Moreno, graduated from Burbank High School and to correct the spelling of Jeff Guzzetti's last name.
Golden reported from Seattle, and Collins from Hartford, Connecticut. Associated Press writers Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco; Michael Sisak in New York; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; and Allen Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed.
In this aerial view, people investigate the aftermath of a news helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026.(AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
A police officer works the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
An aerial view of the aftermath of a news helicopter that crashed in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
An aerial view of the aftermath of a news helicopter that crashed in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
An aerial view of the aftermath of a news helicopter that crashed in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass attends a news conference at the scene of a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
First responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass joined by other officials walk to a news conference near the scene of a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Two people hug each other behind police lines at the scene of a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass talks during a news conference at the scene after a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows first responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows First responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows firefighters respond to a deadly bus crash, in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows a helicopter that crashed near a deadly bus crash, in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
First responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
