JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The preseason home opener Friday night for the Jacksonville Jaguars is as much a preview of where they play as how they play against the Carolina Panthers.
The Jaguars are playing in what amounts to a construction zone this season as it builds its “Stadium of the Future," a $1.4 billion project that won't be ready until the 2028 season.
Seats have been removed from the upper section of Everbank Stadium because of the ongoing installment of massive steel trusses that will support the transparent canopy. Three towering cranes are just outside the stadium and visible from the seats in the lower section. Lights once on top of the stadium are now secured in the upper section.
Capacity has been reduced to 42,500. It will be like that for two preseason games, six in the regular season (two homes games are in England).
“What it's going to feel like? To me, it's going to feel like football,” defensive end Travon Walker said. "Obviously playing in front of a home crowd, it gives you a little extra spark. But other than that, it’s football at the end of the day.
"I don’t care how fancy it is. I don’t care how old it is. We’re going to play football.”
This was the plan all along when Jaguars officials held 28 town hall meetings and learned from fans they did not want the team away from home for two years during construction.
The Tennessee Titans, and Buffalo Bills before them, both played in their previous stadiums while the new home was being built next door. The Jaguars didn't have that luxury along the St. Johns River, and there was no other suitable stadium in town.
Mark Lamping, the Jaguars president who oversaw new stadiums as baseball president for the St. Louis Cardinals and previously was CEO of MetLife Stadium during its construction, was able to come up with a change in the construction sequence to allow for one season at home during construction and one season in a stadium two hours away.
The Jaguars will play before limited capacity in 2026, and then move their home games to Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida — home of the Citrus Bowl — for 2027. To stay home during the entire construction would have taken four years instead of two.
What will this year be like? Lamping described it as “unique.”
“It makes it a little more complex and requires our fans to exhibit a little patience,” he said, referring mainly to routines of parking, tailgating and getting to seats. Parking isn't necessarily reduced because there are fewer seats during this makeshift year.
And there's one eye on the finished product, most notably the transparent canopy that works like mirrored sunglasses and reduces radiant heat in the seating area and concourses by 10 to 15 degrees over direct sunlight. It allows fans to see out the sides for views of the skyline and river. The concourses that encircle the stadium are to be four times wider.
Once the steel trusses are in place — those are the white frames atop the stadium — a large compression ring will be central to slowly raising the roof. That's still a year to 18 months away.
The fans at least won't need hard hats to go to the games. Construction shuts down 48 hours before the games, and resumes the morning after a game — sometimes as soon as the stadium empties depending on the work.
And the schedule is favorable for construction.
The Jaguars are home on Sept. 27 against the New England Patriots, and then they are away for an entire month — at Cincinnati, two games in the UK, followed by a bye week. After another home game on Nov. 1, they have three straight road games.
“The league was very cooperative,” Lamping said. “They're never able to meet all the requests the teams have. But it was important to us that we'd have a little bit of a donut in the middle of the schedule that would allow the construction to get onto the field.”
He also said two games in London would allow the Jaguars to get a game back in 2030, so they are giving up one game in a stadium under construction for a home game in their new digs.
The Jaguars, coming off an AFC South title, are looking for an edge. Perhaps a suboptimal stadium situation can contribute. Coach Liam Coen presented a broad message of playing with something to prove as they try to have back-to-back postseason berths for the first time in 27 years.
“We want to go play anywhere, anytime, anybody, doesn't matter,” Coen said. “We got to go prove it and go earn it because consistency is the truest measure of performance at the end of the day.”
On the road, in London, and at home with a stadium under construction.
___
