Ravens RB Matt Lawrence in training camp, August 2009. (Photo Courtesy: Keith Allison/CC License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode)
Matt Lawrence played 4 seasons in the NFL with the Seahawks, Bears and Ravens before retiring after the 2011 season due to injuries.
He was a stud running back in college at the University of Massachusetts, where Lawrence rushed for 1,585 yards and 16 touchdowns in his senior season.
Monday morning, Lawrence posted on his Instagram page that he had become an ordained minister.
Former Ravens RB Matt Lawrence gets ordained as a minister. (Photo Courtesy: Matt Lawrence/Instagram @TreyDeuce_32)
“I’vealways shared the word with my friends but to take the leap to minister didn’t happened until I retired,” Lawrence told Sports Spectrum. “Then my love for sharing the word to teens and young adultstook off.”
Matt says that his goal in becoming ordained is to go deeper with his faith to a place where he can pastor and mentor teens and young adults.
“The Lord is calling me to the youth and young adults, ages 14-24,” Lawrence said. “Kids get so much God and then they move out of the house and they don’t see a church again until about age 27 when they start a family of their own. I believe God has called me to speak into their lives and show them Christ.”
Lawrence retired in 2012 after suffering a career-ending concussion. He says the injuries he sustained during his 4-year career still affect him to this day.
“I’m still trying to get healthy in 2017, it continues to remain a struggle. I have constant double vision, ringing in my ears, a compression fracture in my neck.This is my daily reality and when I say I’m totally relying on God I mean it! God holds my cards and spreading the Gospel helps me understand that pain on earth is temporary and I’m not the only one going through something. “
Matt and his wife Jennifer recently became parents to baby Savannah Lawrence and aside from his commitment to God, Lawrence says his priority and motivation are to keep going for his wife and baby girl.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba in January 2026. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
THIS IS THE SPORTS SPECTRUM PODCAST HOSTED BY ANNABELLE HASSELBECK, FEATURING JAXON SMITH-NJIGBA
Jaxon Smith-Njigba was selected by the Seattle Seahawks in the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft. He was named to the Pro Bowl in 2024 and 2025, and last year led the NFL in receiving yards and was named the NFL Offensive Player of the Year. He had 10 receptions, 153 receiving yards and a touchdown in the NFC Championship Game victory over the Los Angeles Rams and ultimately led the Seahawks to a Super Bowl LX title.
Today on the podcast, JSN joins Annabelle Hasselbeck to talk about his incredible 2025 season, signing a new four-year extension in March to make him the highest-paid NFL receiver in history, trusting in God’s plan, growing in his faith in Jesus, and believing the best is still yet to come.
BREAKING: Seahawks, WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba agree to terms on 4-year, $168.6M extension with $120M guaranteed, making him the highest paid WR in the NFL. (via @RapSheet) pic.twitter.com/krdA4gMRVe
Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Liam Coen, Nov. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/David Becker)
Despite going 13-4 and winning the AFC South a season ago under first-year head coach Liam Coen, the Jacksonville Jaguars have largely flown under the radar in offseason talks about potential Super Bowl contenders. Many experts predict the Jaguars to take a significant step back in 2026-27.
But as Coen enters his second year at the helm, with quarterback Trevor Lawrence returning, he believes his team can not only replicate last season’s success but continue to improve on it. If they do, it will mark the Jaguars’ first back-to-back postseason appearances this century.
“In everything that we do, we are training to say, ‘Anyone, any time, any way,'” Coen said as he addressed his team during the first week of training camp. “We built the standard and the foundation and the way that we want to play the game.”
At 40 years old, Coen is one of the younger head coaches in the NFL, and he’s also a member of the famed Sean McVay coaching tree; Coen learned under the Los Angeles Rams head coach as a position coach for three years (2018-20) and the offensive coordinator for another (2022). In 2024, Coen was the offensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and helped fuel the career renaissance of QB Baker Mayfield. In his first year in Jacksonville last season, he became the NFL’s first rookie head coach to win 13 or more games after his team won four or fewer games the prior season.
During Coen’s coaching journey, he’s established himself as an offensive mastermind and a skilled quarterback developer. He’s also made it known during his time in the spotlight that he’s a follower of Christ.
Coen was a guest on the “Built 4 More” podcast last week with pastor Joby Martin and Denny Thompson, where the coach discussed one of the most difficult experiences of his life and how Christ formed his faith through the trial.
Coen grew up as an only child in Rhode Island, where he was a football fanatic and very close with his mother, Beth. But when Liam was in high school, Beth felt something was off. After numerous appointments, the doctors concluded that she’d contracted Lyme disease. The former marathon runner now struggled to get out of bed each morning. The physical pain was excruciating, and there was little improvement. But the emotional toll grew unbearable.
Four years later, in 2006, Coen was chasing his gridiron dream in college at UMass. He returned home during a school break, and his dad was in the hospital with congestive heart failure. While Coen was at the hospital with him, his mother took her own life.
Coen needed to care for his dad in the immediate aftermath, and then he rushed to return to school and join his team. Suddenly, he was back on a college campus, going to classes and practices like nothing had changed.
“I didn’t probably deal with it right, or well, in that short term,” Coen admitted on the podcast.
But this was different than anything he’d experienced before. The pain of losing his mother in the way he did wasn’t going away.
“Come to find out, 10 years down the road, it creeps up on you when you don’t deal with it,” he said on the podcast. “You don’t process it, you don’t forgive, you don’t have grace. It started to eat at me, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what was really happening. I wasn’t feeling right.”
He found people to talk through his traumatic past, and amidst those sessions, Jesus became a frequent topic of conversation. Coen had attended a private Catholic high school and learned many of the rituals, but he had never truly discovered the essence of Christianity.
“I actually began to have a relationship with Jesus Christ,” he said of that time. “And oh my gosh, I started to have more grace, and I started to forgive, and I started to have a little bit more understanding of what she went through and why.”
He had been given new life in Christ.
That new life was only strengthened during his time as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Kentucky (2021, 2023) through the ministry of the school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) chapter. There, Coen was introduced to a man who handed him a small but extremely helpful packet about the Bible.
“I didn’t know what Jesus did,” Coen said on the podcast. “I didn’t know what He sacrificed. I didn’t know why He was truly put on this earth.”
Coen’s story of unthinkable pain followed by the power of healing found in Christ is a testimony of God’s goodness that he’s shared with his team and those close to him.
“Once I understood [true faith] and learned and was educated, I felt a different vibe,” he concluded. “I felt a different way of wanting to represent God — Jesus Christ, myself, my family, the way that I carry myself, the grace or honesty that you live life with.
“Perfect? Absolutely not. No question. But I know that it helped me when I actually built a relationship with a Power greater than myself in Jesus Christ.”
find someone who looks at you the way Liam Coen looks at Parker Washington
Now, in the hyper-competitive world of NFL football, with a nation’s eyes soon falling again on his sport, Coen has an opportunity to point others to Christ — the Fountain of true life — both in the 2026-27 season and beyond. Jacksonville’s first preseason game is Aug. 15 in New Orleans.
THIS IS THE SPORTS SPECTRUM PODCAST HOSTED BY JASON ROMANO, FEATURING MIKE MACDONALD
Mike Macdonald was named the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks in 2024 and immediately made a big impact, leading the Seahawks to a Super Bowl championship in 2025-26. Prior to becoming the Seahawks head coach, he was a longtime assistant coach with the Baltimore Ravens, Georgia Bulldogs and Michigan Wolverines.
Today on the podcast, Mike Macdonald shares about winning the Super Bowl, developing a culture in Seattle, being outspoken about his faith, and what it means to “run it forward” in 2026.
