JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Six days before the season began, head coach Liam Coen said the Jacksonville Jaguars were going to need a lot out of defensive tackle Arik Armstead.
Nearly three months later, here's how Coen described what he's seen from Armstead, especially since the team's Week 8 bye: "Out of his mind."
Coen was talking about the way Armstead has been in practice, but that has been translated to the field on Sundays, where Armstead is having one of the best seasons of his 11-year career.
"Arik Armstead, going back since the bye, has practiced, on obviously the Thursdays when we go padded, out of his mind," Coen said. "Out of his mind. Every single rep he's in the backfield in practice every single time.
"To see him disrupting as much as he has, it is showing up in practice. That's where he's doing it every single day. It's not like he's a 13-year vet that's just kind of hanging out on the sidelines during practice and then going out in the games and doing it. He's doing it every single day in practice. And I've been really pleased with Eric and the kind of guy that he's been. He's been so consistent."
Armstead is tied with Jeffery Simmons and Calais Campbell for third-most sacks by an interior defensive linemen, per ESPN Research, which is his highest sack total since 2021 (6.0). That puts him on pace for just the second double-digit sack total of his career (he had 10 in 2019). He's also playing 69.4% of the defensive snaps.
It's a marked difference from his first season with the Jaguars, when he had two sacks, seven QB hits, and 29 tackles in 17 games in 2024. He started just once, the lowest number of starts in his career since his rookie season with San Francisco in 2015, while playing 48% of the defensive snaps.
What sparked the improvement? Moving back inside after spending 2024 as a rotational edge player.
The 6-foot-7, 290-pound Armstead did play both outside and inside during his nine seasons in San Francisco, but at this point in his career the 32-year-old is a better interior rusher than outside on the edge.
"I feel I've been very effective playing inside throughout my career and I have advantage rushing against guards in pass-rush situations," Armstead said. "So that has worked well."
Armstead made it clear after the 2024 season finished that he wanted to go back inside in 2025, saying that was where he wanted to play last season but played outside because that's what former defensive coordinator Ryan Nielsen wanted and needed. He said that would allow him to go back to being "an elite player that I know I can be."
New defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile was all in on the switch.
"He's doing a good job for us," Campanile said. "He made some big plays in the game the other day [against the Los Angeles Chargers], not just in the pass game, but in the run game, even some of the rushes that didn't exactly get home he affected the QB. And he's another guy just from a leadership perspective, what he's brought to some of the younger guys on the team."
Armstead has not only impacted the Jaguars on the field this season. The 2024 Walter Payton Man of the Year, which is the NFL's most prestigious recognition for community service, has also tapped into the Jacksonville community.
In 2019, Armstead partnered with his wife, Dr. Mindy Armstead, to create the Armstead Academic Project, a non-profit organization that promotes educational equity and provides resources to help students improve their physical and mental wellness.
When Armstead signed a three-year, $43.5 million contract with the Jaguars in March of 2024, the AAP began a presence in Jacksonville as well.
On Oct. 28, the AAP partnered with Jacksonville-based sports business Fanatics to put on a Stay Hungry Career Camp, featuring students from the Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida.
A group of 30-50 students attended the camp at Fanatics headquarters, where they interacted with employees in different departments, participated in a panel discussion with executives, and met with Arik and Mindy Armstead, who is also a psychiatrist specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry as the owner of Armstead Medical Group.
Cameron Marshall, an 18-year-old senior at nearby Riverside High School, had a notebook in hand and made sure he was up front because he didn't want to miss anything from the three Fanatics employees as they explained what their jobs entailed as buyers.
"Man, it's amazing," said Marshall. "I see a lot of opportunities here. I'm a firm believer you can't be what you can't see. And so when you get this type of exposure at a young age, man, it's amazing. It's a great experience."
That's exactly what Armstead wants to hear.
The goal of his AAP's Stay Hungry Career Camps is to give youths 16-20 an immersive career exploration experience to spark their curiosity about future careers. The recent one in Jacksonville was the fourth of 2025 and the AAP has conducted others in New York, San Francisco and Sacramento and has another in development for Los Angeles.
"That's what the career camps are all about: Meeting those youth where they're at a time where they're trying to figure out life and create exposure for them," Armstead said. "Open up and unlock pathways in their brain to see what's possible in their life. And it's a perfect time for these older kids. They're already going through that mental thought process of, 'I'm kind of becoming an adult. I got to figure out college and getting a job, and I'm kind of becoming of that age.'
"And so an experience like this, I feel that every kid should have no matter what neighborhood they're from, no matter how they look, they deserve an opportunity like this to try for us to help figure out how they can pique their interest in something that they want to do with their life."
WPMOY @arikarmstead is on a mission to connect and learn with the humanitarians making a difference in their communities.
— NFL (@NFL) October 28, 2025
He talked with fellow WPMOY @LarryFitzgerald about his work with the @BGCA_Clubs and why he dedicates his time to the next generation. ❤️ @Nationwide pic.twitter.com/Zc0JYv9E6o
Armstead decided to partner with Fanatics to put on a career camp in Jacksonville after participating in the Athlete Immersion Program put on by Fanatics and sports media and entertainment brand Boardroom during the summer.
A meeting with Grace Farraj, the executive director of the Fanatics Foundation, spurred the partnership.
"We struck up a conversation and as I was just learning more about him, and obviously the Armstead academic camp, I was just intrigued," Farraj said. "... We have a joint partner in Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida, and we have a commitment to giving back in the communities where we all live, work, and play. So it was just simply a natural fit."
The Armsteads' hope is that the camps can be replicated across the country by other athletes and companies to help give back to the local communities.
"We're trying to take the career camps on a national level," Mindy Armstead said. "... And really our goal is to challenge other athletes, other companies to, if they could, just do one career camp in their hometown where their team is.
"Think about all the kids that we could impact that could be having this career exploration really open their eyes to different possibilities."
Armstead and his wife made it a priority to get involved in the Jacksonville community as soon as they arrived, and they've done so with multiple events.
The latest was a Thanksgiving Blessings event at Lakeside Elementary School in Orange Park, a Jacksonville suburb, where he and teammates Josh Hines-Allen and Matt Dickerson distributed backpacks with food -- including Thanksgiving fixings -- and hand-written notes of encouragement.
"It was a point of emphasis that me and my wife talked about when we moved here was how we're going to have impact here, being in a new city and the opportunity of being around a whole host of new people, new organization, new city, new town, and new community to have impact in," Armstead said.
"... I measure my successes by how many people I bless and how many lives I can make better with my resources and platform and ability that God has blessed me with."