JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence will be just a few feet away from Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair during the coin toss before Sunday's game (1 p.m. ET, CBS) at EverBank Stadium. It's the first time Lawrence will be face-to-face with the player who hit him in the head while he was sliding and ended his season last December.
And Lawrence knows what he will say.
"[Nothing] outside of a normal what I would do if whoever was out there for the coin toss," he said.
It's the Texans' first time in Jacksonville since that hit that earned Al-Shaair a three-game suspension -- and it might be a big topic among fans and media, but not among Jaguars players and coaches.
"He hasn't brought it up or anything like that," Jaguars coach Liam Coen said of Lawrence. "So, I just think continuing to focus on him, on us, on our guys, on our execution, that's how you ultimately respond to anything."
Lawrence just wants to move on.
"I'm past that," he said. "I'm way past that at this point in my life, so it's not something I've thought about since then. It's football, it's a violent game, and obviously, it's unfortunate when things like that happen, and I don't want to get into all that again.
"We're past that. So, I'm not going to look in the rearview mirror."
Al-Shaair hit Lawrence in the head after Lawrence slid at the end of a 6-yard scramble late in the first half of the Dec. 1 game. Then, Jaguars tight end Evan Engram retaliated against Al-Shaair, and that sparked the first of two fights between the teams.
By the time the melee cleared, officials ejected Al-Shaair for an illegal hit to the quarterback's head and neck area and also assessed Engram a personal foul penalty.
Lawrence, who had missed the previous two games because of an injury to his non-throwing shoulder, suffered a concussion, and the team placed him on injured reserve three days after the hit.
Lawrence's teammates are following his lead entering Sunday.
"Ready to play football, folks," defensive end Josh Hines-Allen said. "We watch the tape from the last two weeks, prepare for that team and go out there and get it up.
"Obviously, you don't want to see your teammates get hit, so obviously the emotions were high. But at the end of the day, man, that was last year, Trevor's a tough guy and he bounced back, and I know he's excited to kind of go out there and play to the best of his ability and go from there."
Said tight end Brenton Strange: "I think we [are] worried about this year. Obviously, we want to go out there and beat the Texans, and we're going to go and do everything that we can to do that, but we're worried about this year and that's it."
Al-Shaair said earlier this week that he got some angry feedback from people over the past 10 months, and he doesn't know what kind of reception to expect from Jaguars fans Sunday. But he will not change the way he plays.
"I've gotten all type of crazy stuff since that day, and I still get it to this day from people, just in general," he told reporters. "I don't know if they're fans of football or they just hate me. Either way, that's between them and God. But I have no clue.
"I know I'm going to go out there and do what I've done my entire career, play as hard as I can [and] anybody who has the ball in their hand, that's who I'm trying to hit and just do my job."
That could involve hitting Lawrence again, whether on a blitz or a scramble. Will the Jaguars players be on edge about that?
"If [Al-Shaair's hit is] on our minds, then we're probably thinking about the wrong things right now," Coen said.