Ping-pong table in Jaguars locker room brings team together

The Jaguars have been emphasizing team chemistry during training camp and now in the season. Head coach Doug Pederson has made it a priority. A table with a net across its mid-section is used to bring the team together.

The majority of Jaguars players play table tennis in the locker room. It unifies the team and reduces work-day stress.

The Jaguars will have a player lounge with a pool table, shuffleboard and ping-pong table in their renovated locker room. The previous head coach Urban Meyer and Doug Marrone prohibited locker-room ping pong. Doug Pederson signed off on it because he liked the idea of the players having an outlet from always focusing on football. The Buffalo Bills have corn hole in the locker. Long snapper Ross Matiscik is sold on table tennis. He thinks it brings more life to the room than a putting mat.

C.J. Beathard is the team's best player at ping-pong. He has played over 200 games and never lost. His teammates are impressed by his skills. He grew up in a small town in Tennessee with a ping pong table. As a senior at Iowa, he took a class twice a week. The class involved playing pingpongs with his brothers. They died in 2019.

Beathard and Lawrence are competitive ping-pong players. Beathards and his teammates won a doubles match 21-14. The team is made up of Beithard, Matiscik, Riley Patterson, Cooke, third-team QB E.J. Perry and Trevor. Practice squad players Gerrit Prince and Seth Williams are also competitive. The Jaguars want to win on Sundays. They hope to organize a team-wide tournament before the season ends. It's more about camaraderie than anything else.