by Glenn Tschimpke
Staff Writer
Somewhere beneath the rhetoric of statistics and anecdotes, Coach Tom Coughlin might have predicted a 2002 Super Bowl run for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
As the team’s head coach rattled off the woes-to-victory stories of the handful of recent Super Bowl victors at a Rotary Club luncheon Monday at the Radisson, he alluded that the Jaguars could follow a similar path.
“You’ve seen teams come out of nowhere for the last two years and win the world championship with just one run,” he said. “And even then, with the Patriots for example, it wasn’t even expected.”
Coughlin pointed to the New England Patriots improbable Super Bowl win after years of player attrition and mediocre win/loss records.
“The 2001 Patriots had just 10 players that existed on their roster just three years before,” he said. “Last year, the Patriots had 26 new players.”
He also noted the dramatic one-year turnaround of other teams who made the playoffs last year, including the Chicago Bears, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Francisco 49ers.
“So the evidence of change in the National Football League is prominent and change in our situation must be good,” he said.
A Super Bowl prophecy from the Jaguars head coach? Hardly. Most NFL coaches are reticent to predict their future fortunes. One game at a time, they say. When asked which game looks the toughest on next season’s schedule, Coughlin simply said, “The first one. All of them.”
Coughlin once again defended the Jaguars personnel strategy that landed the team in the salary cap cesspool. After building a team of skilled players that won 15 games and came within one half of the Super Bowl in 1999, the Jaguars decided to keep the team’s key players for a couple more runs at the big game. While hopes were high, the results were less than stellar. In 2000, the Jaguars went 7-9. In 2001, 6-10.
“Let me tell you without a doubt,” said Coughlin. “Most people realize today that if you believe you’ve got a shot at winning the world championship, you’re going to go for it. You’re going to take that shot knowing that perhaps down the road you’re going to have to suffer your lumps.”
The Jaguars’ lumps turned ugly at the end of the 2001 season, which found the team $21 million over the NFL’s salary cap.
“We soon came to find that mortgaging your future is not the best way to go about doing your business,” noted Coughlin.
Relief came in the form of the Houston Texans, who took Tony Boselli, Gary Walker and Seth Payne in the expansion draft, giving the Jaguars $16.9 million in cap relief. Coughlin said the Texans’ interest in the players was not a coincidence.
“Don’t be naive enough to realize that these arrangements aren’t done in advance,” he said. “There were many, many phone calls between him [Texans head coach Dom Capers] and myself trying to decide where it was that there was interest.”
Even though Coughlin wouldn’t predict his team’s success next year, he expressed optimism in the coming season.
“I’m willing to let the chips fall where they may with this group. I think this will be a good, exciting, energetic group for all of us to take pride in,” he said.