Jacksonville Jaguars Coach Tom Coughlin is the man in the middle of a lot lately as the local National Football League team, coming off a disappointing season and in the midst of numerous roster changes and salary cap problems, prepares to move forward to rebuild both the team and its image. Coughlin arrived here in February 1994 to build a team that twice came within one game of the Super Bowl. He has been the team’s only coach and also acts as the general manager. He sat down this week with Jeff Brooks and Fred Seely of the Daily Record to talk about the past, present and the future.
Question: You’ve been to the top. Now, the team is almost back to where you started. How did it affect you?
Answer: It was devastating for me.
Q: In public, it doesn’t show that badly.
A: You have to work at that as hard as you can. You have a bunch of people who spend their entire day trying to figure out what vibes you are sending. You have a whole building full of people who are looking for somebody to give them direction, leadership and some type of positive approach and a definite answer. Sometimes the answers aren’t there. You have a staff of coaches and you have a bunch of football players who feed off of the direction that you hopefully mold them and shape them in. So that became my responsibility as much as anything else — to keep our people pointed in the right direction, playing hard and playing as hard as we can.
Q: What bothered you most about last season?
A: The one thing that does bother me to this day is that we were getting it to the fourth quarter and gave ourselves a chance to win. That sounds good, but it is only reinforced when you win those things. We lost six games by 19 points, which is very frustrating. But for me personally, my own makeup, my own self-esteem, it’s a devastating experience. But on the other hand, I have to believe in the ability, our ability to win. You know that old statement: ‘Faith is what you have when you really don’t have any proof?’ Well, that’s where I am.
Q: How did you deal with the devastation?
A: I just fought through it. I tried to face the media every day as best I could and answer the questions as best I could.
Q: Looking back from the first days of the franchise, what has the experience been like?
A: The first five years were great. They were wonderful. Everything was upbeat, straight ahead and straight forward. I think the thing that happened — I’m going to jump right to the crux of it — is that we won 15 games in 1999 but we did not win the world championship. The next year I thought we had put together basically the same team to go ahead and continue with the 15 wins and go after what had been lacking to win the world championship. In training camp we lost [offensive lineman Leon] Searcy and [defensive back Carnell] Lake. We had five tackles down at one time and we never really got on track with that team. Then, we lost [running back Fred] Taylor in preseason. We never got on track until about the mid-point of the season. We won some games in a row but we didn’t finish the way we wanted to with our loss to Cincinnati and then the Giants beat us up there. That 7-9 season really hurt us because it was an opportunity for us to win under the present concept we had employed with the salary cap, which was basically restructuring and keeping a nucleus of people together as long as we could. Then beyond the 2000 season it became obvious that we still restructured but we tapered down. The media had it that we would not be able to field a team in 2001. I can remember asking a sports columnist if we do, are you going to write the retraction? I never saw the retraction. So we did get a team out there but our nucleus came down. We were [overloaded with a few] outstanding football players that had all our money, to be honest with you. In 2001, we had basically 14 guys who were the nucleus of our team. I felt that if we could keep those 14 together, we could be all right around them. Obviously, we weren’t able to keep those guys together through injuries and because of the fact that we also had no money to be able to replenish our players.
Q: What was the solution?
A: We immediately become involved only with those fill-in players that could substitute when they had no accrued seasons and they would play for [the minimum salary of] $209,000. So that’s all you saw from us. Any time we had to maneuver with a player it was either a “209” for a “209” or a player who was put on IR replaced by a “209.” We were able to stay with a 53-man roster through the year because of that, but the quality of our play, obviously, had diminished. It became, again, a part of the strategy that we had to begin to develop before the 2001 season that the restructuring idea and allowing that the nucleus dwindled and that all you do is restructure to get under the cap was not the way that we could continue to go. And that’s the result of which you’ve seen this winter in terms of how we’ve tried to get this thing under control.
Q: If you could go back to that first year, would you change anything you’ve done?
A: Nothing. Exactly as it was. Those were great times. Those were great times. The one thing that I’ve said consistently about our 1995 team is they were one tough group of guys. They lost seven straight games and still won the 16th game. They were a tough, hard-nosed bunch of people. And we developed them. That training camp wasn’t for the faint of heart. That was tough. It was 9 on 7 everyday. It was full pads every day. There were no breaks for the players, there were no breaks for anybody. And if you remember correctly, when we got up there it became 104 [degrees] in Wisconsin. It was no picnic. But they were tough guys and those who emerged afterwards and went on to the next team, they were talking about doing the right things. They were football players and they were getting better and that’s all you can ask them to do. Would I change anything? I don’t think so.
Q: What was the effect of the rumors that you were a candidate for the head coaching job at Notre Dame?
A: I really do believe that the media stir over the Notre Dame thing was detrimental. I tried to handle that as best as I possibly could and I was forthright with the media under those circumstances. They didn’t want to believe it. The writers did not want to believe it. Television people didn’t want to believe it. But my position through all of that was that I have a job and it is a very good job and this is where I want to be. I’m not going to answer things based on rumor. That whole thing bothered our football team a little bit too because we were not having a lot of success on the field. They are young people and they can get distracted. I certainly didn’t want to be the distraction and I wasn’t going to provide another reason for them to be distracted.
Q: Isn’t that part of the media game, though? You were at Boston College when this job came open — were there rumors up there that you had to deal with?
A: No, no, no, that didn’t happen. The thing that happened was we had a very successful season and had won a bowl game. We had just finished in the top 10 in recruiting in the country. I maybe had a dime conversation with Atlanta [about the Falcons’ coaching vacancy,] but that’s all it was. I was reloading for the offseason program for the direction we were going in. This opportunity came very fast and even when the contact was made, it came faster because there wasn’t a lot of time to even sit back and weigh these things out, which is the way these things are. When they happen fast, you have to make decisions fast, so there wasn’t any real undercurrent of speculation about it at that time. It came fast and when it did happen, it was almost time to tell people it wasn’t a rumor and I was seriously considering doing that.
Q: Does the local media have a misconception of you?
A: In 1995, when we went to training camp, I went to camp a week earlier than we were supposed to and we had almost 100 percent of our players there, and there was a perception that I was this hard-ass rule guy who was so rigid and inflexible that the players couldn’t understand where I was coming from. That perception remains to this day. And it is no more true . . . I mean, if you think that people don’t change and adjust and grow and learn from and develop, that’s just not right. No one stands still. You don’t ever stand still. You are either going to get better or you are going to get worse at what you do. I think that’s what happens with me — and I can be right up front about it — the first team was a very motley group of people. There were a lot of people from the expansion draft who were in the expansion draft because, in most cases, they were at the bottom of the roster. It wasn’t what you saw in this draft. The salary cap was not even an issue. You had college draft choices, you had veteran free agents. It was a very diverse mix of people, none of whom had proven anything to me yet. So as we advanced and moved forward, there emerged a group of people who were extremely trustworthy, who I could count on. Then, naturally, my relationship with those people changed. I gave them more responsibility. More ability to work with the younger players. I asked them to do more things and I listened to them and I took their counsel in many things. I just think it’s a natural evolution. So every time I see these statements about [me being] this rough, whatever and they refer back to 1995, it’s as if — Wait a minute! What happened to the years between 1995 and today?
Q: How can you avoid being so sensitive to the media?
A: I can ignore the media, but that’s not going to work and the National Football League is not going to let us do that. What I try to tell people is if you will deal with the facts and present them in a fair and honest way, and be balanced in your approach, then I can deal with it. I was attacked during the bye week for not being involved in the community, which I thought was just asinine. I’m not about to wear on my sleeve what I do in the community behind the scenes from a charitable standpoint. If it’s facts, I don’t have a problem with the facts. I understand the facts very well.
There were three or four things that followed [a recent press conference] that I felt were uncalled for and didn’t deal with what I was trying to present. There was a quote in there about me asking everyone to be loyal when the most loyal player of all, Tony Boselli, is put on the expansion draft list. If there is anybody in this world that thinks the decision to put Tony Boselli or any of our players into that expansion draft was done in a lighthearted, casual fashion without weeks of agonizing over it, they are wrong. They are wrong. I couldn’t feel stronger about Tony Boselli and any player I’ve ever been associated with. But that doesn’t hide the fact in terms of the predicament we’re in.
Q: Is there an plan now to reach out to the public?
A: Yes, oh, yes. There’s a need for us to try to explain to the public.
Q: Have the Jaguars been a little cold to the public in the last few years?
A: I hope not. For example, we have an outreach program and I am going to go along with the coaches to speak at some of the country clubs.
But the interesting thing that I want to tell you is, the job that I have, I am the head football coach. I have the responsibility of personnel. I was brought here to hire video, equipment, training, the personnel department and be responsible in the final run for all the players who are brought here and the football side of it.
As such, [those people] want to know when I’m available. This weekend, I go to Indianapolis. When I come back from Indianapolis, I go on the road for the month of March, evaluating players. Now the league meetings are in the middle of the month, and I’ll be gone literally from the time I get back from Indianapolis. When April swings around there’s three weeks in front of the draft. I go and lock myself in the personnel room along with my director of player personnel, the head of college scouting and we go one week with just the scouts and the personnel people and me on the college draft. We go the next week with the two [scouting] directors and the coaches for their input as they evaluated the players and rank them and grade them. Then the last week before the draft we have our mock drafts to pull things together. We digest information that we’ve gotten, we do some final studies and some final reading. The point I’m trying to make with you is, while it sounds good, from March until the end of the draft, I’m not available for the right reasons. For the right reasons.
Q: Isn’t the organization pushing to reach out to the public more?
A: Right. And it’s a communication thing as much as anything else. I know from my personal standpoint that I want to tell people what has transpired and why it has transpired. And then I want to show people how other teams have been in this situation and what has happened for them to fight their way out. And then I want to try, despite what’s being said by our local [media] gurus, to create the idea that it can happen and that there is hope and we must go forward here and we’ve got to believe.
Q: Is that lack of understanding because we’re a relatively new NFL city?
A: I don’t know if it’s a lack of understanding. It’s not easy. It’s kind of a complicated matter. If you believe everything you read you can be anywhere from one end of the spectrum to the other as far as the salary cap. I really haven’t seen the number correctly reported yet.
Q: How do you deal with the college mentality — lose one game and the season’s over?
A: For five years, I didn’t worry about any of that. We won our share of football games. And now, it’s a whole different league. We try to deal with our business. I know our fans have high expectations. Great. It’s terrific. But you have to be a little bit realistic too to see that this game today, because of the cap, has become cyclical. Baltimore, Tennessee, look what they’re doing.
Q: What would you do, besides fielding a winning team, to entice fans to the stadium?
A: I think it’s twofold. We need to play good, solid, entertaining football. We need to continue to bring great players here who the fans can associate with and be excited about. We need to win football games. And we need to have our people stand by us, as difficult as it is, in the good and bad, believing that it is going to get better. I don’t know what else I can tell you. That’s the bottom line.