JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Tom Coughlin didn’t have an office. He didn’t even have a desk or a chair.
Things have changed quite a bit since Coughlin first walked through the door of a trailer in the makeshift offices of the Jaguars to now.
Recommended Videos
On Sunday, Coughlin will take his place in the Pride of the Jaguars as the seventh member, a ring reserved for the best of the best of the franchise. For a coach who had to share a desk with owner Wayne Weaver when he was hired in 1994, Coughlin, 78, will now have his name permanently etched into the facade at EverBank Stadium.
It has taken longer than expected to get Coughlin here, including a bitter end to his second stint in town as an executive in 2019. But no coach is more deserving of induction into the Pride than Coughlin is. While the bulk of Coughlin’s success came as head coach of the New York Giants, there is no way to diminish what he did to shape the Jacksonville franchise.
“I mean, you can’t tell the story of the Jacksonville Jaguars without Tom Coughlin. He was the architect from the beginning that really was responsible for almost everything that happened here,” said Jaguars Pro Football Hall of Famer selection Tony Boselli. “Obviously Wayne and Doris Weaver, great owners and a huge part of it. But they hired Tom and they gave all control to Tom, and Tom ran this place from front to back, A to Z.”
Coughlin arrived in Jacksonville more than a year before the franchise played its first game, drafted Jacksonville’s lone Pro Football Hall of Famer with his first selection and built it into an AFC championship team by his second season.
Coughlin was and remains a true old-school, hard-nosed throwback, both a benefit and a detriment. His legacy with the Jaguars is a bit slippery, the result of being unceremoniously fired from his executive role by owner Shad Khan in 2019 because of a scathing rebuke of his style from the NFL Players Association. But time has smoothed over the wounds and Coughlin is ready to see his name be placed among the legends at EverBank Stadium.
It could — and should — be the first step in what former players say should be a career enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
“When you look up at that name, that name represents about 200 people in the first nine years of the franchise and the commitment and the way we shared winning when we won here, everybody won,” Coughlin said.
Pride of the Jaguars members
| Name | Year inducted |
|---|---|
| Tony Boselli | 2006 |
| Delores and Wayne Weaver | 2012 |
| Fred Taylor | 2012 |
| Mark Brunell | 2013 |
| Jimmy Smith | 2016 |
Who are the Jaguars?
Coughlin was fresh off a 9-3 season with Boston College and a Carquest Bowl win over Virginia when he got the phone call from then-Jaguars team president David Seldin. Coughlin said he didn’t know much of anything about the Jaguars then.
He wasn’t thinking about any job other than with Boston College. BC’s seismic upset of No. 1 Notre Dame in 1993 was the biggest win for the Eagles since Doug Flutie’s Hail Mary pass to Gerald Phelan to stun Miami 47-45 in 1984. When Seldin asked about Coughlin’s interest in the job, he said that he didn’t have any.
“I said, how many people have you got [as candidates]? He said, ‘Well, we have five right now.’ And I said, ‘I’m not interested.’ And he said, ‘You’re not interested?’ I said, ‘No, you got five [candidates], that’s plenty.’ I’d just won a bowl game, just came back from Boston College, so I said, ‘No, I’m fine. I’m not interested,’” Coughlin said.
Coughlin said Seldin called back two weeks later and said the candidate list had been cut down to two, and if Coughlin would be interested then. That piqued Coughlin’s interest, and led to a meeting between Coughlin, Seldin and Weaver. He expected that meeting to be an hour. It lasted three.
‘What in the hell have I gotten myself into?’
On Feb. 21, 1994, the expansion Jaguars made the hiring official. Coughlin was the team’s first head coach and de facto general manager, titles that are often separated now. When Coughlin arrived in Jacksonville for his first official day on the job, he was jarred by just how much of a build this was going to be.
The old Gator Bowl was already mostly knocked down to the basics for a rebuild. The Jaguars franchise was operating out of one trailer and shared space within that trailer.
“There’s a gal there at the desk and she looks at me and she goes, ‘Well, there’s a chair and a table over there where Mr. Weaver sits. If you want to sit over there while he’s not here, you can use that space,’” Coughlin said. “I’m thinking, ‘They don’t even have an office for me?’ I’m going to sit in a chair where Mr. Weaver sits until he comes. And when he comes, where am I going to go then? So, I thought to myself, ‘What in the hell have I gotten myself into?’”
Coughlin remembers those early days of the franchise as rough. The team signed its first 10 free agents in mid-December 1994. They loaded up in a bus and practiced at Bishop Kenny, something Coughlin said shows just how rudimentary things were back then. But when the calendar flipped to 1995, Coughlin and his coaching staff turned full attention on filling out the roster and the NFL draft.
The expansion Carolina Panthers had won a coin flip for the first pick so Jacksonville would select No. 2.
Offensive tackle Boselli was a player who Coughlin zeroed in on early in the scouting process. Boselli, whom Jacksonville eventually drafted, said that his first meeting with Coughlin was intense and as detailed as any he’s ever had.
“It was basically a two-hour dinner with him, grilling not only me but my future wife about everything, like hobbies, likes, beliefs. I mean, he wanted to know everything about me, growing up, family, her family,” Boselli said. “I was like, ‘Golly, I’m not even sure you’re allowed to ask some of these questions.’ But that was my first insight into how thorough Tom was. And he was not going to leave any stone unturned.”
Boselli said that Coughlin told him during their next meeting that the Jaguars were going to pick him at No. 2. Before the draft, Coughlin made a deal to acquire another future member of the Pride. Coughlin dealt third- and fifth-round picks to Green Bay for quarterback Mark Brunell, who was stuck behind Brett Favre. Coughlin also signed receiver Jimmy Smith after a tryout in early 1995.
Special time in Jacksonville
Those first few years of football in Jacksonville were special, with perhaps the best season of Jaguars play coming in 1996. The Jaguars finished 9-7 in Year 2, sneaking into the playoffs as a wild-card team and then beating both Buffalo and Denver on the road in the postseason. The 30-27 win over the Broncos and John Elway remains one of the most unforgettable moments in Jacksonville sports history.
“When we came back that night, to say something about the fans, we flew over the stadium, 35,000 people are sitting in the stands waiting for us to get back,” Coughlin said. “Yeah, that’s exciting. I always believed the fans of the Jaguars, they’re tough, they’re resilient, they believe in it. They have the ability to come back when things aren’t going the way they want ‘em to go. But it was fun, believe me.”
The Jaguars went back to the NFL playoffs in 1997 and ‘98 and then turned in what remains the best season in franchise history in 1999. They went 14-2 in the regular season and reached the second AFC championship game.
Former Jaguars running back Fred Taylor, who Coughlin drafted at No. 9 in 1998, has stories about Coughlin’s tough love just like Boselli. Taylor said that he remembers how demanding Coughlin was when he first met him at Florida’s Pro Day in 1998. But through the hard coaching, strict lessons and many tough days, Taylor said he appreciates Coughlin now more than ever.
“I never really had anyone in my life that went to bat for me. And Coach Coughlin, he was one of those people. And again, I didn’t always like it, and I thought he was crazy, but he was consistent and he was consistently crazy, too,” Taylor said. “But it helped mold me and teach me values. It helped teach me tough love, integrity, discipline, all those different things. What he stood for, a lot of that rubbed off on me and it made me better for everything in life.”
Good, bad with Jaguars
By 2002, things had turned south for Jacksonville. Poor drafting, injuries and salary cap issues led to a downturn and Weaver fired Coughlin after a 6-10 finish in 2002. He had a remarkable second act as an NFL head coach with the Giants, winning two Super Bowls with quarterback Eli Manning. He retired in 2015. Coughlin has a 170-150 career record.
Coughlin returned to Jacksonville in 2017 as the team’s executive vice president of football operations. His first season was remarkable, with the Jaguars winning the AFC South and reaching the third AFC championship game in franchise history. But things spiraled from there. His old-school style wasn’t meant for today’s NFL players.
The NFL Players Association released a scathing rebuke of the Jaguars and owner Khan was left with no choice but to move on from Coughlin. That ending is perhaps why it’s taken a little bit longer for the Pride invite to happen. The old wounds have healed. Coughlin said he’s grateful for the recognition, but said that so many people’s names who helped him succeed should be up there with his.
That includes his “quarterback,” Coughlin’s wife, Judy, who died in 2022.
Outside of the game
Coughlin’s legacy is largely football, but it extends outside of that, too. Perhaps even greater than anything football related is Coughlin’s Jay Fund. He started the foundation in 1996, based on a former BC football player, Jay Gillis, who was diagnosed with leukemia during Coughlin’s time as Eagles head coach. Coughlin was so impacted by the challenges Gillis and his family went through after his diagnosis that he and his wife, Judy, decided to do something about it.
They started the Jay Fund in 1996 as their way to help families whose children are battling cancer. The foundation has provided $28 million in support to more than 5,800 families in Northeast Florida and the New York/New Jersey areas since its inception. Coughlin’s daughter, Keli, is the CEO of the Jay Fund. The mission is the same now as it was back then. The Jay Fund is unquestionably Coughlin’s legacy, something that will outlive even its president.
Didn’t get it then but they do now
Taylor said that the biggest fine of his NFL career was $15,000 and it was Coughlin who was the one who fined him. At the time, getting slapped with that big of a fine from his own coach wasn’t something that Taylor thought fondly of. Nearly 20 years later, the lessons that came from something like that fine or a chewing out in practice, make total sense to Taylor. Taylor said he truly first recognized that when he was released by the Jaguars and saw Coughlin during a preseason game: “I said, thank you. I appreciate you. I get it. Thank you for everything that you’ve done.”
“But when you’re in it, you can’t see it. And then as your journey continues, there are certain moments that allow you to look back and say, ‘Man, without this happening, I wouldn’t understand this particular [thing], I wouldn’t understand the moment.’”
Boselli said that as tough as Coughlin was, there were lessons baked into his tenacity. The brutal heat of training camp practice was meant to toughen up players. Setting the watch and clocks to Coughlin time (always five minutes early) was about respect and never being late. The expectation and demand to be great was always there because that’s what Coughlin knew his players were capable of.
“You appreciate, especially when you look back and the impact that he made and what I learned, the principles I learned, not just in the game of football, but how to be a leader and what it takes to get things done and how to get hard things done,” Boselli said. “And it’s influenced me as a father and as a husband and as leading the company I run now. All those things that, a lot of those things obviously learned from my dad, but Tom’s a big part of that too. I learned a lot of good principles and I’m thankful for it.”