Perspectives - Tom Coughlin

In the premiere episode of Perspectives, Brian Sexton sits down with former head coach, and current EVP of Football Operations, Tom Coughlin.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
The following presentation of the Jaguars podcast Network is presented
by a bi star credit. A football coach would be
the first to tell you it's never about one guy
win or lose. The game rarely rests on a single

(00:23):
play or single player. But some men do stand above
their contemporaries. Some are just better at what they do,
Some work harder than those around them, and some leave
a more lasting impact, a mark that bears witness to
little legacy. This is Perspectives, a look back at the
first twenty five years of the Jacksonville Jaguars through the

(00:44):
eyes of the people who built the NFL's thirty franchise
from the ground up. This is Tom Coughlin. Coach Conflin
checks all of those boxes, which is exactly why he
was Blaine Weaver's choice to build the Jaguars. He is
excellent football coach. No one in football works with as
much energy for as many hours as he does, and

(01:04):
no one, no one cares as deeply as Tom about
doing things the right way. You know, whenever you're a
head coach, it's you. You know, it's your you, and
it's probably to a fault from me, all right, because
I've always felt, and I felt here longly so, but
I felt this was my teeth, this was my team

(01:27):
because I was given that responsibility by Mr Weaver. This
was new ground for a man who had coached at
the highest level of college and professional football for story
programs like the Giants, the Packers, and the Eagles. Putting
together an NFL franchise wasn't in Coughlin's background, but he
wasn't completely unprepared for the task. Nothing anywhere that I

(01:48):
could read about how people did things, because obviously those
are some of the oldest in the history of the
National Football League. So what really helped me, which is
an interesting thing. When I I graduated from college, okay,
at Syracuse University, I came back, uh in the master's program,

(02:11):
and I was what they called a graduate assistant coach,
and I helped coach a freshman team. At Syracuse there
were still freshman teams and varsity teams. I got my degree.
I took like fifteen credit hours in the spring, uh,
you know, which was heavy for graduate school. But I
wanted to be done. I interviewed for a job at

(02:32):
Rochester Institute of Technology. Rochester Institute of Technology had been
playing club football for like two years. Okay, they wanted
someone to come in. They wanted, uh someone to be
an assistant coach for a year, take over the second year,

(02:52):
and then build the program into a varsity program and
it would compete in what they called the Dependent Collegiate
Athletic Conference, which was quite frankly for Division three was
loaded Alfred Hobart St. Lawrence Ithaca College. You know, really
really good, good small college football teams. So when I

(03:17):
came in, I was a secondary coach. I coached the
defense on the secondary side of the ball for one year.
Then I became the head football coach. And little did
I know that what came with that was everything under
the sun. In other words, I was the person who
was supposed to collect the football team. I was supposed

(03:39):
to coach the football team. I was supposed to figure
out how to run a training camp and house the
football team. I was supposed to make a schedule. I
was to establish all the traveling needs, the hotels, the buses,
all of those things. I had to hire assistant coaches
who were not going to be full time, they were

(04:01):
going to be part time. I had to uh have
something to say about how the football field was lined,
how the grass was cut, how we wanted to do that.
A couple of years later, we moved over to a
prime field in the middle of campus, which was a
soccer field that we had become a head, an opportunity

(04:25):
then to play in front of bigger crowds and that
type of thing. Uh, And I would still I can
remember pounding post in the ground while the opponent drove
up in his bus, you know, and then what are
you doing out there doing? What's it looked like I'm doing.
I'm you know, I'm I'm getting ropes together so we
can have a game and not have everybody feel. What
I was trying to say, is uh the organizational part,

(04:46):
the putting things together part, how things came into play.
What was the strategy? Certainly, Brian, it was not as
sophisticated as would be the case when I came to
Jacksonville the first time in the spring of ninety four,
but it gave me an advantage because I had seen
it from Rochester to Boston College. Coughlin built his career

(05:10):
as an assistant coach, an offensive coordinator, and finally the
head coach. His signature win a stunning defeat a number
one Notre Dame in South Bend with the ball of
caught the attention of many in pro football, including an
upstar group in North Florida when David Selden and Wayne
Weaver came came calling. First of all, um, we met

(05:36):
when we met in the Providence, and I was I
lived in Walpole, mass which was maybe a half hour away.
So I drove down and I told Judy when I left,
I said, I'll be back in an hour. This isn't
there's nothing going to be to this. This is But
the interview got real serious, real fast, because my the

(05:57):
original phone call that was made to me, Uh, my
exact comment was, well, how many people do you have
involved in the job, and they Selden said five. I said,
I'm not interested. He said what do you mean. I said,
I'm not interested? There was five. You know, you got
plenty of people, and you don't. I mean, I just
finished a bowl game. We recruited in the top twenty
in the country, and you know, I was pretty happy

(06:19):
where I was. So he said, can I call you back?
And I said, call me back anytime, but I'm I'm
not gonna be interested. And he said, okay, So he
called me back two weeks later, and he said, would
you be interested if I told you there were two
and you were one of them. I said, well, that's
a little different story. So I thought, well, you know,
I mean I can listen to anybody and so on.

(06:39):
So I told Judy I'll be gone an hour. Meeting
started at eight. I was home at eleven. I supposedly
she turned to Brian's son, Brian, when I left and
she said, okay, Brian, get the map out, where's Jacksonville.
One of those deals, you know. So but when the
opportunity came to come here to Jacksonville, I was hired.

(07:01):
I think I was the seventh employee. I say, I am.
There might have been more, but I think that was
what it was. And I had a chance to listen
to what, um Mr Weaver I had in mind, and
I could set up my own calendar for when people
would come on board, and so I put a lot
of thought into that. Obviously I needed a personnel staff

(07:24):
right away, you know, so I put my mind to
work on that. So I literally had a I hired
everybody who touched football, so I you know, the trainers, um,
the as I said, UM, the personnel side of the ball.
UM certainly the coaching staff. UM. I hired them all okay,

(07:48):
and I had a timely way in which I would
go about that. And the very first season for us UM,
when we didn't have a team, we acted like we
had a team. We had game plans on Monday and Tuesday,
we traveled the country, went to a college game on Saturday,
went to a pro game on Sunday. I had a

(08:09):
personnel staff in place. We had a mock draft for
the expansion draft. We had a mock draft that went
along with the NFL draft in the spring. We did
it all. We did it all so that we had
gone through this prior to being under the gun and
having to make those decisions that counted. So we did

(08:30):
it all. I brought some of my coaches from Boston College,
not all. I put them right to work immediately UM
and they would do the same thing I did beyond
the road on weekends, etcetera, etcetera. And then hired the
rest of the staff immediately following the season. I was
really fortunate that a number of my friends who were

(08:51):
outstanding NFL coaches invited me to go to their camp,
so I would travel around the League in the summer,
just like I, you know, studying and watching how people
did things, keeping tracking things and so on and so forth.
That's where the Mark Burnell tip came in. And uh So,
all of these things, all everything that I always say this, Brian,

(09:11):
you know, you live you you you learn as if
you're gonna live forever, okay, and you live as if
you're gonna die tomorrow. So I've always thought, I don't
care how old you are. What you better be learning
all the time. You better be studying, You better be
understanding the changes. You better be adjusting, you better be
doing all those things. So everybody, everybody that I was

(09:32):
with along the way, all the coaches, Frank Maloney, who
gave me a chance to come back to the Division
one football, which was a great opportunity. Frank had been
with Boschen Beckler. I had everything bo had been with
Woody Hayes. I had all that. I had, all their
organizational stuff, everything, how they went about coaching, the toughness
that they brought to the job. Um so, and then

(09:53):
all the coaches that I had the pleasure and the
good fortune to be with, I learned from Okay, and
even back as far as when I was my own
head coach a Division three. So these things all were
in place when I came to Jacksonville in February of
ninety four to be the head coach of the expansion

(10:14):
Jacksonville Jaguars. Whenever that happens, you roll up your sleeves
and you know, you're a myth to your wife and
your kids. You're just once in a while around but
not often, you know. And uh, And that's why I
have so much respect and admiration for for Duty, because
she did it all. I mean, she raised the kids,
she did. But you're right, I mean, this thing became

(10:36):
something that you pour your heart and soul into it
because it had your name on it. And that's what
I've always believed, and that's what I still try to
tell players. That your name's on the back of that jersey,
that's your teeth. You better show ownership. More perspectives following
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(11:20):
forget that it's your money. All loan subject to approval,
insured by n c u A. Having bought into Division,
Coughlin had a lot to accomplish if the Jaguars were
going to be ready for opening day. No task was
more important or higher on the priority list. And finding
a quarterback. If you can remember and think about an

(11:40):
expansion team with the three quarterbacks we had who Steve Burlin,
Mark Burnell, and Rob Johnson, who was Selly's teammate at USC.
You know who is a big time arm and a
wacky kid, but oh he was a beauty. He used

(12:02):
to give Brunel Hut all kinds of heat and it
was great. It was funny sometimes, but uh well, I
went traveling around the league, and I knew a lot
about Mark because of his success in Washington and the
style of quarterback. So remember, in the back of my mind,
it's going to be an expansion offensive line, and I

(12:24):
just felt like if you can't move, if you can't
if you're not mobile, you're gonna have a tough time
in this situation, and so that was a big part
of it. I watched him practice, not long, just a
mike ho Homebram had many you know, even what he
called a tuidache. His afternoon practice was quick, short, boom boom,
boom boom, and uh. But I saw him live and

(12:48):
then I began to look and look and study and
so on and so forth. But the the the unique thing,
the unique thing was the way we acquired and that
was really interesting. I mean, it's litter really the night
before the first draft in the history of this franchise,
and I pick up on the fact that he was
headed for Philadelphia and the deal was well well down

(13:11):
the road. But something happened. There was a snag in
the deal. Okay. I picked up the phone and I
called Ron Wolf on the phone, and I said, Ron,
I understand what's going on. And I know you're well
down the road on this, but I want to tell
you up front, okay, that here's what I'd be willing

(13:32):
to do for Mark Brunel. Okay, And there is no
I have to wait till tomorrow. I'll do it right now,
right on the spot. You won't have there's not you'll
have these these picks in place for the for the draft.
There's not gonna be any dancing around. Okay, I would
like this quarterback and I would you know, I forget

(13:53):
what how it went. It went the third round and
then he said, well, can you give me something else
so I can really make this look like I'm not
a that's just sure. So I gave him a fifth,
a game, a third, and a game of five. But
I remember I had two in each round, so it
was a good thing. So um, we pulled that one off.
And it was like a couple of years later when

(14:14):
Brunell's running up down the field and Wolf was looking
at me like I've got two heads, and I like,
you sign up a gun. You so forgot, but you know,
it just was and then Steve started and he should have,
you know, and and uh, we missed that one up
in the corner of the end zone and that opener.
We might have won the first game in the history
of the franchise because it was a battle, but it

(14:37):
was but getting Mark and being able to have some
mobility and at that time and Jimmy come along, and
Mark and Jimmy hook hook up and keenan and you know,
that was that was some some fun. The next pressing
issue was the NFL Draft, which presented the Jaguars with
a chance to add a cornerstone type of player. It

(14:59):
caught wasn't about to swing in miss on that. I
can tell you this in all honesty. So I go
out to Mike Maser and I and there's five other
NFL line coaches there to work Tony out. The day
we were there, I still remember six seven three, uh,
but I've never seen anybody moving around like that. I mean,
the feet were unreal, you know. And he had a

(15:21):
buddy of his who was an offensive guard who actually
started and played, who worked out with him, and I
felt bad for the kid because Tony was bouncing around
like a premier, the premier athlete that he is, and
the other kid was just hanging on. You know. It
was one of those deals. But so we knew, we
knew what, you know. I remember Jim Haneffin saying to me, so,

(15:42):
what do you think, coach, what are you gonna do?
And I said I'd probably take a receiver. He looked
to me, yeah, You're gonna take a receiver. So, I mean,
all we did and Tony gave me a little grief
when he came into what's your way? So long for coach? Well,
you know, I'm sitting there saying I got this. You
know we're on the clock. But come on, somebody come
up and tell me you want this spot so I

(16:02):
can find out if you want my player, if you
don't want my player, and maybe I can pick up
another draft pick. But so read at the you know
what we knew all along what we're gonna do. So
when we took Tony and we finally got he and
Anty in here, he said, coach, what the heck were
you doing? What took so long? You know he's sitting
there aunty about because you know we called him and
find out how he he was healthy and all the

(16:24):
things you go through. So yeah, that was that was critical,
critical for us. Coughlin didn't account for good fortune as
he made his plan for the Jaguars, but he got
some early when personnel boss Ron Hill found former second
round draft choice Jimmy Smith sitting at home in Mississippi,
pondering life and wondering if there was another chance for

(16:45):
him in professional football. When Jimmy first came in here,
it wasn't all that impressive okay, and Pete kept saying,
give him a little time, give him a little time,
give him a little time. Okay, we're giving him a
little time. We're giving him a little time. And then
all of a sudden, you know, the story of the

(17:08):
way the thing went. He's he's leading our team in
completion and receptions. He didn't even start. He's he's he's
the third guy on the field. But with Jimmy's development, okay,
and the the communication between he and Mark okay, and
then the the arrogance with which played, you know, and

(17:32):
these things started to come together and people started to
feel better about who they were. And we would I mean,
we just praised press Jimmy, please please press them. You know,
we're playing teams like you know, Denver, who is up
there the whole ballgame, and I mean, it's like, Hallelujah,
here we go. The coach kept planning his work and

(17:54):
working his plan through training camp and Stevens Point Wisconsin
a rigorous five game exhibition season, and right up to
the start of the inaugural season. Patience was required, but
Conflin is famously impatient, and it figured to be a
tough ride. It's keeping your nose to the grindstone and
trying to judge improvement rather than wins, you know what

(18:16):
I mean, personnel improvement going in the right direction. I
mean I was hard on him. I was very hard
on him. And we were a unified team. And I
say it, it's it sounds funny. It may not be,
but they were. They were all unified because they hated me,
but they played and even that first team might have
been one of the toughest teams that I've ever been around.

(18:38):
They were tough outfit. Now and you know, we played
people really tough and hard, and you know, so on
and so forth. Although we only won four in that
first year. But um, it was the constant, constant ability
to you know, keep your thumb on where you're going,

(18:59):
you know, keep your eye on your on your team,
keep your coaches pushing, pushing, pushing, don't be overcome with
the the negativity, you know, don't don't let it get
to you. Fight it off, you know, continue to teach
and continue to to build more than just the football
part of it. Talk about being good people, good human beings.

(19:19):
You know, how things should be done. Uh, you know
the type of character that has to be in place
in order for you to win. The type of work
ethic outwork people you know continuously sell that and that's
basically what what it was. And you know, even in
year two, you know when when we we are better,
But how much better are we? We're still collecting players.

(19:43):
You know, We've still got some things going on that
that need to be fixed. But we're making We're getting that.
The Wolves were beginning to howl the door. In November
of more than halfway through the second season, the Jaguars
were modest four and seven and seemed far far behind
expansion rival Carolina. Dave Thomas suffered a gruesome leg injury

(20:05):
in Cincinnati, a five interception game from Mark Brunette in St.
Louis doomed them to a loss, and the decision to
part ways with Andre Risen after a shaky game in
Pittsburgh left the Jaguars at the very edge of a
steep cliff. The guy that most teams don't recover from it.
But something turned in the most important month of an
NFL season, and it turned at the most critical time

(20:27):
for the head coach. I think it was the long road,
the tough road, the tough season, and then being nine
and seven and getting in you know, all of a sudden,
everybody's healthy, all of a sudden, everybody's excited, all of
a sudden everybody. And then the opportunity thing, it's sitting
right in front of us. It's it's the chance of
a lifetime. And uh, you know, it probably is where

(20:50):
that road warrior thing started, because we were tough on
the road. I mean we didn't I mean we could
go into the most difficult of environments and and play
tough and uh and we did, and and it was
you know, it was yeah, it was the little subtle things,
but it was also there come from behind and things
of that nature, you know, And and and the confidence

(21:13):
that was starting to be built thinking that we we
could score, you know, we could do some things. And
we were, you know, we had pretty good leadership on
both sides of the ball, to be honest with the Jaguars.
Dramatic run to nine and seven, followed by improbable playoff
winds in Buffalo and in Denver, ignited the collective imagination
of North Florida and set winning as the expectation in Jacksonville.

(21:35):
So we beat Buffalo in the playoffs in and we're
headed for Denver, and this is John Elway. All right,
they've they are Super Bowl champions. Okay, they have a
heck of a football team, a great team. Mike Shanahan's
the head coach. We go out there, nobody gives us
a chance to win. Okay, anytime I've ever won anything,

(21:56):
nobody gave us a chance to win. Okay. We go
out there and uh, it's one of those games. And
I remember, you know, ball up in the end zone,
Burnell making it gazelle like runs, people flying around, and
you know, defense banging away and just you know, back
and forth enough to keep us where we are in

(22:16):
the game. And we're ahead at the end of the game,
and uh, it's about to be Uh, they don't have
any time outs. And I tell Dick Geron, who was
a defensive coordinator. I said, Dick, just make sure that
when they do score, it's under two minutes. Just they're
gonna score. They're gonna score. We're up with ten, they're

(22:38):
gonna score. But when they do, make sure it's under
two minutes because they don't have any time outs. Sure enough,
he goes down bang bing bing bing bing. Any scores
it's under two. They line up with the onside kick,
and quite frankly, you can tell they've they've been winning
by so much they don't they don't even know how
to line up for the onside kick, you know, don't they.

(23:00):
They bonded the ball back to La Maston was our
fullback who was in the middle of the of the
hands team, and La recovers the ball really uncontested. It's
not much of a kick and just and everybody's going
the league is incomplete shock, okay, because if we don't

(23:22):
beat him, then they're gonna win three in a row, okay.
And it's just exactly what it was. And and and
when we win that game, there's no way you could
not smile. The locker room was fabulous, you know, Wayne
was in there, and it was players were just pay
players were beside themselves because of what you know, fellas

(23:47):
you sacrifice your work, you're ever loving off, you pay
a great price. You can't quite see the end of
the road, but you know, if you're doing it the
right way, it's gonna happen. Things are gonna happen good
for you. You know. Sometimes it takes longer than others,
but it's gonna happen. And there there they go out
against the great team in the National Football League at
the time, with a great running back and the greatest quarterback,

(24:09):
all that, all this stuff, defense and all all of
all of these things when players are going crazy. We're
getting the plane. We come back and we're you know,
getting towards and wait, wait a minute, the airport's over there.
What's he doing? He starts to bank the plane and
then they announced that. You look down and there's thirty

(24:31):
six thousand people in the state waiting for us at
one o'clock in the morning to get back from the airport.
It's it's unreal, as u there was an unbelievable feeling
to know that, man, man, we got the whole town
is behind this team, and we're having fun doing it.
You know, we're having a lot of fun doing Mark

(24:54):
and Tony, Jimmy and keenan party in brackets. The foundations
were in place in the spring of night. Then a
trade with Buffalo and an incredible Pro day performance in
Florida brought the missing element to a championship team. First
of all, um Fred was a product of the development
of Rob Johnson. In the trade. Okay, we wouldn't have

(25:16):
been up there if it wasn't for that. But that's
the critical thing about being able to keep those young
quarterbacks around, because you remember what Rob did. We go
up to Baltimore and he plays an incredible game. On
one leg, he gets the high ankle sprain. I got it,
you know. I pulled him out. He comes over the sideline.

(25:37):
He can't go back in. He can't. He's in my ear. Coach,
let me go, I can go. I can do it.
I can do it. By god, he did do it.
He did do it. But that, you know, the whole
world looked at that and said, my goodness. You know.
So Fred became that spot in the draft, Buffalo spot.

(25:58):
So it's a dynamic that we quite frankly don't have.
So I'm looking to see now Fred's career at Florida.
It's at the end of the of his career that
they finally play him and use him. And he has
some incredible games, but there's not a lot of them.
So I go over to work We go over to

(26:18):
work him out, and I love their stadium. It might
be the fastest track in the history of tracks. Okay,
everybody wants to run a forty on that grass. I
couldn't do it, so we had to for whatever reason,
something was going on, and we conducted the workouts down
on their practice field, which is just like any practice field,

(26:38):
to be honest. He's he's two pounds six ft whatever.
You know. He runs four four on my clock. Some
had him under four four. You know. It's like when
I talked to him about the I call it an
eighty nine yard. He calls it a ninety you know.

(26:59):
So but he comes over. He's a young kid, he's
got a long way to go, and he uh, you know.
First of all, he on the day that the rookies
come in and we we warn them all. I mean,
this is gonna be a conditioning test, and it's a
tough test. He doesn't do quite well. Yeah, he doesn't

(27:23):
do as well as he should. He's the number one
draft choice, but yet he's not the top conditioned athlete.
So that's how he starts on. He's he's embarrassed. He
feels bad about it, but it's a done deal, you know.
So we get to camp and we're gonna work against
New Orleans. The first drill is nine on seven. The

(27:47):
the bodies are flying, you know, it's it's it's haslet
you know, who's got them all gunned up. And we're
so Fred and so this is I'm jump away. But
I go to the Combine a couple of years ago
and Fred's brought in by the league to speak to
the rookies, you know, to speak to them. And I

(28:09):
walk in and I see crowd of people around this
guy and they're interviewing him. But I see it's Fred.
So I go over and I see Fred. He comes over.
He gives me a hug. Remember he finished he was
in New England for the end of his career. So
we stood there and talked for a minute. He kind
of hugs me and he says, Coach, I get it.
I get it now. He said, I was with you

(28:30):
and then I was with New England and I get it.
I get it now. So I said great. He so eloquent,
so smart. You know, I had it all together. So
we walked around the corner, were by the elevators, and
he goes, Coach, you know you were trying to kill
me And I said, no, now, I wasn't trying to
kill you, but I was trying to get you ready
for what what was coming real quick. And we laughed

(28:51):
and stuff, and he goes, oh, he's a coach. I
gotta run because I had my next appointment. Elevator opens,
He steps into the elevator. The elevator doors are starting
to close. He said, coach, I love you, but you
were trying to kill him. The door shuts like that.
But uh, I mean we've never I mean, you can remember,
remember Tampa. He goes seventy with a draw out here

(29:14):
with Miami. The things that he did, you know, I mean,
if he doesn't get hurt, we're gonna we're gonna have
what we keep saying we are. We're a balanced team.
You know, We're gonna be able to do this. We're
gonna do that because when he gets out there, he's gone.
I mean, there's nobody gonna catch him. And uh and
but I think the proudest part of it is the

(29:35):
way that he developed as a man, you know, the
way that he kind of put it all together, and
the and the and the the person that he is today.
The rookie from Florida exploded all over the National Football
League and in his second season, the Jaguards went from
a contender to the favorite. Fourteen wins in the regular season,

(29:55):
and a historic sixty two to seven win over Miami
in the divisional round set up the off C Championship
game against the Titans, the only team to beat the
Jaguars in I'm telling you, I've been Super Bowls. I've been,
but that stadium was electric that day. I mean an electric.
They were going crazy. Pregame was as incredible as I've

(30:19):
ever been around home field. I mean you could feel,
you felt it. You know, it was the real deal.
You know, we we jump out with a nice, nice lead.
They come back. You know, we have the fumble punt,
they kicked the field goal. But at halftime, our guys
are rattled. What the heck is wrong with you guys?
You know we're up fourteen to ten. Settled down, settled down, Well,

(30:43):
there was nothing to the second half. We don't do
a thing that they but we should have been the
team in Atlanta that game. It hovered over the franchise
like a dark cloud, and the injuries and salary cap
issues would begin to hover as well. What looked like
a dynasty now looked ready to dissipate, and in two
thousand three, after three consecutive losing seasons, Tom Coughlin was

(31:07):
asked to leave. It was tough. It was, it was
It was really really difficult, really difficult. And you know,
I mean this is coach talk, but even in the
last year, we lost five games by twelve points, I think,

(31:28):
and stupid losses. The Cleveland loss was ridiculous, I mean ridiculous. Uh.
And the ball was dropped and they still wouldn't they
still wouldn't change the call, you know. But it was
hard to believe me. It was hard. It was, you
know what. And it was really hard because when when

(31:48):
you're told that your services are no no longer wanted,
I mean, it's a crushing blow to who you are,
you know. And I can remember my car had been
moved around to the dock. I wasn't gonna talk to anybody.
I wasn't gonna do that. So then I went home
and I had to tell my kids, you know. And uh,

(32:13):
I'm sitting on this ernie and read it came over,
you know, and I was sitting on the stairs steps,
you know, they go up to the second floor. I
just sat there and we had a table right there.
But I'm sitting on that and they're trying to make
it feel better, and it's it doesn't work. You know,
it's not gonna work. You don't want to see anybody,
you don't want to talk to anybody, you want to

(32:34):
go out here, you know. So but the thing that happened,
which was incredible for me, was so I I did,
you know, I mean, obviously there's things you have to do.
So I'm I did go out in the community, basically
out you know, out of the beach, you know, kind
of bed and around there. People were great, they were amazing.

(32:57):
Thank you, coach, Thank you coach. So my daughter came
up a little bit, you know, and uh, you know,
but it hurt. It definitely hurt. And I wasn't I
wasn't ashamed to admit it, you know. And uh so

(33:19):
you know, life marches on and there's things that that
happened in life that are are incredible. Really, Uh, the
way the Good Lord deals with you, you know, I
don't get such a big head, buddy, because you're in
for one or two. You know, you're you're gonna get yours.
But but the idea of you know, what you go through.

(33:45):
And then I stayed here, which is people don't do that,
they go somewhere. I stayed in that same house and uh,
Harbor Island because quite frankly, I wasn't going to move
and move again. I mean, I thought that was stupid it,
you know. And uh, I did have to go through
a season, but I got myself back to football, you know,

(34:07):
and Mike Perkins kept me stocked with tape, and I
had the upstairs room. We had a kind of a
game room upstairs, and I would take over and I
would I'd go to Mass Sunday morning and I say
to the family, I'll see you guys probably Monday night,
and up I would go for the one o'clock and

(34:27):
then the four thirty and then the night game, you know,
and I would watch everything, take notes and the Monday
night game would be the same way. And I would
get tape on Monday from from Mike, and I would
pick the games I wanted to look at and I
would be able to look at those games and study.
And in the meantime, you know, life goes on. And

(34:52):
I remember the first phone call from John Mara, and uh,
I remember um Kate was home the whole fall and
she was going back for second semester of of her
senior year at Boston College. So she and Dylan and
Chris snee flew in from the Bowl game, which was

(35:14):
in Hawaii, and we had I think it was Dylan's baptism.
Then in the car they went. They left January five.
I left either next day and I went to New
York and I never never come back. More perspectives following

(35:38):
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(36:00):
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n c u A. What happened with the Giants is
well chronicled. Coughlin took a different team to the Promised
Land and won two Super Bowl championships. He was working

(36:21):
in New York in the fall of tea and thinking
about his next steps in football when the owner of
the Jaguars called the new owner. I was at the
League office, okay, and it was I had done a
lot of stuff during the course of the year with
surveys and all kinds of stuff, trying to feed Roger information.
At the head coaches, we're saying about what had to

(36:43):
be done with the game, um, and it got to
be that I don't know what was it. It was
early January, I guess early January, and it was the
Jaguars had fired their coach. My first thing is I
came down and talk to Shot on the boat down here, um,

(37:04):
and then went back to the league no problem, and
we talked about a lot of things, not just a
head job here. But so when that other opportunity came up,
and it was really interesting because I had basically told Shot,
you know, I can help and a lot of capacities
I can. I can help the head coach, I can

(37:25):
help the general manager, I can help the owner. I
can help in a lot of capacities because I've done
lots of different things in the course of my career
and I have, you know, a little bit of knowledge
about a lot of a lot of things, so I
can help. And so Shot called back and it was
really just a manner of minutes and it was a

(37:47):
done deal. And I remember when I went upstairs to
tell Roger okay, and he already knew it, and uh
so he you know, and I was kind of basing
everything on. Well, you know, uh, I'll I'll come back
tomorrow and clean my desk up and I'll So he
comes down a minute later, Roger does, and he starts
talking about, well, you got your hands full, but it's

(38:07):
gonna be good for the league because you're gonna be
there and they'll be better. And he said, so what
are you doing? And I said, well, I gotta get her.
You better get at it. So I left. So I left.
I just got my stuff together and left. So I
hadn't been through that front door in that and any
kind of capacity. And all the time that I've been

(38:28):
I've been here, I think, but not through that door.
So that was interesting. And then there's a few people
that I have a chance to say hello to again.
But uh, it was different, much different, you know, much different.
And then uh, trying to talk Dug into taking the
office that I'm in, he didn't want it. I'm basically
in the office I was in when I was here,

(38:49):
which I don't know how fair that is for everybody.
But that's where I am. It felt like deja vu
in twenty seventeen, but Jaguars were in the a f
C Championship Game New England, no less. Tom Coplin was
back in teal and Black, now twenty five years since
he first arrived in Jacksonville. He smiles and shakes his
head himself somewhat surprised and certainly thrilled to be back

(39:12):
with the Jaguars. And for a man who's always focused
on the future, he's happy to share some fond stories
from the past. Don't tell you a story of the
true story, Okay. I come here to accept the job,
and the job is the press conferences at a bank.
You remember this, well, it's at a bank, Okay. I

(39:33):
don't see anything. Press conference is over. I'm back in
a car out to the airport. Wayne's plane takes me
back to Boston. I haven't even seen my team yet.
A Boston college. That was that hurt, that was not
well done by me. But I didn't I didn't have
a whole lot of choice, So so I come back

(39:53):
a week later. I got everything in order, and I
come back porn rain, you know, pull up in a
car and MUDs this deep, it's all dirt. Okay, there's
one concrete stanching, that's it. Okay, there's one trailer. I
walked through the mud. I go up the steps, I
walk in the front door. There's someone's over here at

(40:16):
a desk. Okay, I walk in. They don't even have
a desk for me. Yeah, they say, uh, Mr Weaver,
when he's here, he sits at that desk. He's not
here a lot. Why don't you take that desk? And
those are you know, non no cell phone days. Those
are you know, land land falls. So I look around

(40:39):
and I'm saying to myself, what in hell have you
gotten yourself into this time? Because that's what it looked
like at first, because the wheels weren't in motion, you know,
until we made it get in motion, until we got
more people here, and then they would put another trailer around.
Remember how that went. It would be trailer. Okay, we
need room, trailer. But the wheels weren't in motion right away.

(41:00):
I mean, I'm trying to drum up, you know, what
we're going, and putting put putting a plan together and
so on and so forth. Another one of those deals
where I I'm never going back home. They all got
to come to me, so uh, but that was the first,
my first introduction. Two, there was no stadium, there was
no nothing. Okay, we weren't gonna play until but a

(41:25):
lot of things had to happen quick. Twenty five years later,
he has desired to bring a Lombardi Trophy to Jacksonville.
He's still burning as bright as it did back then.
People usually when they leave there, either even when they're booted,
they don't want anything to do with it. They don't
come back. But different situations, both both with Boston College

(41:47):
and with the Giants, and hopefully with this, I hope
it turns out the same way.