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Jags to Riches

The Cinderella Season of the Jacksonville Jaguars

St. Martin's Press

DOUGHNUTS AND A CRISIS

"There are certain things about which there are no compromises."

— TOM COUGHLIN February 1997

Early on Saturday morning, October 12, 1996, eleven football players sat on a cluster of sofas and soft, low chairs in the locker room at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. The players laughed. They talked.

They ate doughnuts. Everywhere, there were smiles.

This was a special time, a friendly time. Saturday morning, doughnuts time. The players ripped, ribbed, and ridiculed one another, and when a guy said something, he got it right back. Fast. And then some.

Televisions blared in the background. This was loose. This was fun. No coaches here. The players talked over the TV. They joked. They teased. Eleven professional football players. Eleven members of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Boxes of doughnuts lay open on two long, thin tables amid the sofas and chairs. The players continued laughing. On the sides of the room, players sat by their lockers, listening to the banter, preparing for a light walk-through later that morning. This was their routine. Doughnuts time was the players' time, a time for bonding. A time away from the media, away from team meetings, away from fans. A time to relax.

Early on the morning of October 12, the day before a home game against the winless New York Jets, the Jacksonville Jaguars — in their second NFL season — needed such a time. This was a team struggling for identity — a team as noted for inexcusable losses and inconsistency as it was for a stable of young stars. Those players — Tony Boselli, Mark Brunell, Kevin Hardy, and Tony Brackens, to name a few — might have been the answer for the future, but in the present, there were questions.

Why was Brunell — considered a potential second coming of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young — not yet comparable to the four-time NFL passing champion? Why was the running game ineffective? Why wasn't their star free-agent signee, wide receiver Andre Rison, getting the ball more?

Why did the defense play well one week, then poorly the next?

Why did the offense do the same?

Most of all, fans in Jacksonville, who had waited patiently and desperately for 15 years for an NFL team, wanted to know this: Why weren't the Jaguars good yet?

Or at least, why weren't they better than 2–4, a game better than their record after six games the previous season? One and five was OK in 1995, as was a 4–12 season-ending record. That year, the Jaguars were a ragtag team of free agents and "youth with potential." Fans expected little. Even when the other 1995 expansion team — the Carolina Panthers from the hated city of Charlotte, North Carolina — went 7–9 and set an NFL record for expansion victories, Jacksonville fans didn't mind much. They had a team, after all, and team officials promised a bright future — sooner rather than later.

Now, six games into 1996, things weren't OK. After a season- opening victory over the AFC's defending champions, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Jaguars lost consecutive games to the Houston Oilers, Oakland Raiders, and New England Patriots. They followed that streak with a dramatic victory over the Panthers, but lost to the then winless Saints in New Orleans on October 6. To some, the losses diminished any positives — even the Panthers victory. Carolina, despite the loss, was 4–1, leading the NFC West. Given a choice — Panthers or Jaguars — many in Jacksonville no doubt would have preferred the Panthers' gaudy record and first-place status.

That their only loss came to the Jaguars was no consolation — particularly with the Panthers garnering positive press nationwide as the NFL's feel-good story of 1996.

What was wrong? Fans weren't the only ones asking.

Players and coaches were, too, so the Jaguars needed Saturday morning doughnuts. They were a way for players to escape the pressure of the NFL, and escape the pressure of losing. Most of all, they were a way of escaping the often overwhelming pressure of playing for the Jaguars' head coach, Tom Coughlin.

Coughlin had built the Jaguars in his image. His total control extended into his players' lives. Doughnuts were relaxation. Coughlin was stress.

Early on the morning of October 12, some players wondered if that stress was too much. The Jaguars spent big money in the 1996 free- agent market, and had high hopes for the season. A 6–16 overall record in nearly a season and a half meant something was missing, something was wrong. Some players believed that something was Coughlin. This talk of Coughlin being too unreasonable, and out of control, was spoken in whispers. That's the only way anyone talked about Coughlin around the Jaguars — a whisper. Anything else meant risking your job.

Coughlin was more than the Jaguars' coach. He was coach, general manager, and personnel director in one militaristic package. He, in many ways, was the team; his power, absolute. He hired players, and fired them — and in the first year, he was so intimidating that players avoided looking at him when passing in the halls, walking with their heads down to avoid eye contact.

Once, Coughlin told a player to cut his Mohawk, then released him that afternoon — after he cut his hair.

Coughlin was distant and controlling, and some wondered if he didn't push his ways too far — and if his image was right for a young franchise. He was more infamous than famous, and his old- fashioned image made him an easy target for media and cynics.

One Coughlin quirk made him an easy stereotype: a laundry list of rules (assistant coaches could not wear sunglasses on the field, and players' phones were turned off in their hotel rooms at 11 P.M. the night before games) that ranged from nitpicky to comical.

National media picked up on the rules, painting a picture of a red-faced, silver-haired maniac.

He didn't mind a bit.

He embraced his image. The rules, the tough approach — to listen to him, it was part of the Jaguars' building plan. "There has to be a period of orientation," Coughlin said after the 1996 season, explaining his philosophy in the early days. "There just has to be. There has to be a period where people have to understand that this is the way it's going to be. There are certain things about which there are no compromises."

The style, planned to the detail, alienated players in an era of "players' coaches" who offer hugs on the sidelines. "It's a dictatorship," Jaguars defensive tackle Kelvin Pritchett said late in the 1995 season.

Coughlin, until October 12, 1996, didn't seem to care. A coach's role, in his mind, was to coach. A player played, and if a player didn't like the coach ...

Well, there always were 29 other NFL teams.

So, doughnuts time was important to the players, but early on the morning of October 12, it turned strange. Doughnuts time had started the previous season. A few veterans told a few rookies to bring doughnuts on Saturday morning. It became tradition, and that morning, the players laughed and joked and drank coffee as usual. Then, for the first time, Coughlin walked into the locker room, and to everyone's surprise, sat in the middle of the group.

Stunned silence followed.

"They were probably shocked that it happened," Tom McManus, a second-year linebacker who played for Coughlin at Boston College, said.

The players sat still for a moment, and when Coughlin spoke, a few players replied, breaking the awkward, stony silence. Was this an olive branch, or an invasion? Or an attempt to show his players there was more to the man than the myth? Who knew? Coughlin tried to loosen the mood, joking with a few players, some of whom stared at one another in disbelief. Others looked away, or at the floor.

Those not in the circle watched, amazed at what came next: One by one, those seated around Coughlin stood and walked away, leaving him alone with the doughnuts.

"Anytime the boss comes into the employees' locker room it becomes an uncomfortable situation," defensive tackle John Jurkovic said. "We were struggling at the time, and we weren't playing well. That adds a little stress. Guys' nerves are edgy and raw anyway, so when the boss comes down to the locker room, it's a stressful situation."

The first two seasons were full of difficult times, but as Coughlin sat alone that morning, the gravity of his situation became more real. His team was struggling, and he had made a conscious decision to change — "It was part of the plan," he said later — but his players, bewildered, rejected the effort. After two years of distance, Coughlin trying to be a buddy didn't register.

Coughlin, players said later, never mentioned the incident, and at first, little changed. The next day, the Jaguars needed a rally to beat the Jets, 21–17. They then lost two games to fall to 3–6. Coughlin knew he needed to change, but changing — and convincing his players the change was real — wouldn't be easy.

And then there was a question, one Coughlin may have contemplated as he sat alone with the doughnuts, early on the morning of October 12: Even if the change was real, had it come soon enough?

THE LEGEND OF WATERLOO

"You cursed him ... like your parents. You get angry at the time they're doing those things to you, but you know they're doing it for your benefit. It was the same with him."

— PETE MITCHELL August 1995

"Nobody outworked the guy."

— GLENN FOLEY August 1995

The scene was tiny Lafayette Field in Waterloo, New York, a town in the north of the state. This was a Saturday afternoon, late fall, 1963. More than 4,000 people packed into Lafayette Field to watch Waterloo High School play a football game against Mynderse High from nearby Seneca Falls.

The boys from Waterloo played that day for town pride. Mynderse — bigger, mightier, stronger Mynderse — had beaten Waterloo 11 consecutive years.

"The rivalry with Seneca Falls was so bitter people in Waterloo didn't even want their kids born in Seneca's hospital," said Mike Ornato, then coach at Waterloo High.

Waterloo, this year, was unbeaten — thanks to a core of seniors who grew up together playing sports and bringing pride to a small town. They were childhood friends, and the star was a gritty running back — Tom Coughlin, the oldest of the seven children of Waterloo natives Lou and Betty Coughlin. Young Tom personified the team and the town. Already, he was a legend. "A dynamic focal point for all our success," the quarterback on the '63 Waterloo team, Bob Baldwin, called him years later.

"He was a leader from Day One," Waterloo's baseball and basketball coach, Bill Carey, said.

Coughlin was that, and more.

Native son. Driven. Clean-cut. Disciplined. Well behaved.

A model early-1960s kid.

"The all-American boy if there ever was one," said then Waterloo resident Paul Whitaker, who later became Young Tom's father-in-law.

These kids, these seniors, Coughlin would later say, "were good, and we knew we were good." They had won Little League baseball and basketball championships, and won a section title in basketball and a league title in baseball as seniors, but football was never big in Waterloo. Nearby Syracuse University and its coach, the legendary Ben Schwartzwalder, made football popular in the area with its great teams of the late 1950s and a national championship in 1959. Waterloo, however, was small and its football teams were just OK. Never had an athlete from Waterloo received a Division I football scholarship, much less one to Syracuse.

This year was different. Coughlin was talented, and the offensive line cleared his way all season. Early against Mynderse, the game went well for Waterloo. The line overpowered Mynderse, and Waterloo led 7–0. Later, when Coughlin returned a punt 60 yards for a touchdown, Waterloo led 14–0, and the town had a memory to last forever.

"I'm sitting at the top of the railing when that happened, and I forgot where I was," Coughlin's younger brother, John, told the Florida Times-Union years later. "I went over the back of the stands and this girl broke my fall. They took her to the hospital, but I was fine."

The final: Waterloo 27, Mynderse 0.

The run secured the only perfect season in Waterloo history, and the next summer, Lou and Betty Coughlin drove their oldest child 40 miles up the New York Thruway to Syracuse, where he was to play football on scholarship. "When Lou and I left the driveway the first time to take him to college," Betty recalled years later, "there was a kid at every downstairs window. They all cried the day he left for college."

So did the people of Waterloo.

Their legend was leaving home.

* * *

Thomas Richard Coughlin was born August 31, 1946. His was the story of a small-town hero — a driven, disciplined kid destined for success. Succeed he did. Always. And always, the backbone was discipline. For Coughlin, discipline was the only way, a way first shown him by his father, Lou.

Lou Coughlin, a warehouse operator for 38 years at the Seneca Army Depot, served in the army in World War II, and applied a military, ordered touch to rearing his children. Lou was a sports fan who played soccer and basketball at Waterloo High, but he never pushed young Tom to play sports. Education and discipline were more important to Lou, which was one reason Coughlin said his childhood was diverse.

He was an altar boy, an honor student, a junior Rotarian, and the treasurer of the Varsity Club. When he graduated Waterloo High, he had an 88.4 grade point average.

His favorite sport was basketball, and he averaged 11.9 points a game as a senior point guard before hitting .425 as a senior catcher on the baseball team, but it was football in which he most excelled. Wearing number 44 — same as his idol, former Syracuse great Ernie Davis — he rushed for 1,852 yards in 1962 and 1963, scoring 36 touchdowns. His 20 touchdowns as a senior was still a Waterloo record in 1997. "He had a great work ethic, was very intense, and made the most of what he had," Ornato said of Coughlin, nicknamed "Ernie" in high school, after Davis.

Rarely did Coughlin deviate from a path to success — so rarely that such stories take on a legendary tone. Once, he and his best high school friend, Terry Manfredi, bought a six-pack of beer. This was a lazy, hazy, crazy day of summer — or as close as Young Tom got to such things. They drove to nearby Junius Ponds, but before they opened the first beer, Terry's mom, Laura, found them. "Tom almost jumped out of the car," Laura recalled in a 1997 interview with the Finger Lakes Times in Geneva, New York. "No, he did jump out of the car. I said, 'You two better get home in a hurry because Bill Carey called, and he knows what you're up to.'

"They said, 'Oh, no.' They came right home and didn't dare do it again."

Winning brought out what rebel there was in Young Tom. Once, a day after winning a baseball sectional, he and some friends skipped school to go swimming at Junius Ponds. Another time — hours after winning a sectional basketball championship — he and friends drove around in a friend's 1959 Chevrolet. Coughlin and his friends dared the driver, Kenny Sitterly, to cut across a yard to get to another street. Sitterly did.

The car stuck in the snow. Police freed the car, by which time "his friends" had abandoned Sitterly.

"Being the buddies they were, they all took off and ran on me," Sitterly later recalled, laughing at the memory.

"Normal kid stuff," Coughlin called it.

So, Young Tom wasn't perfect. He was just very close — and always, he was a leader. "Tom was always a good speaker," Carey said. "When people weren't doing too good, they looked up to him. He knows how to pick people up and get them going."

Despite his football success, Coughlin wasn't highly recruited. The University of Buffalo — with future NFL coach Buddy Ryan then an assistant — and Syracuse showed the most interest. Syracuse, the school of his idol, Davis, was the easy choice, and he signed there, but there was nothing easy in those days about playing for the Orangemen.

Schwartzwalder built a power as most coaches did in his era — casting a broad, militaristic shadow over his program. No one used the term "players' coach" in those days, and if they did, they didn't use it referring to Schwartzwalder. "He used the old military tactics to run his football team," former Syracuse all-American Gary Bugenhagen later said. "I'm sure a lot of that wore off on Tom."

Coughlin agreed, saying, "The leadership has to be strong, and the coach has to stand for something. Otherwise, you don't know where you're going."

Coughlin started three years at Syracuse, playing alongside Floyd Little and Larry Csonka. In three seasons, he carried 65 times for 336 yards, caught 34 passes for 367 yards, and returned punts and kicks. Once after fumbling a punt, Coughlin returned to the sideline. Schwartzwalder met him there.

"Fumble again, kid, and you'll never play again," the coach yelled.

"That happened a lot," Coughlin said, remembering the story.

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Excerpted from Jags to Riches by John Oehser, Pete Prisco. Copyright © 1997 John Oehser and Pete Prisco. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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