Tom Coughlin is the man in charge of personnel and roster moves with the Jacksonville Jaguars, which means the two-time Super Bowl winning former coach bears much of the responsibility for a season that has become a total disaster. That doesn’t mean he has any regrets as he watches his team pile up the losses.
In an interview with The Drill on 1010XL Tuesday morning, Coughlin defended the moves the Jaguars made — or didn’t make — after their season ended with a loss in the AFC Championship Game last season. He seemed a bit irritated, to say the least.
“We’re a whistle [away and] we’re in the Super Bowl,” Coughlin said of last year’s tough loss to the New England Patriots, via ESPN’s Michael DiRocco. “And that’s my position, OK? So tell me, everyone out there, what they’re going to do in that circumstance about your football team.
“Aren’t you going to fill other pieces in and try to be as good as you can be? And we tried, didn’t we? Well, the nature of the game got us, so we go back to the drawing board. But I’ll put the gloves on with anybody that wants to talk about what [moves the team made].”
The general consensus over the past two years has been that the Jaguars are a quarterback away from legitimate Super Bowl contention, but they decided to sign Blake Bortles to a three-year, $54 million extension this past offseason rather than looking to upgrade at the position. The other money they spent on offense — a five-year, $66.5 million deal for left guard Andrew Norwell and a one-year contract worth nearly $10 million for wide receiver Donte Moncrief — also does not look like money well spent.
Coughlin has been criticized for drafting defensive tackle Taven Bryan in the first round, as that was not a real position of need for the Jags. Despite some rule changes in the NFL that have placed a greater emphasis on needing to score points, Coughlin says he is not going to change his philosophy of trying to win with defense.
“Points are up,” he admitted. “Everything is up, but our formula a year ago was play great defense, run the ball and do a superb job of play-action pass.”
You can understand where Coughlin is coming from when he says the Jaguars were a play away from the Super Bowl last year, but that doesn’t excuse sticking with Bortles when a QB upgrade could have given the team a major boost. We’ve already heard rumblings that Jacksonville could be looking to shake things up quite a bit this offseason, but it seems more likely that Coughlin will consider 2018 the exception and stay the course.
