What Were the Greatest Personnel Missteps of the Tom Coughlin Regime?

Tom Coughlin made a lot of mistakes when he led Jacksonville's front office. Which were the most detrimental?

On Wednesday night, the news broke that Jacksonville Jaguars executive vice president of football operations Tom Coughlin had been fired. Coughlin was the first head coach of the Jaguars and was viewed as a legend in Jacksonville. But following his stint as EVP, his legacy has been skewed due to several personnel missteps.

Not even mentioning the numerous fines he gave out to multiple players on the Jaguars, he really did a number on a team that was once one play away from the Super Bowl. Coughlin took over during the 2017 offseason and the Jaguars went on to have their best season in the last decade. His stint got off to a good start, but immediately following 2017, the team fell downhill. 

Multiple bad decisions led to the sending of the Jaguars back to the abyss of irrelevancy where they’ve been for the last decade, so let’s go over the top five worst decisions Coughlin made during his latest tenure with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

5) Letting Allen Robinson Walk

Wide receiver Allen Robinson tore his ACL in the first game of his contract year in the 2017 season, Robinson was the best wide receiver the Jaguars had since the Jimmy Smith and Kennan McCardell days in the 90s, and was a guy that could take the top off the defense and catch the 50/50 balls, being a true deep threat for the Jaguars. His best year of his career came in 2015 where he had 1400 yards and led the league in touchdowns with 14.

However, following his injury that seemed like enough for Coughlin to let the team’s best receiver in the last 20 years leave the team. He continues to be a dominant receiver in the league, now for the Chicago Bears.

In Robinson's place, Jacksonville drafted DJ Chark and signed Marqise Lee and Donte Moncrief to sizable deals in free agency. Chark looks to be a star, but Coughlin missed badly on Lee and Moncrief, and Robinson continues to make it look like a bad decision.

4) Drafting Taven Bryan over Lamar Jackson

Blake Bortles led the Jacksonville Jaguars to the 2017 AFC Championship game, which was enough to convince Coughlin that he was the future of the organization. He threw for 3,900 yards, 23 touchdowns and 16 interceptions, a the best season of his career and a somewhat typical Blake Bortles season. 

The Jaguars had the 29th pick in the 2017 draft and Jackson, who is now the front-runner for the NFL MVP award. was still available when it was Jacksonville's time to pick. Despite the team having faith in Bortles to be the franchise QB, Jackson still could’ve been an insurance policy in case Bortles didn’t work out. Instead, the Jaguars took defensive tackle Taven Bryan out of Florida - an unproven defensive tackle whose best year in college came in 2017 with six tackles for loss and four sacks. Bryan has yet to truly become the player with that “high ceiling” that the Jaguars assumed he had when they drafted him, but Jackson has surpassed all expectations.

3) Paying Blake Bortles

Oof, this was a doozy. There is one more quarterback contract that we need to dive in later on in this list but this was very similar.

Coughlin decided to give Bortles a new contract after a small sample size in 2017, despite his ridiculously low win-loss record as the Jaguars quarterback for his career and all of his ridiculous turnover records.

Who could’ve saw this going south? I don’t know, probably everybody in the building and around the franchise except Tom Coughlin. Bortles received a 3-year, $54 million dollar contract, and was then benched for Cody Kessler and was cut by the Jaguars a year after receiving the contract. Jacksonville paid Bortles nearly $17 in 2019 despite him not being a part of the roster due to the ludicrous contract.

2) Trading Jalen Ramsey

Jalen Ramsey was the face of the Jacksonville Jaguars franchise since the day they drafted him in 2016. Fans and the team alike knew Ramsey was a special player and a guy the Jaguars could build an elite defense around.

They did that with the 2017 Jaguars defense, and Ramsey became an All-Pro cornerback and one of the top players in the entire league. But Coughlin ran Ramsey out of town quick and now that everyone knows the full story it’s kind of hard to blame Ramsey. Ramsey was the best player on the Jaguars roster since he joined the team, and now the Jaguars really lack that face of the franchise.

The Jags may have got two first-round picks out of the Rams but trading away a cornerstone of your franchise is never a good look.

1) Paying Nick Foles

Where can you even begin with this whole debacle? From the second the Jaguars signed Foles something always seemed off. The Jaguars paid Foles $88 Million based on “respect”. The Jaguars were the only team really in the market for Nick Foles and they grossly overpaid for another quarterback based off a small sample size.

Sure, Foles was a Super Bowl MVP but that’s really the only thing you have to go off of, and the Jaguars went all in. Foles got injured in the first quarter of the 2019 NFL season, came back in after Minshew had the hot hand, went on to go 0-4 as a starter, and ultimately played horrendously. The offense that was built in Jacksonville wasn’t an offense Foles would succeed in and that showed fast - this was without a doubt the biggest mistake Coughlin made during his second tenure with the Jacksonville Jaguars.