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Tom Coughlin had one complaint about his first season back with the Jacksonville Jaguars: Watching games from the press box.

”The window in front of me got messed up a few times Terrell Edmunds Game Jersey ,” Coughlin said Tuesday at the NFL Meetings.

The 71-year-old former coach turned fiery executive might need to find a new seat, especially given the ultrahigh expectations that will follow Jacksonville into the season.

After making the AFC championship game in January – and leading New England by 10 points in the fourth quarter before losing 24-20 – the Jaguars will be a popular pick to win their division and make another run to the Super Bowl.

”Non-negotiable expectations from within,” Coughlin said. ”That’s how we look at it. Our expectations are very high and anybody that comes on board has to understand there’s a way to accomplish what we’re trying to accomplish. It’s through team, it’s through individual improvement and it’s through a relentless drive through team success.”

It was the same way during Coughlin’s first stint in Jacksonville. Coughlin essentially built the franchise from the ground up in 1995. He was the head coach and the one voice that made every decision – from who threw the passes to who ran the calculator for the salary cap to what color paint was on the walls.

Anyone who believes he’s a figurehead in his return would be mistaken.

He even had his hand in the Jaguars new uniforms.

The team spent part of last year designing new uniforms. The revamped ones will be unveiled April 19 at the team’s annual state of the franchise address. Most notably, the Jags are adding more teal to the jerseys and eliminating the two-tone helmets that had become as much a reason for ridicule in recent years as the team’s woeful record. The first version of the helmet was matte black.

Coughlin vetoed that color, instead opting for an old-school, shiny-black look.

”It was just a feeling of who we are, what we represent,” Coughlin said. ”That’s a very good look. It’s a solid look. As I said at one point in time, we have some guys that will be in the Hall of Fame and the connection will be very similar as we go forward. We just wanted a little bolder statement, and I think we got it.”

The Jaguars made a statement on the field in 2017. They won the AFC South for the first time in franchise history and earned a postseason berth for the first time in a decade.

The success coincided with Coughlin’s return, but it was far from a coincidence.

Team owner Shad Khan credited the two-time Super Bowl-winning coach with bringing some much-needed leadership to a franchise that had won 17 of 80 games across the five seasons before his return.

”And with that comes a sense of values and a sense of expectations and ability to deliver results,” Khan said.

Even though Coughlin has final say over all football decisions Authentic Korey Toomer Jersey , his role alongside coach Doug Marrone and general manager Dave Caldwell has evolved.

”I was basically on the practice field for every practice and I was in the Saturday night meetings,” Coughlin said. ”I did everything just like I normally would do (as the coach). I prepared just as if I was in that spot, the coaching spot, and I would do some things. Like Doug might ask me to look at something and prepare a tape for him to look at, and I would do that. I enjoy all of that.”

Winning surely helps, even in the press box.

Now, the Jaguars will try to build on their success amid external expectations that haven’t been part of the franchise in a decade and haven’t been an annual occurrence since Coughlin’s heyday.

”Expectations are the easy part,” Khan said. ”Delivering, that’s the hard part. I think what’s fun going forward is it’s expectations, but then a high degree of confidence that we’re going to deliver.”

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The journey from the tiny African nation of Togo to the Cologne Crocodiles of the German Football League to the Arizona Cardinals is a very long one.

Now, still learning English, Moubarak Djeri is trying to navigate the tough and often complicated world of the NFL and prove he belongs.

”This experience is really big,” he said after the Cardinals went through a voluntary workout Thursday. ”That was like a dream for me to be here. Now to see how it’s working Cheap Nick Chubb Jersey , how you’ve got to work hard to make the team and be in the season, it’s a really big experience.”

The 6-foot-3, 275-pound defensive end came to Arizona on a tryout basis but showed enough ability to sign a contract and earn a spot as one of the 90 players going through offseason drills.

Djeri speaks four languages – German, French, his mother’s native tongue of Kotokoli and ”just a little English.” He has been in the United States for three months.

”My English was not that good before I came here,” Djeri said. ”I just started learning better the time I was here, like speaking with my other teammates, watching movies. On the field, the coach is speaking English and you just keep understanding what they say.”

One of his best new friends is teammate Praise Martin-Oguike, also a defensive end, who was born in Nigeria and moved to the United States at age 10.

”The language barrier, he might not get the communications sometime,” Martin-Oguike said. ”It’s very difficult.”

There are other challenges. Martin-Oguike helped Djeri set up a bank account with a debit card to facilitate the automatic deposit of his paycheck. He showed him how to use an Uber app on his phone.

And he provides lots of on-the-job encouragement.

”If I have bad practices Mark Andrews Jersey Elite , I just think about it and get myself really mad,” Djeri said. ”Praise says don’t think too much about it. Keep going, next play. Tomorrow you’re going to get better. It’s something to motivate me.”

Djeri was born in Lome, the capital city of Togo, a small west African nation sandwiched between Ghana and Benin. One of six children, Djeri is part of a very large extended family. He has 27 aunts and uncles.

At age 11, he moved with his family to Germany and in his late teens, he became interested in American-style football, first joining the Cologne junior team and then advancing to the senior team.

Combined, he played just four years of football. But Cologne assistant coach David Odenthal saw something special in Djeri and put together a highlight tape that eventually caught the attention of the Cardinals. He was one of many tryout players, but one of the few that made the initial cut to become an undrafted rookie.

At 22, he has a long way to go to master the game he loves.

”He’s still learning the game,” coach Steve Wilks said. ”He’s just got to continue to get better Youth Cincinnati Bengals Jerseys , keep putting the time in.”

The time required is so much different than what he had to do in Germany, Djeri said. He said players in Germany thought they knew what it takes to play in the NFL, but it’s much different once it’s experienced up close.

”To have it and to feel it is way different than you think,” he said. ”You’ve got to be every time on point. We’re done now with the practice. We do our lift in 30 minutes. After that, we’ve got meetings again. After that, you go to the hotel and you study and after that you’ve got to sleep to be ready for tomorrow.”

Djeri sees how the odds must be against him.

”I just ask why are they going to get someone from Europe if they’ve got a lot of guys from college,” he said. ”They’ve got a lot of guys with four years’ experience of college football. This is the difficulty to be here.”

But he is giving it his all.

”This is what I want to do every day,” he said. ”After the practice you feel like your body is sore but this is what you want to do. That’s why it don’t matter how you feel, you’ve got to keep at it every day to get better.”

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