Tom Coughlin’s return to Jacksonville started off so well. During his first season in charge of the Jaguars front office, the team made it all the way to the AFC Championship and was one missed call by the refs — Myles Jack wasn’t down — away from beating the Patriots and getting to a Super Bowl.

It’s been all downhill from there, though. And things may have hit rock bottom on Monday when the NFL Players Association announced that it had won a grievance against the Jaguars after an arbitrator ruled that the team violated the CBA for fining an unnamed player $700,000 for not showing up to “mandatory” offseason treatment sessions that weren’t actually mandatory.

Along with that announcement, the NFLPA also released this scathing statement…

Dante Fowler Jr., now a member of the Los Angeles Rams, confirmed reports that he was that unnamed player…

One passage from the statement is particularly noteworthy…

“In the last two years, more than 25% of grievances filed by players in the entire league have been filed against the Jaguars. You as players may want to consider this when you have a chance to select your next club.”

That stat would be more shocking if not for Old Man Coughlin’s reputation as a football tyrant. I didn’t think Shad Khan needed any more reasons to move on from Coughlin after the last two seasons, but I don’t know how he survives this based on that last sentence. Remember, this letter was sent to every player in the league.

“You as players may want to consider this when you have a chance to select your next club.”

It’s going to be awfully difficult to convince free agents to come to Jacksonville with that hanging over the organization. Especially with Coughlin still employed.

If Coughlin had been doing a better job building the team, he’d probably survive this. But he’s made numerous roster-building mistakes, which includes botching the quarterback situation two years in a row. A year after out-bidding themselves to extend Blake Bortles (and subsequently cutting him and suffering the largest dead money hit in league history in the process), Coughlin then gave career backup Nick Foles an $88 million contract. Why was that contract so big when no other team seemed interested in signing Foles?

Well, you see, the Jaguars wanted to send a message to the team that Foles was their man.

He was the man … for about four starts. After struggling, Foles was benched for sixth-round rookie Gardner Minshew last month, and now the Jaguars are stuck with an expensive backup for at least one more season. In order to get out of the deal, Jacksonville would likely have to give up a valuable draft pick to convince a team with cap space to spare to take on Foles’ horrible contract.

It’s not like the Jaguars didn’t have cheaper (and more promising) options for fixing the quarterback situation. Colin Kaepernick, who may not have been a great starter during his career but was certainly better than Bortles and Foles, has been freely available for years, and the Jaguars passed on Lamar Jackson because they believed in (and had just paid) a quarterback who can’t throw a spiral.

It’s not just that Coughlin passed on Kaepernick and Jackson that has to be frustrating for Jaguars fans. It’s the old school thinking that has guided Coughlin’s roster moves that should really irk them. (We haven’t even mentioned the fact that he drafted a running back who doesn’t contribute in the passing game over Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes.) When Kaepernick’s name was brought up by the Jags media, Coughlin said he wasn’t interested and then refused to explain why. Great.

As for passing on Jackson, ESPN’s Mina Kimes told a story on a recent episode of “The Right Time with Bomani Jones” podcast (15:05 mark) about Jalen Ramsey pointing to Coughlin as the main reason the Jags passed on the Louisville star. This was shortly after the 2018 NFL draft, Kimes says, when things were still going well for Ramsey in Jacksonville.

That Ramsey, one of the most talented players in the history of the Jaguars organization, is no longer on the team can also be pinned on Coughlin. He sent veiled shots at Ramsey through the media, dragged his feet when Ramsey started asking for a second contract and then ended up trading the star cornerback after personal disagreements.

Hours after the NFLPA sent out its announcement on Monday, Ramsey tweeted this…

Former Jaguars teammate Allen Robinson, whom Coughlin let walk in part to free up money to foolishly pay Marqise Lee and Bortles instead, replied with crying laughing emojis.

This team is literally a laughing stock.

When Coughlin took over, the Jaguars had one of the more promising rosters in the league. Two years later, it’s terribly flawed and, worse, terribly expensive. No NFL team has more money committed to the 2020 salary cap than Jacksonville does…

The Jaguars don’t have any money to spend on free agents, but even if they did, it probably wouldn’t matter after the NFLPA’s comments about the team. There are no obvious fixes for the roster or the salary cap situation, but there is an easy way to repair the reputation of the franchise: Get rid of Tom Coughlin as quickly as possible.