“I used to meet with Tom every Friday at 6 a.m. At first, I used to think, ‘Oh, man, there are other things I could be doing at 6 a.m.’ But Tom watches every practice tape and invariably he would tell me about something he saw on the defense that made me say, ‘Hmm, I need to think about that.’

“Usually it caused me to make a change in the game plan, and I can’t tell you how many times that change saved us points or even helped win the game. I came to look forward to those 6 a.m. Friday meetings.”

Mitchell, the tight end, left Jacksonville in 1999 because, he said, “I wanted to get away from Tom.” Mitchell, who played two years with the Giants and retired in 2002, was seeking the proverbial player’s coach.

“I don’t regret it, but I missed Tom’s details,” Mitchell said. “Before every Jacksonville game, Tom would give us all these finite readouts on the other team — like what their linebackers did on third down and less than 3 yards, on third down and more than 3 yards but less than 6 yards, and on third down and more than 9 yards. You knew exactly what to expect.

“I got to other teams and we didn’t do that. I would get in a game and say to myself, ‘I wish I knew a little more about this third-down situation.’ ”

Mitchell concluded his career on Coughlin’s last Jacksonville team.

“My favorite year,” Mitchell said. “I was older, married and had kids of my own. I came to realize Tom wasn’t driving us crazy with these details for no reason.”

‘Thumb on Everything’

Jeff Lageman, a defensive end, left the Jets in 1995 to join the Jaguars.

“At the first practice, Tom is screaming at everybody and I thought, ‘What the hell have I done?’ ” Lageman said Wednesday. “Tom starts a practice with his thumb on everything, and the pressure of that thumb runs downhill to everyone. Practices were not fun.