Tony Boselli Pro Football Hall of Fame 2022

Pro Football Hall of Fame Boselli Yearbook 2022

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It didn’t take long for Tony Boselli to fall in love with football.

As a quarterback.

“Oh, I thought I was a quarterback,” he recalled of his ninth-grade year in football at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado. “I played quarterback that year and the first day of training camp the varsity Head Coach, Sam Pagano, moved me to tight end. The next year he moved me to O-Line. He told me later that the only reason he didn’t move me right to O-Line was because he thought I might quit.”

There was no chance of that.

“I did want to be the quarterback,” Boselli added. “But I really didn’t care when they moved me. I just wanted to play football.”

From those decisions by his high school coach and his fourteen-year-old self, a career as one of the best offensive linemen in the history of football was born.

A high school All-American as a senior, Tony chose the University of Southern California over his home state Colorado Buffaloes to study and continue his football career.

For Boselli’s final two years at USC, John Robinson returned for his second stint as the Trojans’ Head Coach. Tony had established himself as a starter and as a dominant player, but Robinson thought he could be better.

“I was hard on Tony,” Robinson admitted, adding he told USC’s offensive line coach Mike Barry to be hard on him as well.

Boselli says that made him a better player and was named the top offensive lineman in the Pac-10 in 1994.

Saying Boselli was “the best college offensive lineman I ever had,” Robinson saw a great professional future for Tony in the NFL.

“I grew up with John Madden,” Robinson said the night Boselli was named as part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s class of 2022. “So, I called him one day after Tony was drafted and said, ‘John, watch for this Boselli kid. He’s the best tackle I’ve ever seen!” ‘You’re crazy,’ John said to me and hung up. About a week later, he called me back and said, ‘About this Boselli guy, you might be right’!”

At Southern Cal, Boselli was an All-American on the football field and a three-time selection to the Pac-10’s All-Academic team.

He earned a degree in finance at USC and was awarded a postgraduate scholarship from the National Football Foundation.

But the NFL was calling.

As an expansion franchise, the Jacksonville Jaguars made Boselli the first pick in the franchise’s history, second overall in the 1995 NFL Draft.

“The cornerstone of the franchise,” is what Jaguars Head Coach and General Manager Tom Coughlin called him at the time.

And he was that.

With Boselli in the lineup, the Jaguars won sixty percent of their games and were a perennial contender, making the AFC Championship game in 1996 and 1999.

Named to the All-Rookie team in 1995 and the All-Decade team of the 1990’s despite playing only half the decade, Boselli was elected to five Pro Bowls and was All-Pro three times.

No easy feat playing in the “Golden Age of Tackles” with fellow Hall of Fame tackles Willie Roaf, Walter Jones, Jonathan Ogden, Orlando Pace and Gary Zimmerman.

“I wore 71 because that’s what Tony wore,” Jones said.

“I’d check my game against Tony’s every week. Even though we weren’t even in the same conference,” Roaf admitted.

From his position at left tackle, Boselli handled fellow Hall of Famers Bruce Smith, Derek Thomas, John Randle, Jason Taylor, and others.

Smith was the league’s Defensive Player of the Year when Boselli neutralized him in the AFC Championship game in Buffalo. Thomas was coming off a six-sack performance the week before against the Raiders when Tony took him on the following Sunday.

“We’re putting Boselli on him and not going to worry about it,” Coughlin said the week leading up to the game.

While it was considered a marquee matchup, Boselli rendered Thomas ineffective for four quarters.

“Boselli beat me down on a Monday night,” Taylor said, recalling Tony waving him to the other end of the field. “An epic beatdown. Surprised it didn’t knock me into retirement.”

Former Seattle and Steelers Offensive Line Coach Kent Stephenson probably watched more “Boselli tape” than anybody in football.

“Since we were in the same conference and the same division, we played similar opponents. I watched him every week. You couldn’t help but watch him perform. He jumped off the film. He could do it all. He was a great, great player.”

“There are certain guys that when the lights go on and when the game is on the line, they have something extra,” he added. “Boselli had that.”

Choosing Mark Brunell, his former quarterback and best friend as his presenter for the Hall of Fame seemed like a natural selection, but Brunell remembers it wasn’t always that smooth.

“We didn’t get along when we first met,” Brunell recalled with a laugh. “I didn’t like him actually.”

“He thought he was the best offensive lineman in training camp as a rookie.”

“Which he was. “

“He thought he was the best player on the team.”

“Which he was.”

“And he thought he was the toughest guy on the team,” Brunell continued through the laughter.

“Which he was.”

Mark and Tony found some common ground through their faith and their families, and their friendship grew and blossomed into what it is today.

A 19-year NFL career with five teams gives Brunell some perspective on talent in the league and he puts Boselli in some rarefied air.

“I wouldn’t say Tony was better than Brett Favre or Reggie White, but those are the guys he’s in the conversation with.”

Boselli dipped his toe into the political arena when his NFL career ended. After years of outstanding philanthropy work in North Florida, he gained a real sense of what children and families in need were looking for. He was encouraged to run for Mayor and gave it serious consideration but decided his best work could be accomplished through his foundation and outside of politics.

A bout with Covid three years ago gave Boselli some new perspective. During his hospital stay, Boselli was quarantined, only staying in contact with his family via text when he had enough energy to grab his phone. He credits the health care workers with his recovery. They were the only people allowed near him, wearing full protective gear.

“They were great,” Tony said with a strong sense of gratitude. “Those doctors and PAs and nurses and techs, everyone, they’re amazing. These people were absolutely amazing. Superstars.”

Boselli and his wife Angi have two sons and three daughters and live in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Tony is in the health care business but stays close to football with a national broadcasting career on Westwood One and locally on the Jaguars radio broadcasts.

Now the “cornerstone”’ of Jaguars history, Boselli says he’s with the Jaguars to stay.

“As long as there is a Jaguars team, I’ll be a part of it.”

2022 Masters Tournament

A Big Week at The Masters

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Sam Kouvaris At The Masters 2022“You’ve had a big week,” my long-time friend “The Ghost” texted me on Sunday of this year’s Masters Tournament.

And he was right.

After a two-year delay, Augusta National and the Masters celebrated my more than four decades as a reporter at the tournament, presenting me with the Masters Major Achievement Award. I’m very grateful to the Augusta membership and the Tournament’s Media Committee and staff for taking the time to recognize my work. It’s the best sporting event in the world and they value tradition, loyalty, and good work like no other.

As part of the Award, they invited my entire family to Augusta for a banquet on Wednesday night and a chance to experience The Masters in person all week. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me and how wonderful it was to have them there for the week. It’s always great to see people’s reaction to their first time at Augusta National. But after years of me working nights and traveling, and them putting up with that, to see them experience what I’ve had the privilege of being a part of in my career was so gratifying, it’s hard to describe. For that, Augusta National and The Masters will have my unending gratitude.

As you might imagine, there are a lot of highlights for me at Augusta, topped by this week. But here are a few others, starting at the beginning

It’s been forty-three years since I covered my first Masters. In January of 1979, an invitation from Augusta National to apply for a credential to cover that year’s Masters Tournament came to my desk at Channel 2 in Charleston, South Carolina. I was shocked, and thrilled. As a new reporter in my first job as the Sports Director there, I was 23 years old and was just learning about the big events and what it was like to be involved.

When I arrived at Augusta National in April, I’m sure I looked lost because Tom Place, the regular PGA Tour media director, saw me outside the Quonset hut that served as the press room clearly bewildered.

“Sam, you look lost,” he said kindly.

“Because I am Tom!” I told him.

Place showed me around the press facility, and as a 23-year-old I was amazed to see legendary writers and broadcasters I had only read about. Herbert Warren Wind, Furman Bisher, Dan Jenkins, Edwin Pope, and others were the titans of the industry I was lucky enough be a part of at that moment. Here they were, right in front of me, and doing their jobs.

Whenever I walked through the front door of the Press Building, I always instinctively walked to the right. Because in my first experience there, the left side of the press room had a table with a bunch of liquor bottles on it, clearly a post-round ritual for those seasoned at their profession. I knew I hadn’t earned that and stuck to the right side for the rest of my time there.

That first year I was working as a one-man sports department, so I asked Martha Wallace, the credential coordinator for the Masters if I could bring my dad as my photographer. She said yes, and I was excited to teach my father how to run the little industrial camera we were using in back then.

We stayed in a house listed by the Masters Housing Bureau. In 1979, there were only a couple of hotels in Augusta, so residents rented rooms, or their entire home for the week of the tournament.

I think of that often, as my father was 46 years old, twenty years younger than I am now. And as the son of immigrants from the streets of Baltimore, he was awestruck by the beauty of Augusta National. So awestruck in fact, I occasionally had to reel him in to do his job!

When Fuzzy Zoeller won that year in a playoff at eleven, the member taking him to the press room stopped and delivered Zoeller right to me standing behind the first tee. It was dark, and I remember asking Fuzzy a question and seeing a dozen or so microphones come out of the darkness and pointing at me to continue the interview. “Whoa, this is a big deal,” I remember thinking.

Before I asked the first question, I could hear my Dad saying, “I can’t see him, I can’t see him” as I turned on the light. I glanced back, and noticed the viewfinder was pointed at Zoeller but the camera had hinged toward the ground. I grabbed it with one hand and maneuvered it at Fuzzy, only to hear my dad say, “Oh, there he is.”

The following year I was able to secure a ticket to the tournament for my new wife, Linda. We were walking up the left side of the first fairway, chatting, when a security guard stepped in front of us with his arm held out from his side. He didn’t say a word but when I glanced to my right, Seve Ballesteros was crouched down in between some trees, not three feet from us looking at a small, window-like opening between some branches for his second shot. We literally had almost stepped on him! In what became typical Seve style, he executed a six-iron from the woods onto the green and made birdie on his way to his first green jacket.

In 1981, Tom Watson won his second title at Augusta National and a picture of me was included in the Masters Yearbook. In what looks like a historical time capsule image now, I’m standing next to the clubhouse, waiting my turn in the dark to interview Watson. Little did I know that the following week I’d be in Jacksonville interviewing for a new job.

I was working in Jacksonville in April of 1982, and I missed the Masters Tournament that week. My daughter Austin was born that week. Linda’s labor was long, so our OBGYN, Dr, Richard “Dickie” Meyers and I brought a small black and white television into the room to keep up with the tournament. I’m not sure what Linda thought about that. She claims to not remember!

Operating a small sports department at the television station in Jacksonville, I wrote, anchored, produced, and edited all the on-air shows, not unusual at the time. I also acted as my own cameraman/photographer. Occasionally, The Masters would offer me a photographer’s credential, and in 1985, Tom Wills, our anchorman, came along to Augusta to fill that role. We were down on Amen Corner when Curtis Strange made par on 12 to grab a three-stroke lead with six holes to play. We decided to pack up and leave, figuring the tournament was over. Little did we know that Strange would find the water on both 13 and 15 to let everybody back in the tournament. Bernhard Langer birdied four of the last seven holes to win the first of his two Masters titles. Tom and I still laugh about that to this day.

Anybody who’s been around The Masters for a while references Jack Nicklaus’ win in 1986 as a highlight. I was standing right behind the 18th green when Nicklaus completed his round. Everybody talks about the birdie on 17 but Jack’s two-putt on 18 was equally impressive. From the front of the green to a back-right pin placement, Nicklaus calmly finished out a back nine 30 with what, on paper, looks like a routine par at the finishing hole. It was anything but. Jack said later that he knew the putt well, having been asked by Augusta National, in his role as a golf course builder, to reshape the 18th green a bit.

He made the slope from front to back shallower and had hit that putt “a thousand times” while working on the hole. Greg Norman famously missed the green to the right and failed to get up and down for par to finish a shot back. Tom Kite hit a magnificent shot to ten feet and had a chance to tie for the lead, only to lip out his put and tie for second. I walked with Nicklaus over to Butler cabin after he came out of the scoring tent behind the 18th green (at the time). There were patrons everywhere and it would be an understatement to say they were “excited.”

Covering about ten professional golf tournaments each year, I got to know many of the players of that era. I was friendly with Greg Norman in his heyday and went through the gamut of emotions with him after each close call at Augusta. Fred Couples and I knew each other well, and he was friends with my brother Gust, so it was exciting to see him put on the Green Jacket in 1992.

You might remember Couples’ shot on twelve stopped on the bank in front of the green and helped propel him to victory. Standing on that tee playing the hole a year later, I mentioned that shot to my caddie.

“Haven’t seen a ball stop there ever before or ever since,” he said shaking his head.

With Tiger’s victory in 1997, the whole golf world changed. He went on to be the most dominating player of the next twenty-five years and brought a whole new group of fans to the game. That was important in my position as the Sports Director of a television station in Jacksonville Florida.

A little more than thirty percent of Jacksonville’s population is Black, and golf was not a very big, or oftentimes not generally accepted sport in the Black community. Many leaders in the Black community let me know that in my first twenty years in Charleston and North Florida, telling me I covered too much golf for their liking. I would explain that I thought it was important to cover golf because North Florida was home to the PGA Tour’s headquarters and we had a very significant golf championship in our back yard, then known as the “TPC.”

Their disappointment in my choice of coverage never abated until Tiger’s Masters win. His victory, and domination of the golf world changed all of that, even in my small world of local television coverage.

Over the next decade, Tiger and Phil Mickelson won six of the next ten Masters titles but David Duval of Jacksonville also emerged as a top-flight competitor and ascended to the number one player in the world. His near misses at Augusta are part of the tournament’s lore. He invited me to caddie for him at the Par 3 Tournament one year in that stretch and it was a fun as it looks. Dressed in the white jump suit with “Duval” affixed to my back, David’s only instructions were “keep up and don’t lean on the putter.” When his bag fell over as I was delivering a sand wedge two him on the second hole, I was mortified but David lightly gave me the needle saying, “You had one job,” with a laugh.

As we walked the short fairways and tight tee boxes, there wasn’t much room because of the number of patrons lining every step of the way. When we got to the eighth hole, David was mildly in contention and asked what club I thought he should hit. “It’s wedge,” I said, drawing on what I had seen him do over the first seven holes. “I think it’s nine iron,” he deadpanned. “There’s a bit of wind behind us and it’s severely downhill. It’s a solid wedge,” I repeated.

Duval calmly pulled the nine iron from his bag, and without a glance, hit a beautiful, high, arching shot right at the hole. And it landed five feet past the flagstick, checked, and rolled off the back, into the water. He gave me a “don’t say a word” look, and we walked down the hill. In retrospect, I’m not sure David didn’t do that on purpose. A birdie there might have given him the title, and no player has ever won the par 3 and the Masters in the same year. So maybe he wasn’t going to tempt fate.

After a nice shot to eight feet across the lake at nine, we were standing on the green when David handed me his putter and said, “Now it’s your turn.” I gave him one of my “Really?” answers and promptly missed the putt on the right. “I told you it went left,” David said with a laugh as we walked on the back of the green to the kind of applause that only happens at Augusta.

Wins by Bubba Watson, Adam Scott, Jordan Spieth, and Sergio Garcia over the next ten years were fun and make me smile when I recall wins for players who passionately competed for the title of “Masters Champion” and finally achieve that goal. Despite trying to maintain journalistic integrity, I always find myself trying to will certain players I like to victory. That was especially true with Scott and Spieth.

The win by Tiger in 2019 rivals Nicklaus’ victory in ’86. Watching Brooks Koepka and Francesco Molinari hit it in Rae’s Creek playing the twelfth, seemingly victims of the “golf gods,” the “Tiger effect,” and their lack of experience playing Amen Corner holding the lead. Woods’ calmly hitting the ball to the center of the green and waiting as they played their shots from the drop area showed Tiger’s experience and steely nerve and was one of the best photographs of the year.

My 40th Masters was the only one played in November of 2020. Because of the pandemic, the tournament had been postponed until the fall of that year. To paraphrase my friend Jim Nantz, that was an “experience like no other.” I wrote about it here: https://www.samsportsline.com/a-walk-at-the-masters/ That’ll be a “memory like no other” for sure. Being alone on Amen Corner might be the most serene spot I’ve ever experienced.

And this week will not only be one of my most special memories of Augusta, but also one of the great weeks of my life. To have my family around, and to see and hear from so many friends who offered heartfelt congratulations was humbling and yes, fulfilling as well.

GolfWeek wrote about the award ( https://www.samsportsline.com/sam-kouvaris-receives-masters-major-achievement-award/ ). Thanks to Adam Shupak for his kindness and accuracy in reporting. The “cigar” story is true and makes me laugh every time.

If you every are at Augusta and see me on my “walk,” please stop and say hi. I’m sure we’ll both enjoy it.

Sam Kouvaris Receives Masters Major Achievement Award

Sam Kouvaris Receives Masters Major Achievement Award

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Adam Schupak – GolfWeek
AUGUSTA, Ga. – The wait is over for Sam Kouvaris to be honored at the Masters.

Sam Kouvaris Masters Major Achievement AwardIn early 2020, Kouvaris received a letter in the mail from Augusta National Golf Club Chairman Fred Ridley congratulating him on his upcoming coverage of his 40th Masters and notifying him that he would be honored with the Masters Major Achievement Award in April. But then the global pandemic postponed the Masters until November and canceled the Golf Writers Association of America Annual Awards Dinner, where the award is traditionally presented, for not one but two years.

On Wednesday evening at the Savannah Rapids Pavilion, Kouvaris, 66, was one of five honored with a plaque for reaching this milestone achieved by just 31 members of the press corps.

“Your vivid descriptions, accurate reporting and heartfelt love of golf and the individuals who play the game will serve as an inspiration for all time. These accounts from Augusta National have helped make the Masters one of the great sporting traditions in the world,” are the words inscribed on a permanent plaque in the Masters media center with a roll call of this exclusive club.

2022 Masters Tournament

Kouvaris also received his own parking spot in the press lot at Augusta National.

“A friend of mine texted me a picture of my sign on Sunday and told me I’m in the front row,” he said.

Kouvaris covered his first Masters in 1979 at age 23 when he was working for Channel 2 in Charleston, South Carolina, and his credential followed him to Jacksonville when he joined WJXT-Channel 4. He missed the tournament once in 1982, but for good reason – his oldest daughter was born during the final round. Instead, Kouvaris watched the broadcast on a small black-and-white TV in the hospital. He covered his 40th Masters in 2020 for the Florida Times Union.

“The first one was pretty special,” Kouvaris said of seeing first-time participant Fuzzy Zoeller win in a playoff. “I was standing behind the green at 18 when Jack Nicklaus won in 1986. One year I was standing with a friend at 13 and he asked me, ‘Where should I propose to my fiancée?’ I said, ‘Right here.’ He brought her over and dropped to one knee and proposed to her right there. It turned out to be David Duval’s sister.”

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Tony Boselli - Pro Football Hall of Fame 2022

What Took So Long

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Although his career on the field was full of skill, technique, power and passion, Tony Boselli’s path to the Pro Football Hall of Fame was a numbers game.

This was the sixth consecutive year Boselli has made the finalists list. The last five years he’s made the first cut to the final ten. In the time I’ve researched the nuances of Boselli’s career for his presentation to the other forty-eight members of the Selection Committee, nobody every says to me “he wasn’t good enough.” It’s only ever “did he play long enough.”

So here are a couple of quick numbers about the length of Tony’s career

Boselli played ninety-seven games. There are 300 players in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and nineteen percent played either fewer games or less than one more full season than Boselli. Twenty-three percent of all of the tackles in the Hall played less than a hundred games.

It’s not unprecedented for a player with the length of career like Tony’s to be elected to the Hall of Fame. It’s not even unusual.

In the Hall’s Class of 2017 both Terrell Davis and Kenny Easley were elected. Davis played eighty-six games and Easley ninety-five.

It was after that year that former Times-Union reporter and columnist Vito Stellino, a writer in the Hall of Fame himself, penned an open letter to the Selection Committee suggesting that if Davis and Easley were Hall-worthy even with short career’s, Boselli should earn some consideration. Boselli had been a finalist for the first time that year and Stellino, then an at-large member of the Selection Committee, gave credence to the idea that as the dominant Tackle of his era, Tony’s case had some merit.

Besides the length of his career, other numbers were working against Boselli’s case. In 2018, five of the fifteen finalists, one third of the total, were offensive linemen. Joe Jacoby, Alan Faneca, Steve Hutchinson, Kevin Mawai and Joe Jacoby. All had longer careers than Boselli and only one of them, Jacoby, played tackle. It was clear it would be an uphill battle for Tony to leapfrog those other players, all with strong cases for admittance to the Hall. In addition, Committee rules at the time had the players presented by position and by alphabetical order. That meant Boselli was always first, a distinct disadvantage. Those rules were changed the following year, with players now presented in random order.

Tony’s candidacy also ran up against an odd stretch of other players becoming eligible who were considered ‘first-ballot’ selections. While I don’t think ‘first-ballot’ is a thing for the Pro Football Hall of Fame (unlike baseball) it has become a measuring stick in the last twenty years as the makeup of the committee has gotten younger. In the last five years, half of those elected to the Hall have been first-ballot selections. With only five spots available each year, the numbers didn’t work for Tony.

When the Hall announced a ‘Centennial Class’ for 2020, it appeared Boselli would be a front-runner. But with some momentum as a ‘modern-era’ candidate, the committee put together to select the Centennial Class was looking for players no longer under consideration.

Included in that Centennial Class was Jimbo Covert a tackle for the Chicago Bears. Covert had a similar career to Boselli’s. An All-Decade player, Covert made two All-Pro teams compared to Tony’s three (four unofficially if you count Sports Illustrated’s selections). An perhaps most importantly, Covert played one hundred and eleven games, less than one full season longer than Boselli.

By 2022, Jacoby had moved to the Senior Pool and Faneca, Mawai and Hutchinson had all be elected to the Hall. That left Boselli as the last offensive lineman from that group still on the ballot.

Including Boselli there were six great tackles in his era: Willie Roaf, Jonathan Ogden Orlando Pace, Walter Jones, and Gary Zimmerman.

In the last fifteen years, all have gained entrance to Canton. Hard to believe there are only thirty-one true tackles in the Hall and we’ve put six of them there in recent history.

There were three years where all six of those tackles played together in the NFL. On the All-Pro team for those three years the one constant at tackle was Boselli. The others rotated through the other tackle position.

While researching Tony’s presentation to the Selection Committee, I’ve had a chance to talk to opponents of his era as well as those tackles who played in the same years.

Walter Jones told me “Are you kidding? I wore 71 because of Boselli.”

Willie Roaf said he’d have the video department for the Saints cut up Boselli plays from the previous Sunday and watch them during the week.

“Even though we weren’t even in the same division or even the same conference, I wanted to check my game against his,” he said.

Anthony Munoz considered perhaps the best tackle of all time said of Boselli, “Tony was the best in the era he played. He should be in Canton.”

John Hannah, considered the best guard of all time said of Boselli: “I thought he was the best tackle I’d ever seen play.”

Tony told me that John Randle was the toughest opponent he faced. Randle couldn’t say enough good things about Tony, saying Boselli easily was the best he faced.

“He had the versatility if you combined Gary Zimmerman and Walter Jones,” Randle said.
“Plus, he was just a tough guy.”

Jason Taylor, a first-ballot Hall of Fame defensive end from Miami said it was such a classic beat down Boselli gave him on a Monday night, “If they didn’t turn the lights off, he’d still be kicking my ass. I’m surprised he didn’t beat me all the way to retirement.”

Bruce Smith, whom Boselli handled singlehandedly in the playoffs, after five years of asking said, “He was a stud. He gave me all I could handle. In that era of football, there was none better.”

Tony was on the All-NFL Rookie Team in 1995. The NFL Alumni Association and the NFLPA had an award for the top offensive lineman in the league while Boselli played. He won that award from both organizations in back-to-back years. The only other player to do that was Munoz.

Boselli made five straight Pro Bowls, three straight All-Pro teams and a fourth by Sports Illustrated. The Hall of Fame Selection Committee put him on the All-Decade team of the 90’s even though he only played half the decade.

Well respected Mike Giddings from Pro Scout rated him with five blue seasons, their top rating.

Tony ranks first or second in nearly every quantifiable stat about tackles in the run game, yards per carry to his side. And in the passing game when it comes to sacks allowed.

And he made everybody around him better.

With Boselli at left tackle, the Jaguars had four consecutive winning seasons, went to the playoffs four straight years, and played in two AFC Championship games with him anchoring the offensive line. Head Coach Tom Coughlin, who drafted Boselli, called him “the cornerstone of the franchise.”

The Jaguars won about 60 % of their games with Boselli in the lineup. Without him, well, you know the rest. They’ve won about 25% of their games.

Since tackle is not a quantifiable position with a ton of stats, I talked with Kent Stephenson, the former Seattle, and Steelers OL coach during Boselli’s career. The Jaguars and the Steelers were in the AFC Central when Tony played so they faced each other twice a year. Stephenson said he watched more tape of Boselli than anybody, studying the common opponents every week.

“I have two of my boys in the Hall, Faneca and Dawson, “Stephenson told me. “Tony was in their class He was a great, great player. Did everything well and did it with ease”

“Since we were in the same conference, we played similar opponents I saw him every week,” he added. “You couldn’t help watch him perform, he jumped off the film. He could do it all.”

“There are certain guys that when the lights go on and when the game is on the line, they have something extra. Faneca had that, Dawson had that. Boselli was the same way. They have a little bit of a competitive edge that shows up during competition.”

He played a premium position at left tackle. He handled players like Bruce Smith and Derek Thomas one-on-one. Boselli was athletic, fierce, and could run block or pass protect among the best.

He’s the consensus best tackle of his era by coaches, media, and his peers, and he remains the best player ever to wear a Jaguars uniform. So forever, Tony Boselli will be the first Jaguar to be selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Shad Khan - Jacksonville Jaguars

A Jaguars Fix

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One week to go in the Jaguars’ regular season and we’re looking at a dismal record (again) and the number one draft pick (again) in the 2022 NFL draft. Despite being the one to hire Urban Meyer, give Jaguars Owner Shad Khan credit for firing him when necessary. A captain knows when to make an immediate course correction and right the ship. Khan has had numerous mis-steps in the ten years he’s owned the team but he has also shown a willingness to move on from things that aren’t working.

Whether they keep the number one pick or trade down, the Jaguars need help out of the ‘22 draft and through free agency. Will Khan keep Trent Baalke in place as General Manager? He does tend to keep people he likes around. As a GM and personnel evaluator, Baalke’s track record is spotty and his presence as a team builder could limit the number and the quality of the candidates for the open head coaching position. Khan has said Baalke will be a part of that search but hasn’t said if the current GM will be around making decisions that shape the team in the near future. There’s a bit of a groundswell in the Twittersphere to fire Baalke, but Khan will make that decision based on advice he’s getting from around the league and what he hears from coaching candidates, not from fan pressure.

It must have been one heck of a sales job Meyer did on Khan to convince him that hiring a college coach with a successful, but flawed resume was the right thing to do. From a year or so before his hiring, Meyer was slyly campaigning for the Jaguars job. He can be impressive at first glance. Even his opening press conference with the local media gave a glimmer of hope that he’d adapt to the pro game.

His ability as a CEO-type is what the NFL demands, but his inability to adapt to other adults who have experience, smarts and a willingness to learn led to his ultimate downfall. Meyer was either going to win three Super Bowls or flame out quickly and obviously, the latter was the ultimate outcome. An NFL coach might be the team’s leader and the face of the franchise, but, unlike in college, he has to answer to a variety of voices.

In college, oftentimes the football coach is more powerful than the school President. Meyer found out quickly that organizations like the Fritz Pollard Alliance, advocates for minority hiring in the league, have a big voice. The NFL is a part of society at-large, not some isolated campus that serves as a kingdom to lord over, so long as he’s winning. Based on his actions during his short tenue in the NFL, we can only imagine how many shenanigans Meyer got away with during his college career with nobody having enough “juice” to do anything about it.

So where to now?

As was famously once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” when it comes to winning organizations. It’s especially true in sports where a team with a winning culture, meaning they have habits that make wins happen, beats a more talented group. The Jaguars have had that culture a couple of times. In 2017 during their run to the AFC Championship game, Calais Campbell, Marcedes Lewis, and Paul Posluszny set that culture and it paid off. Players aren’t playing for coaches. They’re playing for each other. Nobody on that team wanted to disappoint the other guys in the locker room. Once those guys were gone, the culture collapsed with no one left capable of picking up the mantle of leadership.

And that’s where the Jaguars have failed under Khan. A willingness to let players move on when they’ve taken a step back in their production on the field, not recognizing their value to the entire organization everywhere else. Khan has to take responsibility for that. As a successful businessman, he knows the value of leadership through the ranks, not just management. Soldiers have to take orders from officers, but it’s the enlisted leaders, sergeants if you will, who keep things in line.

In the late ‘90’s the Jaguars had a winning culture. Their two appearances in the AFC Championship game and their perennial appearances in the playoffs bear that out. Head Coach and GM Tom Coughlin might have set the tone for that, but it was the players who carried it out.

Without a doubt, Tony Boselli was the main cog in that culture. It went through the team with Mark Brunell, Kyle Brady, Keenan McCardell and Fred Taylor setting examples on offense and Clyde Simmons, Jeff Lageman and Dave Thomas doing the same on defense. Go back and look at the starting lineups for the Jaguars’ late ‘90’s teams: Tough guys who had a bit of an edge to them. Talented players who weren’t taking any guff from anybody, including their teammates. Winning NFL cultures, like the Steelers and the Patriots have that year after year. There’s not that much difference between Greg Lloyd and James Harrison when it comes to the kind of players they were on the field. They were “Steelers” type players and there was no mistaking that. They carried the Steelers culture from one generation of players to the next.

That’s why Khan needs to find a role for Tony Boselli in the organization. Boselli is the best player ever to don a Jaguars uniform and his pedigree as a Hall of Fame contender gives him instant credibility among the current generation of NFL players. Whether it’s a title like President of Football Operations or just as a special consultant, Boselli could help a restart for the culture that’s needed inside the Jaguars building.

Follow that hire with a Head Coach who has NFL experience and is more about building a culture than some great offensive or defensive guru. Gus Bradley was that kind of guy but his teams were never mature enough to latch onto what he was trying to teach. Former GM Dave Caldwell takes much of the blame for that, not paying enough attention to what kind of people he was bringing into the organization versus the stats they might provide. Doug Marrone was able to do that, but Caldwell left the cupboard bare after 2017 and without much talent, the team collapsed. Couple that with Coughlin’s inability to adapt to dealing with prima donna’s (see Jalen Ramsey) and you get back to back number one picks.

Through the interview process, Khan should focus on who the candidate is versus what his resume looks like. Clearly Doug Pederson and Jim Caldwell have built winning cultures in the NFL. Can Josh McDaniel bring Bill Bellichick’s culture with him if he ever takes a head coaching job? As a player, Byron Leftwich was aloof and lacked charisma, but that was twenty years ago. Has he developed as a person beyond his player’s mentality? More than his success as a coordinator, can he bring a culture that breeds winning before the first play is ever called? Can Eric Bieniemy bring Andy Reid’s organizational culture along with him?

There are a handful of other candidates where the same question should be asked: Who are they? Winning organizations are built on smart, tough guys. Khan has done that with his other businesses. He needs to apply that thinking to his NFL team.