"In his first month as Jaguars head coach, Mike Mularkey hired a 21-man coaching staff, talked to every player on the team and started putting together the team's playbook.

He's upbeat about the way things have fallen into place.

"I think it's going to work here. I really think it's going to work now that I have this staff together,'' he said. "This is an unbelievable bunch of people I hired. Great people, great coaches."

Choosing which coaches to retain and which not to were often difficult decisions.

"There weren't any bad vibes or bad feeling through the whole process, which is very hard to do these days," he said.

He was also upfront in his discussions with coaches.

For example, he told offensive line coach Andy Heck that he was in the mix, but Mularkey was looking at two other candidates — Russ Grimm of Arizona and Paul Boudreau, who was fired in Atlanta.

When Grimm decided to stay in Arizona and Boudreau took the St. Louis job because the Rams offered his son a position, Mularkey turned to Heck.

And he considers it a coup to have lured Jerry Sullivan, 65, out of retirement to coach the wide receivers."