The playoffs started without the New York Giants on Saturday, which means it is the seventh time in the 12 years Tom Coughlin coached here that the playoffs started without the Giants. But you already know that Coughlins record here will always be complicated, because you already know that all the playoff games he won came in the two Super Bowl runs. In the 10 other seasons Coughlin coached the team, the playoff record was 0-3.
Coughlin didnt forget how to coach. He just wasnt coaching a team as deep or talented as the ones he was coaching when he won the Super Bowl. It figures the Eagles want to at least talk to him. They shouldnt just talk to him, they should hire him, because hes the best guy out there, no matter how many whiz-kid, hot-kid coordinators are in play.
It doesnt mean that the Giants wanting him to leave was some sort of crime, or injustice. It was just sports. The Yankees got tired of Joe Torre and Torre went and managed the Dodgers to the playoffs. Coughlin leaves the Giants because of his record over the past four years and because of all the close games the Giants lost and because they thought he was too old to survive all that. Oh, sure. Coughlins age was the Giant-sized elephant in the room the other day, even if nobody addressed it, Jerry Reese still has a job because hes in his early 50s and Coughlin is in his late 60s. Of course ownership had a right to make a change.
But understand this about Coughlin, once and for all: He will always be the man who coached the Giants to the two most important victories in the history of the franchise. This doesnt diminish the efforts of Ernie Accorsi, the general manager who did so much to assemble the talent in the room for Super Bowl 42, or Reeses efforts as Accorsis top lieutenant and then as Accorsis replacement and responsible for the talent when the Giants beat the Patriots again. But Coughlin made the Giants big again the way Torre made the Yankees big again, until Torre, in his 60s, was the one who got pushed toward the door.
This is also not meant to diminish what Bill Parcells did in winning the Giants their first two Super Bowls. But at a time when people are still talking about the Giants as one of the best operations in all of professional sports despite all the luster that has come off the operation over the past four seasons, you have to understand that it is because of what Coughlins Giants did on two unforgettable Sundays, one in Glendale, Ariz., another in Indianapolis.
It is why Coughlin has to be remembered as important a figure as the team has ever had. His teams won those two games with class and the Giants were once again treated like the first-class section of the sport. You better believe he is worth one more year of salary because, really, how do you ever possibly quantify what he did for this organization?
Coughlin didnt do it alone. But he did it by being himself. Did he change? Sure. He talked about that on Tuesday morning, when he said, Ive changed
and Ive grown and Ive developed and Ive learned. If you dont do that, youre dead.
But he had already said a lot more than that on Tuesday, and if you missed it, you missed as honest and eloquent a valedictory as any coach or manager has ever given here. He reminded you in the process about why he was such a dream candidate for Well Mara and John Mara and Ernie Accorsi when they all hired him. In so many ways, Coughlin was the closest the Giants ever came, in terms of the way he looked at football and the world, to Well Maras old Fordham buddy Vince Lombardi.
Here is just some of what he said, almost like he was giving a closing argument:
In professional football, the goal is to win. We all know that. We understand that completely. But my contention is, when I first brought this up was with our 07 team, my contention is theres a higher ground. Theres a greater purpose. That purpose is team. It is the team concept.
Winning, losing, playing hard, playing well, doing it for each other, winning the right way, winning the right way is a very, very important thing to me and all of our coaches. Thats what motivates and inspires us.
Championships are won by teams who love one another, who love and respect one another, who play for and support one another.
In the NFL its important to all 32 owners, to all coaches, whether they be young or old, to realize that we have an obligation to teach these young men the lessons, the principles and the life skills that they will need once their professional careers are over. And they are short-lived, by the way.
While it is the job of the head coach to get the technical football right, obviously thats why we get hired, to make sure the Xs and Os are efficient, that the players have a great plan, and that plan allows them to go forth and have a chance to win games. It is our duty to equip these men with the virtues that will last a lifetime, the values like honesty, trust, responsibility, respect, service and integrity, those are the things that we teach in addition to the football.
Its easy to be snarky and cynical about the things Coughlin said at his press conference, or act as if these were sentiments about men and sports and the brotherhood of sports out of the past. Just not with the Giants, who thrive and feast on the past, and the romance of old glory.
Did his teams do enough in the playoffs? They did not. Finally they stopped making the playoffs altogether. It was the right time for him to move on and for the team to move on, the way another playoff season moved on without the Giants this weekend.
Do I think Parcells was a better football coach, even though he and Coughlin won the same number of Super Bowls? I do, because of the second act that Parcells had with the Patriots, taking them to the Super Bowl, and probably coming closer than you think to doing the same with the Cowboys.
But he was not more important than Tom Coughlin was to the New York Giants. No coach in the history of the team ever has been. Coughlin didnt just put them back on top, and restore prestige to them. He coached them the way Well Mara wanted them coached. He absolutely was their Lombardi, even if he didnt win here as much as Lombardi won in Green Bay. Lombardi went and coached Washington after the Packers. Coughlin can go coach the Eagles.
Hall hypocrisy, playing a Trump card, and Ew gotta love Porzingis ...
-We thought the story of Wildcard Saturday in the NFL was going to be the Chiefs, who havent lost since the middle of October, winning their 11th game in a row.
But then came the embarrassing ending to Saturday nights game in Cincinnati, when the Bengals ruined a wet, wild fourth quarter comeback because of a cheap-shot penalty to the head by Vontaze Berfict, and then a boneheaded penalty by Pacman Jones right after that.
Maybe Marvin Lewis, the Bengals coach, isnt going to have a job for life there after all.
-The Yankees are clearly on their way to having the first all-bullpen pitching staff.
Okay, its starting to look as if Jordan Spieth really isnt a flash in the pan, right?
How are the 49ers doing without Jim Harbaugh so far?
-You think any of the people accusing Hall of Fame voters of being judgmental and self-righteous about steroid users ever process how judgmental and self-righteous theyre being?
Of course that would involve a level of self-awareness or at least irony that is almost impossible to find in the media sometimes.
But it really is my favorite part of the whole process, the moralizers accusing anybody who disagrees with them of moralizing!
Okay, when Washington was 2-4 and the Packers were 6-0, who wouldve had the Pack going to Washington for a playoff game, and for that game to be a toss-up?
Out of the 6,000 or so bowl games played so far, about five of them have been any good.
And five might be on the high side.
If I had been asked to bet my own money when the Republican race for President was just starting up at the end of last winter, I would have bet on Jeb Bush.
Only then Donald Trump got into the race, and went right at Bush before he went at everybody else, and somehow convinced the whole world that Jeb being a low energy guy was something that ought to have him on no-fly lists.
-Who passed the law that everybody who does have a Hall of Fame vote in baseball has to explain his/her ballot to us?
The amazing thing about the Presidents executive action on guns the other day was that he didnt even try to hit the ball out of the park, he just tried to put it in play somewhere.
What, the Mets are doomed already?
I keep wondering why all the people who are such experts on baseball drugs now didnt tell us a whole lot more about them back in the 1990s when they had the chance.
Because that would have been really, really helpful.
-The kid Porzingis is going to have stretches that make you think he cant throw the ball in the East River, and hes going to get tired as the season goes along, and hes going to make mistakes, because thats what 20-year-old guys playing on this kind of stage do.
And then once we get through all that, he is going to be the most important Knicks player since Patrick Ewing.
Okay: Who do you want to be the starting quarterback for the Jets next September?
Im just going to come right out with this:
If it gets close between the Seahawks and the Vikings on Sunday, I wouldnt have Russell Wilson throw one of those slant passes in the red zone.
Just saying.
-Yoenis Cespedes was never going to win the MVP award in the National League last season, even though he was the MVP of August and September for the Mets.
We saw what he did, and we know how it all came out for the Mets, over two months when he was as exciting a hitter as the Mets have ever had.
Id love to have him back.
But how many years would you give him, and how much money?
Its not Cespedes fault that hes moved around the way he has since he got to the big leagues.
Still: If he doesnt come back to the Mets, h**l be playing with his fifth team in three years, and its kind of a worlds record for somebody as talented as he is.
When you look at the Yankee payroll, still as far north over $200 million as it is, you cant help but notice they spent a total of $300 million on Masahiro Tanaka and Jacoby Ellsbury.
Every time I hear that a coach or manager is supposed to be too old, I remember Trader Jack McKeon managing the Marlins to the World Series when he was 72 years old.
Does Prokhorov own New York City yet in basketball?
The Spurs were lucky to get that game off the Knicks Friday night, mostly because you and I had a better chance of making that last shot than Jose Calderon did.
But, man oh man, all the people who think the Golden State Warriors have already punched their ticket back to the NBA Finals better look at the way the Spurs are still playing ball.
Well, if you had El Chapo making it to wild card weekend as a free man, you sort of lost.
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/giants/lupica-tom-coughlin-important-giants-coach-article-1.2491398
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