New York Giants’ fans showed up that December day at the Meadowlands in a festive mood, but the game eventually went sour, then haywire, so some of them launched a chant that rang throughout the big stadium next to the New Jersey Turnpike.
Their serenade to the seemingly doomed coach: “Fire Coughlin!”
That did not happen Sunday, or two or five years ago, or even in 2009, when the Giants followed up a 12-4 season with an 8-8 clunker. That moment took place way back on Christmas Eve 2006, when the Giants lost to the New Orleans Saints, 30-7, at old Giants Stadium.
So, in other words, Tom Coughlin, who is still the Giants’ coach three months past his 69th birthday, has been on the firing line for nine years in New York. He also has won two Super Bowls, which is why he gets reprieves.
He was thought, again, to be gone for sure in 2010, replaced by Bill Cowher, and again in 2013, when the Giants started 0-6. But they won their next four, and seven of their last 10 two years ago, so Coughlin kept his job. Last year, Coughlin even got a contract extension through 2016.
The Giants have had a horrible season, Coughlin’s 12th as their coach. What happened Sunday at MetLife Stadium might have been the low point. Derailed by a questionable play call by Coughlin, the Giants blew a 10-point fourth-quarter lead and lost in overtime to their rivals for back-page tabloid space, the New York Jets, 23-20.
It was the fifth time this season that the Giants lost a lead late in the fourth quarter. They lost to Dallas, 27-26, on a touchdown with 7 seconds left; to Atlanta, 24-20, on a touchdown with 1:14 left; to New Orleans, 52-49, on a Saints’ touchdown and field goal in the final minute, and on Sunday to the Jets, who scored a game-tying touchdown with 27 seconds left.
But the other three teams in the NFC East are also lousy, so the Giants, led by the perpetually grumpy and seemingly washed-up Coughlin, actually have a half-decent chance to, yes, win the division and get into the playoffs. Every division champ makes it! Woo-hoo!
And look at this: today Tom Coughlin’s Giants are in a three-way tie for first place. Dan Bailey kicked a 54-yard field goal with nine seconds left Monday night to lift the downtrodden Dallas Cowboys (4-8) over Washington (5-7) in a dreadful game at Landover, Maryland, 19-16.
The game was dreadful partly because the score was tied, 9-9, entering the final two minutes, but Washington showboat DeSean Jackson, the cause of agita for Coughlin earlier in his career, ran backwards and fumbled away a punt return at his 15, leading to a Dallas touchdown. Then Jackson caught a 28-yard touchdown pass. But there were 44 seconds to play, and Lucky Whitehead returned the kickoff 46 yards to help set up Bailey.
Washington is tied with the Giants and Philadelphia (5-7), which overcame two straight losses by a combined 59 points to upset New England on Sunday, 35-28. It is quite possible that the division title could be decided when the Eagles play at MetLife Stadium on January 3. Washington plays at Dallas that day. Figure that none of the four will finish with four victories.
Late in his news conference Monday afternoon at the Giants’ facility in East Rutherford, a couple of booming kickoffs from MetLife Stadium, Coughlin was asked if he’d be rooting hard for the Cowboys later Monday. Coughlin just smiled.
Earlier, he was asked what he planned to do these four weeks. He said, “Keep coaching. Keep working, keep grinding, keep planning, keep deciding, keep making decisions based on what we have. Be aggressive. Don’t sit back because the world thinks it’s not getting done. We know better.”
His grouchy sideline demeanor notwithstanding, Coughlin is an honorable man and a good coach: a disciple of (and former assistant to) Bill Parcells, the Giants , would not have won two Super Bowls without Coughlin. The Giants’ owners, John Mara and Steve Tisch, could have sacked him with good reason a couple of times. He is still hanging tough.
Sometimes, he makes decisions that are almost destined to be second-guessed, but he dares to defy the Monday morning quarterbacks. Without even being asked about it late Sunday afternoon, he immediately defended going for a touchdown on a fourth-and-two play from the Jets’ four-yard line midway through the fourth quarter.
The Giants led at the time, 20-10. A chip-shot 21- or 22-yard field goal would have put the Giants up by 13 points with less than nine minutes to play. But Eli Manning’s pass was intercepted by Jets defensive back Rontez Miles. The Jets tied the game with 27 seconds left and won in overtime when Josh Brown’s potential game-tying field goal try sailed wide left.
Coughlin said after the game that he stood by his decision – not that he was thrilled with the outcome. He went for it on fourth down because he knew he needed more than three points because the Giants’ defense had shown it was not capable of wrapping up victories this season. It proceeded to prove that very point.
“Pretty frustrating, to be honest with you,” he said Monday. “But you know what, I’ve always done it this way. I blame myself.”
Asked if he paid much attention to people who were saying, again, that his coaching days are over, Coughlin said evenly: “I’m trying to stay focused for the benefit of my team, my coaches, and everybody else. Quite frankly, you can all disagree, but we’re trying to win games the best way we can. To be honest with you, nobody knows my team better than I know my team.
“So when you sit in judgment of what goes on, it’s all been thought out, whether you like it or not, whether it’s right or wrong. Had some of these things been things that we would have accomplished, it’d be a little bit different story. The majority of what we’ve done, and you well know it, is to try to put ourselves in a position where that last drive is not going to put us in the situation we’ve been in four or five times, and obviously it hasn’t happened. We’ve tried for touchdowns instead of field goals, and it hasn’t happened.”
He missed the point that getting a field goal to happen on fourth-and-two from the opponents’ four is a lot easier than getting a touchdown to happen, especially when a field goal would have put the other team two touchdowns (or a touchdown and two field goals) behind with eight minutes to play. But, the fact is, Coughlin is right. Nobody knows his team better.
They probably won’t be able to hang on to leads any better in the last four games of the season than they did in the first 12. But the Giants, after all of this, have a bona fide chance to make the playoffs – as they did in 2006 – and keep Coach Grandpa out of a rocking chair for one more year.
