Giants: Simms comments

I don't want to plug a show on this blog (not that this blog carries so much weight in the sports entertainment world), but I do want to relay what this week's episode of Inside the NFL on Show Time had to say about the Giants-Eagles game. First of all, the idiots spent more time discussing whether Coughlin was right or wrong yelling at punter Matt Dodge after the game than they did actually analyzing the game. Like anybody gives two hoots about that. They actually spent more time castigating Coughlin for it - poor rookie Dodge, lots of other things went wrong in the game, it wasn't just his fault. Blah, blah, blah. What a bunch of dopes. Look at it this way - here we are discussing whether Coughlin should be fired or not, in fact everyone in the league is talking about that. If the Giants had won the game, they would have virtually clinched the division title and probably a 2 seed in the playoffs, which would give them a leg up to win the title. I think the coach can be forgiven a momentary explosion for, in one moment, going from seeking a title to possibly getting fired and should be given a pass for yelling at the punter. This is especially true when he has been extraordinarily patient with him all year, kept him on the team after numerous punting mistakes, and nurtured him into a decent punter, notwithstanding this terrible mistake. The guy may have cost Coughlin millions of dollars and a place in NFL history. That's all.

After these idiots finished discussing the Coughlin yelling incident, they got to the game - discussing why and how the Giants lost. Simms said exactly what I did on this blog. This was an enormous failure of the coaching staff. When the Giants went ahead on the Boss TD by 31-10 with 8 minutes left, they should have gone back to playing a conservative defense, not rushed so much and made the Eagles earn every yard instead of giving them big chunks by gambling on exotic blitzes. Every big play the Eagles made, said Simms, was on a Giants blitz. He further said that it doesn't matter that the aggressive defense was working up until that point, it was the time in the game to dial it back. That's what coaches are supposed to do - recognize when the tempo in the game needs to be changed and when to go from an aggressive to a conservative tone, both on offense and defense. The mistakes that the players made happened when they were exposed by these blitzes.

Just so you know - Warren Sapp thinks the Giants are done.

Coughlin may survive this season. I am not saying he must get fired, although the ST coach surely has to go and it would be nice to get an OC in here with some fresh ideas. But - if the Giants lose their last two games and don't make the playoffs, there is a chance that Coughlin will not be brought back. If that happens, the question is, who should be the next coach. Cowher's name has been bandied about, but I don't like Cowher as a replacement for Coughlin. He's the same coach in a different skin. Perhaps he had marginally more success in Pittsburgh, but he's got the same attitude, the same personality and is cut out of the same cloth. If the Giants were to look for a new coach, I would not mind if John Fox come back to the Meadowlands, even though he has had some mediocre results and may have underachieved a bit since he took the Panthers on their Super Bowl run a few years ago. The coaches I would really like and may be available are: Jeff Fisher, who will probably become available in Tennessee because of the Vince Young mess or Marty Monhinweg, the OC at Philadelphia. He is very creative and has some HC experience, though it was not a very successful run. The Falcon OC, Mularkey and the Saints OC Carmichael are also very creative, but I am not sure if they are HC material.

Giants: Injuries again

All the papers are making a big deal about Giants second half swoons under Coughlin. It's such rubbish - you can't just look at a few seasons and the second half record to determine the coach's ability. The worst second half results that Coughlin had with the Giants, statistically at least, were in 2006 and 2009. In 2006, Giants started 6-2 and finished 2-6. In 2009, Giants started 5-0 and finished 3-8, but in both seasons the Giants were absolutely decimated by injuries. I won't go over the details, but the injuries were focused on the defense and they had no chance to win. It wasn't about coaching, it was about injuries.... and they certainly didn't seem to fold in the second half of the 2007 season. If you want to look at Coughlin's coaching record from the macro level, you just need to realize that he was a successful, winning coach everywhere he coached and in each case he took weak or nonexistent programs and built them into winners. He came from the Bill Parcells coaching tree and was an assistant coach on the 1990 Superbowl team. He developed a close bond with Bellichick, as Coughlin was the WR coach and Bellichick was the DB coach. They worked long and hard together figuring out how to make each of their opposing units excel. In Jacksonville he was the first coach of the expansion team, meaning he built everything form the ground up, and he took the Jaguars to two conference championships. He got into some salary cap problems there and was fired. He took a year off coaching and went to coach at Boston College. When he took over, the program was in a shambles and he built it up so that it was a strong winning program again and he beat Notre Dame, still a college football power when he played them. He came to the Giants and took over a 4-12 team from Jim Fassel. He tutored a rookie QB in 2004, made the playoffs in 2005 and 2006, with the 2005 season being a division championship. I don't have to tell you what he did in 2007. In 2008, the team was 12-1 and was undone by the Plaxico Burress shooting incident. In the 5 years that Eli was a starting QB for the full season, he made the playoffs 4 times and won 1 title. That's a good record and talk of second half declines are just stupid. Maybe we could say that the team reached its true level and his expert coaching elevated the team in the first half of the season. That would be stupid also, of course - each season needs to be considered on its own merits and analyzed separately. He is a good coach, with some flaws to be sure, but certainly one of the better coaches in the league.

The worry we should have about the Giants is the injuries cropping up again, all focused on one side of the ball. Last year it was the defense that got hammered and this year the injuries are focused around the offense. Giants came into the season pretty deep on the OL but now have lost Beatty, Diehl, Koets and O'Hara. Only Koets is done for the season, so perhaps when the other guys come back, the Giants can be strengthened again. Certainly the difficulty running the ball Sunday against the Cowboys was contributed to by the loss of OL-men. O'Hara was a beast in game one against the Cowboys and he freed Seubert to pull and do his best work of the year. With Seubert doing duty at C, Giants used Boothe at G and he is much less mobile and capable than Seubert at that position. I don't have to tell you that Boothe got called for the crushing holding penalty that nullified the Nicks TD. Giants need to survive until these guys get back.

Another key injury is the Steve Smith pectoral muscle tear. It looked like Barden was really stepping up and filling in competently in his first significant action of the season, but now he is gone for the year with torn ligaments and a broken ankle. Giants resurrected Derek Hagan who made the team last year and was a surprise cut at the end of training camp this year. I hope he's been keeping in shape.

As with the OL injuries, Giants don't need Hagan to play at a pro-bowl level. We need him to play well enough so the Giants offense doesn't really suffer; the Giants can at least win the games that they need to win and hold down the fort until the starters get back.

Giants: about Coughlin

Tom Coughlin rallied the Giants to a Superbowl in 2007 when he had one foot nearly out the door following a weak 2006 season. Giants made the playoffs that year, but all was not right in Giants land and the state of the franchise seemed to be uneven. The Giants had a worse year in 2006 than they did the previous year, going 8-8 after a record of 11-5 in 2005 (which ended with that horrible 23-0 playoff loss to the Panthers). In 2006, they went out in the first round of the playoffs against the hated rival Eagles and even though the game was tied late in the 4th quarter, you never really had the feeling that the Giants could win that game. The advancement of the franchise QB was a bit choppy. The relationship between the players and the coaches was contentious, and that goes for all of the coaches, not just the head coach. The DC, Tim Lewis, was broadly disliked by the players and he did not get a lot out of them; did not coach and get them to develop their skills. The OC Hufnagel was unimaginative and was relieved of his duties late in the year. A team with a lot of uncertainty and almost dysfunction is what the Giants owners were looking at after the 2006 season in deciding the fate of HC Coughlin. They were this close to sending him packing, but he promised to change his ways and they gave him one more chance. So Coughlin became a bit more of a player's coach, communicated with the players more effectively and although he remained firm, he did not use yelling, scolding and screaming as his only means of coaching the players. He also fired the DC, Tim Lewis, installed Gilbride as OC and hired a new QB coach, Chris Palmer. The team responded to all the changes, went on one of the great playoff rolls in sports and beat the favored Patriots for the title in one of the greatest upsets in Super Bowl history. Coughlin was hailed as a brilliant coach and when he followed it up with another great year in 2008, which was unfortunately disrupted by the Plaxico Burress gun incident, and ended with a playoff loss to the Eagles, he was widely viewed as one of the top coaches in the NFL. I would like to take a look at Coughlin now, a few years removed from that unlikely 2007 title and analyze his strengths and weaknesses as a coach.

Whenever we analyze the top coaches and examine their legacy to the sport, we always talk about "the coaching tree" that they planted. The great coaches leave not only championships and playoff wins in their resume but also a cadre of assistant coaches that become successful either as coordinators in other programs or as HCs themselves. For example, Bill Walsh had on his staff future head coaches like: Mike Holmgren, George Seifert, Dennis Green, Sam Wyche and Jim Fassel. Just going through this in my head, without looking it up, I think this group had two Superbowl wins (Holmgren and Seifert), two other Superbowl appearances (Fassel, Wyche) and some very successful season by Dennis Green up in Minnesota. These coaches themselves spawned other successful coaches including John Gruden, Mike Shanahan, Steve Mariucci, Andy Reid and some others. Therefore, I would argue that the most important job a HC has is picking and training his assistants. Parcells had Bellichick, Crennel, Weiss, Coughlin himself and even had Sean Payton down in Dallas after he left the Giants. Parcells was great at picking talented coaches and did a masterful job training them in his philosophy once he got them. I never loved Jim Fassel as a coach, but give him credit in picking his coordinators: two coaches that went on to great success as HC in the league: John Fox and Sean Payton who now have two Superbowl appearances and one title between them.

If you look at Coughlin's record on the Giants at picking assistants, his record is definitely spotty. He picked Tim Lewis as his first DC, Hufnagel as his first OC and both were complete washouts. As I said, Hufnagel was stripped of his duties before year end and Lewis was fired at the end of the year after poor results and a virtual player revolt. Coughlin also took Gilbride as his first QB coach and Manning did not improve his mechanics or his play at all under Gilbride - he blossomed when Palmer came in to be QB coach. Gilbride got shifted to OC and to be fair, his performance can probably be termed competent, though certainly he is not the most imaginative offensive mind in the NFL. Give Coughlin credit for finding Spagnuolo who did a great job following Lewis, but when Spags left for the Rams, Couglin promoted from within and named Sheridan who also was a total bust. Some of the position coaches are pretty good. Flaherty, the OL coach is one of the best in the NFL and I also like Giunta and Merrit, the S and DB coaches. But he certainly does not have a great record picking assistants. Sometimes assistant coaches can get off to a bad start, not have a good fit with the team or players but then excel elsewhere in the NFL. For example, Sean Payton was bumped by Fassel and went on to success. However, Lewis and Hufnagel are out of the NFL now and Sheridan, after being DC with the Giants was hired as an assistant LB coach with the Dolphins. Hear that??? not LB coach, but assistant LB coach. Obviously, he is not exactly highly regarded among his peers.

I also get the feeling that Coughlin is completely hands-off, to a fault, with his assistants when it comes to their game planning. Just like in business, where a manager of managers has to find the right level of involvement to influence direction but not interfere, the HC has to have input to personnel decisions and game planning while not undermining the chain of command and the authority of his assistants. Last year, when Sheridan was clearly floundering with his schemes and his play calls, Coughlin did not step in and guide or suggest ways to improve things. Sheridan leaked to the press that the Giants defense was not physical and there was nothing he could do. Terrible thing for a coach to do - to throw his players under the bus like that - they certainly are not going to be motivated to play for him then. Players were freelancing because they did not trust the play calls which led to more breakdowns and missed assignments. Sheridan's response was to yell more, to become more removed and distant, and to simplify things even more, as if the blown assignments were because the defenses were too confusing. The players were unhappy, but Coughlin did not step in to guide first time DC Sheridan in how to ameliorate the situation. He let him sink and fired him  summarily at the end of the year. This did not reflect well on Coughlin.

That having been said, the NFL is a results oriented league and Coughlin's results have been good. He took over a 4-12 team in 2004 with a rookie QB. If you exclude that first year, where he was remaking the roster and training his rookie qb, he made the playoffs 4 out of the next 5 years, with one title to his credit. He trained that QB into a franchise player and is set up with a pretty good team in 2010. This is a big year for Coughlin. If he fails badly with this talent, his future tenure may be questioned.