E-GIANTS
Dave Klein was the Giants' beat writer
for The Star-Ledger from 1961 to 1995.
He is the author of 26 books and he is one of
only five sportswriters to have covered all the Super Bowls.
Dave has allowed TEAM GIANTS to reprint some of his articles.

By DAVE KLEIN
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- This is a truly big game.

It has all the ingredients -- the returning former head coach, the nearly-sainted Bill Parcells, who gave the Giants their only two Super Bowl victories; the young, electrifying quarterback, Eli Manning, who seemingly single-handedly has rebuilt this once-proud but lately down-and-out franchise; the fact that Parcells' Dallas Cowboys, without a doubt the most hated opponent of Giant fans everywhere, are tied with the locals for first place in the NFC East.

Want more? Both are coming off overtime defeats, but the Giants' 24-21 loss in Seattle was arguably their best game of the season, and in defeat they left the field with the heads up and their immediate future bright.

Want more? The Giants' second-year head coach, the tightly-wound Tom Coughlin, cut his NFL teeth on Parcells' staff with the Giants, and even today -- actually yesterday -- Tuna called Thomas Richard Coughlin "one of my favorite coaches that I've ever worked with. I think we have a lot in common in terms of what are interests are and our feeling about the game. I think the thing that I really respect most about Tom is that he has respect for the game and his predecessors and that's almost been important to me."

Parcells respects Coughlin's hard-working ethic and the fact that he climbed up from the depths to become a successful head coach -- "you know, lining the fields and doing the wash and that's kind of the way I started at Hastings College [Nebraska]. So he's paid his dues."

Want more? The players are pumped, honestly pumped. The feeling in the locker room is that they simply can't wait. They beat the Cowboys in the final game of the 2004 season and that was Manning's first victory. They should have won last time, this past Oct. 16 when they gave away too much and finally lost in overtime, 16-13.

And finally, if you don't think this is a big game, try to buy a pair of moderate location tickets. Oh, you can, of course. You just have to be willing to part with $400 for each of them.

In talking with Parcells yesterday on a conference call, somebody asked if he thought this would be another close game, and his answer showed indisputably where Coughlin learned his interview style. "I don't have a crystal ball," Parcells said. "I don't know how many times we were going to fumble. We turned the ball over four times down here [in October] and I would venture to say if that happens up there, we won't do very well."

They are, in many ways, peas in a pod. When Parcells got the job in Dallas, after he was wooed and pursued by curmudgeon owner Jerry Jones, he phoned Coughlin. "I didn't try to talk Tom into anything," he said. But I did say, look, if I'm coaching as long as I'm alive, you would always have a job with me if you wanted it. And that was just a reassuring thing to him that if things didn't go exactly the way he wanted them to, he knew he would have a place with me. I wasn't trying to talk him into coaching or coming to Dallas. I was just telling him that he could rely on that from me if he had to."

Parcells lost his brother, Donald, earlier this month, and that has left him, well, somewhat different. "My brother and I were close. I really talked enough about it, but he's the guy I slept in bed with when we were young. We used to go into the ocean at 7:30 in the morning and come out at 5:30 at night. That was the guy I was doing all that with when I was a kid. You don't have any of those. I have another brother and I love him very much, but by the time he was six years old I was off to college. So I didn't have quite the same relationship with him. It's not the same kind that I had with Don. So it was a different deal and that was hard on me [his death due to a brain tumor]. I have to tell you that, very hard.”

There has always been more to Parcells than he has let anyone see, even bits and pieces of humanity. Coughlin has been described as "Bill Parcells without the sense of humor," and perhaps he does have one, but he never shows it.

One summer during training camp linebacker Carl Banks had a sprained ankle, so day after day he'd sit on the stationery bike on the sidelines peddling and peddling while the other players sweated and bled on the field until the baking 100-degree sun. One day Parcells walked past him and said: "Hey, Carl, when do you think you'll be ready?"

Banks smiled. "Just a few more days, coach."

Parcells blew up. "Hey, Carl, I'll tell you what. You can start peddling and get all the way home if you don't get ready to practice, you know?"

He was on the field that afternoon. The party, as they say, was over.

He is not a bad man, not really, but Parcells doesn't spare anyone's feelings and he has an agenda from which he will not deviate. But occasionally, briefly, well . . . here, the day he saved your old reporter from severe embarrassment.

This was when Lawrence Taylor and Leonard Marshall were tearing up the NFL, trading sacks like they were candy apples. So one day, your bright reporter asked, in front of a group of reporters: "Hey, Bill, if these two are your best pass-rushers, why don't you put one on either end of the [defensive] line?"

He stared. "I answer that later," he snapped.

Later came, at a time when we were alone, and he looked at me. "That," he said, "was the dumbest question you have ever asked."

"Why?" I improvised, properly chastised.

"Because if I put them on each end of the line, the offense can double team each of them," he said. "When they play on the same side, they can't double both of them, so whoever they choose to double, they're wrong. Got it?"

Yeah, Bill, and thanks.

And this still is the biggest game the Giants will play this season -- to now, at any rate -- because if they lose there probably won't be many more big ones as the season dwindles. But if they win, they're in first place all alone with four games to go.

Check out Dave's website at E-GIANTS where you can subscribe to his newsletters which run much more frequently than what is available here.
- Team Giants

NEW - Send a request to davesklein@aol.com for a free week's worth of news!

Stop in and visit "Mike's Keys to the Internet"
Links to every newspaper and magazine that's available on the net. 

Website by Mike