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
What did you guys see when you watched the Giants' game Sunday?

Did you see a team that had quit? Did you see a team just crying out for the end of the season? Did you see a team that knew it was going to lose and couldn't have cared any less?

Nope, you didn't see any of those things. What you saw was a team giving 100 percent, a team that had a game in its grip and then let it slip. But breakdowns happen, to all teams. That's how teams win and that's how teams lose.

There was a story, most of you are probably aware of, in the New York Post on Sunday, one that said the players hate Tom Coughlin and that even some of the assistant coaches hate him, too.

This is surprising? How do you think players felt when they played for Vince Lombardi or Bill Parcells or Tom Landry or hundreds of the less successful head coaches? You aren't guaranteed of having a coach who loves you, or one in whom you can invest your love. This is football, children. Deal with it. Coaches want to win because they like to eat and pay their bills. It's a lot more fun then begging for a new job, or going from being a head coach in the NFL to some kind of assistant coach grunt just to keep a paycheck coming in.

So players are unhappy? Golly, maybe they'd like to join the ranks of the civilians and work for a living. And maybe they'll find a boss who is even more difficult to deal with than Coughlin. But then, you see, there won't be any newspaperman around to listen to his bitching and write it all down and silently thank the idiot for giving him an easy story in the next day's issues.

Players don't like Tom Coughlin. That's true. Some of his assistant coaches don't like him, either, and that is equally true. He is harsh and he is abrupt and he is stern and strict and all those things. And the only intelligent reaction is: SO WHAT?

Deal with it. Play better. Win a game or two. Don't get involved in this nonsense that has led to eight straight losses and a 5-10 record with one game remaining, next Sunday night against Dallas. Oh, Dallas. That's the team with Parcells as the head coach, and there are a lot of guys on that team who don't like him, either. And isn't he one of Coughlin's mentors? Absolutely.

Players don't have to like their coach; the hard truth is that they must fear him. Guys on all those great Packer teams under Lombardi laughed at Ray Nitschke's line, one that became sort of their war cry: "Lombardi treats us all the same. Like dogs."

Imagine how Lombardi would have reacted to an eight-game losing streak. Just try. You won't be able to do it because no Lombardi team would ever lose eight in a row. You have to trust that statement. It would never happen. You think fining players is unreasonable? That would be the least of Lombardi's reactions. Nobody really liked the old man, except in some weird love/hate context, but they sure did play for him.

"Why? That's easy," said guard Jerry Kramer one day. "We are more afraid of him than the guys on the other side of the line of scrimmage, that's why."

So what we have here are players taking the easy way out. The ones who said they hate Coughlin will probably not be back next season. But the ones who played their hearts out in Cincinnati, who didn't look like they were part of a losing team, they'll be back. And the ones who hate the coach will be deeply disappointed because nobody is going to honor their request that he get fired.

You know how they say that it's easier to fire a coach than 25 players? That's usually true, but not in this case. Like it or not, Tom Coughlin is going to remain the head coach of the Giants, and like it or not, the players are going to have to deal with it.

According to the story in the Post -- and don't you just love it when identifications such as "one Giant said" and "another veteran added" are all you get? -- there are players who will not play for him. "Guys absolutely hate Tom Coughlin," one Giant allegedly said. "He's not the type of coach we're going to go out and put everyone on the line for. Guys don't play for him; we play because we have to play and you're not going to win that way. Arguments go on every day in that building [Giants Stadium, one assumes], cursing out between the players and the coaches. It's the coaches against the players, it's Coughlin against the [assistant] coaches. There's no team atmosphere or camaraderie."

You know what? The guy who said "we play because we have to play" shouldn't let that bother him. He doesn't have to play. Honest, he can go do something else. Maybe bag groceries or drive a cab or something equally rewarding and fulfilling, you know?

Then the story added that one day Coughlin petitioned the players "to stick up for him" when dealing with the media. Hey, you know what? There aren't that many players who deal with the media anyway. "He came into a meeting the other day and asked us to support him in the media," one Giant veteran supposedly said. "He asked everybody to stand by him and support him and say the right things."

Remember, this is alleged. Besides, it has been a long time since I knew any coach who cared what the media thought of him.

So there you have it. Either the story in the New York Post was a neat piece of fiction, or players are unhappy but not stupid enough to allow their names to be used. In that case, it's as if nobody said those things, which may be the way they want it. Usually, when an athlete asks that his name not be used if he says something controversial, you can assume one of two things: 1) He has another agenda entirely or 2) the word that comes most quickly to mind is coward.

It is unlikely that the guy who free-lanced this piece for the Post was dabbling in fiction. I know him and I'd be astonished if that was the case. I also understand that he was told things by certain players that were just too juicy to pass up -- and where better to use them than in the Post?

Here, as a bonus (and I'll use my name) is something pertaining to Coughlin that you may now have known. For one thing, he wasn't general manager Ernie Accorsi's first choice. Wellington Mara and his son John were anxious to land Coughlin, and they may not have been wrong, in the long run.

Another thing: You Giant fans, at least you E-GIANTS Giant fans, have been screaming for Ernie's head for two or three years. Rest easy. If not this year, then next. That part will be easy. It's just business, you know? Ernie is old enough to retire and he won't need food stamps if he does. The difficult part -- very, very difficult -- will be to find a new general manager who will agree to work under whatever set of rules that was extended to Coughlin.

Like him or not, hate him or not, he must be an extremely difficult man to work for or with.

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

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