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| E-GIANTS By
DAVE KLEIN If the Giants are going to win their game Saturday night against that team from a little suburb of Boston that has a fairly impressive record, what exactly will they have to do? Run the ball. Let me make that clear. RUN THE BALL. Oh, yes, and play defense, that jolting, bone-crunching style of defense they have often, but not always, been able to produce in big games. The run and the knockout punch, so to speak, are what might beat the New England Patriots, and that's might, as in MIGHT. This is a team far better than excellent, driven by a head coach, Bill Belichick, who is driven by intimations of grandeur, a man who has devoted his coaching career to doing it one better than his mentor, with whom he had a serious falling-out, Bill Parcells. He has won three Super Bowls and Parcells has won two. He is excruciatingly close to something Parcells never did and will never do, coach through an undefeated season. Even the setting is perfect for him Saturday night. The game is against the Giants and it's in Giants Stadium. He used to work for the team, and he coaches (albeit in an assistant's capacity) here, and one of his fondest dreams was to one day replace Parcells as the Giants' head coach. That desire to be the Giants' head coach, and its ultimate failure, serves as the root of his hard feelings toward the organization. It all began in February of 1991, just weeks after the Giants won their second (and last) Super Bowl. There were rumblings that Parcells was going to take a walk, that he could no longer deal with the late general manager, George Young, and since he was not only a mentor but a close friend to Belichick, word got to "Little Bill" early. At the same time, the Cleveland Browns seeking a replacement for interim coach Jim Shofner and they asked Young for permission to talk to Belichick. Permission was granted, and Young informed his young coach of the decision. Belichick was reluctant. "If I don't take this job," he reportedly asked, "will I have a strong chance to replace Bill if he retires?" Young said no. Belichick left. And that's the root of the hard feelings. Belichick and current Giants' head coach Tom Coughlin worked together on Parcells' staff from 1988 through 1990, and had intense contact every day. "Tom coached the receivers and I coached the defensive backs," Belichick said, "so we worked together in one-on-one drills, seven-on-seven, you know, all the passing drills. We had a good relationship. Tom was a good guy to work with. He's smart and I think we both learned a lot from each other about different receiver techniques and coverages. "He would say, 'Here's the way this corner is playing us [and] it's really giving us a hard time' and I'd take a look at that, or vice versa. I'd say, 'Hey, Tom, here's a route that we're having a lot of trouble covering. This might be something you might want to take a look at.' So it was good, we talked a lot about the passing game and individual techniques and all of that in those two years, and I probably had as good a working relationship as Tom as anybody I've worked with as an assistant coach. He does a good job. He's very detailed, a precision guy who's well prepared. He studies hard and has a thorough knowledge of the game. I have a lot of respect for Tom Coughlin." In truth, the two are equally intense. Football is everything, an all-consuming passion. In a real and valid way, players are pawns, pushed from spot to spot, providing the right "formation look" for the particular problem at hand. Neither man can accept failure; when it does come, as it inevitably must, they brood and sulk. They are twin products of Parcells' legacy, and along with Cleveland head coach Romeo Crennel perhaps the best examples of latter-day Parcells currently working in the NFL. In fact, and in case you missed it, there is a rumor that Crennel is going to be asked to take the head coaching job in Miami. Miami, isn't that where Parcells suddenly appeared as the new Director of Football Operations? You bet it is. Coughlin, when he looks at tapes of the Patriots, doesn't really see an undefeated team. He sees a team that must have some weaknesses, some chinks in this unique armor, and the odds are that he has already decided that running the ball, over and over and over, and then some more, is going to be the right way -- perhaps the only way -- to deal with this juggernaut. Why? Because New England isn't great at stopping the run. The Patriots rank 10th in the NFL in rush defense and the Giants rank fourth in the NFL in rush offense. Does that make sense? It certainly does to guys who are so precise, so intense and so detail conscious. Defensively, the Giants must pressure quarterback Tom Brady. New England is first in the NFL in overall offense and first in passing offense as well. If you let Brady start playing catch with Wes Welker and Randy Moss and Donte Stallworth, it is going to be a long, long night. So there are two ways to combat this behemoth -- you run the ball down the throat of the Patriots' defense, and you rush the passer constantly. Belichick has noted that the Giants' defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo has used defensive ends as tackles, has used linebackers as defensive ends, has played four and five of them at the same time. This is all in his attempt to get "the best 11 guys on the field," and to make the defense not only unpredictable but, to some extent, unstoppable. If anybody can find a way to neutralize the Giants' running game, it's Belichick. If anybody can find a way to stop the Giants' intense pass rush, the one that leads the NFL in sacks with 52, it's also Belichick. It should be a doozy of a game, you know?. 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. NEW - Send a request to davesklein@aol.com for a free week's worth of news!
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