(Source: NFL.com)
Not bad, right? When the season started, pretty much everyone with a microphone (or a blog for a major newspaper) was burying the Giants. Plax was a pain in the ass, Eli wasn't good, Coughlin should've been fired, Tiki was gone... The latter was the big one. Tiki Tiki Tiki. Outside of Hawaii, has that word ever been given so much importance? There's a legitimate argument to be made that the team is better now than they were with Barber. He was so incredibly self-absorbed; on a team with a pile of head cases, he didn't do much to help the situation, especially in his final season. Even announcing his retirement the way he did was selfish, since it shifted the focus entirely onto him.
But what if Tiki's an evil genius? What if he, by calling out Eli on national television in a direct and pretty irritating way, he was hoping to get the team fired up? Personally, I doubt it. But it does seem to have helped.
One of the other differences between this year and last year is Coughlin. On Newsday's Giants' blog, Arthur Staple quotes Jay Feely, who had a lot to say about his former team. Frankly, the fact that Jerry Reese thought his desire for a 3 year/$2 million guaranteed contract was too much seems pretty foolish now, considering the fact that Lawrence Tynes has had trouble kicking extra points. Extra points! All you do is kick and you miss extra points? The occasional field goal, OK, but seriously, dude. Come on. Maybe it's all the pressure he feels as the NFL's lone Scotsman. (There may be other Scottish folk in the NFL but I'm too lazy to look. Sorry.)
Back to Feely and the Coughmeister. Jay say:
Whether he thought TC could change: "No, I didn’t. But if you remember at the end of last year, when we talked, you guys asked me what I thought our problem was on our team and why we struggled the last half of the season and in the playoffs and I said I thought as a locker room and as leaders on our team, we talked too much and criticized Coach Coughlin too much and that a head coach needs unquestioned support at least publicly because, otherwise, you undermine his ability to lead. If you have a veteran question the head coach publicly, then those young guys are going to do that and they’re not going to listen to him the way they need to. I said we needed that and then that Coach Coughlin could probably create a more friendly environment where players wanted to play for him more and I think that’s exactly what happened. You’ve had Coach Coughlin, he took them out bowling and did little things like that to try and relate to them on a (personal) level rather than just on a football level. He knows so much about football. There have been many coaches that have coached with him that are now at other places that have told me that he knows way more than their current coach does about football. That says a lot about his knowledge of football. but I think now that he’s trying to relate on a relational level with players now, he gets a different level of commitment from those guys."
OK, that's too much to read. In a nutshell: Coughlin mellowed out and stopped acting like your crazy uncle that everyone tolerates, but deep down, they all really wish somebody would smack some sense into him. Maybe it was the threat of being fired, maybe he mellowed in his old age, or maybe the idea of going out (he's no kid) on such a down note made him realize that perhaps it was time to take stock. Whatever. The team is playing better, that's all that matters.
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