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Coughlin's Hard Line Pays Off

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By IRA KAUFMAN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 5, 2008

PHOENIX - Somewhere over the skies of western New York, Tom Coughlin had to make an executive decision on a snowy Dec. 23 evening.

He came up with a doozy.

The Giants had just rallied from a 14-0 deficit at Buffalo to beat the Bills 38-21, securing a first-round playoff game at Tampa.

At 10-5, New York was locked into the NFC's No. 5 seed heading into a regular-season finale against the 15-0 Patriots. His team couldn't move up or move down, but Coughlin took a hard line and refused to back off.

On the bumpy ride home, Coughlin tightened his seat belt and decreed the Giants would not deviate from their assigned flight path.

While several other playoff clubs, including the Bucs, rested regulars in Week 17, the Giants never scaled back on a memorable Saturday night at the Meadowlands, building a 12-point lead before dropping a 38-35 decision to New England and league MVP Tom Brady.

Three New York starters went down with injuries in a shootout loss that galvanized the Giants and earned Coughlin new-found respect from veteran players eager to topple a juggernaut.

Five weeks later, New York finished the job.

"I don't know what other people were thinking, but for our situation, playing against the best team in the National Football League, I really felt, and our players did, too, that if you're going to go into something that's hard, why not prepare with something that's very hard," Coughlin said Monday, posing with the Vince Lombardi Trophy following a 17-14 Super Bowl XLII shocker against New England.

"The way we approached it was that we would play it as hard as we could, do all we possibly could to win the game. As I told the players, there would be nothing but positives out of the game. As it turns out, it was a great bridge for us from the regular season into the playoffs."

New York's first Super Bowl win in 17 years refutes the notion there are no moral victories in professional sports.

"That first game against New England proved to be a very competitive loss and it created a sense of confidence within the Giants," Bucs quarterback Jeff Garcia said Monday before boarding a Pro Bowl flight to Hawaii. "It created a momentum that they carried right through the playoffs."

Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning, who fumbled four times and was intercepted twice at Buffalo, came of age in that nationally televised thriller, firing four touchdown passes against the Patriots.

Even NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell couldn't help but admire New York's determination on the night of Dec. 29, when Coughlin's players gave it all they had with nothing tangible on the line.

"At the end of the season, we were playing our best football," Manning said on the morning after one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl annals. "We got hot at the right time. We played, really, five great games at the end of the season, the first being against the Patriots."

In his State of the League news conference last Friday, Goodell singled out New York's effort in the regular-season finale as one of the NFL's proudest moments of 2007.

Now the league is looking into ways to discourage head coaches from resting regulars on a widespread basis in Week 17, when fans arrive at stadiums expecting to see marquee players finish out the regular season.

Goodell suggested the NFL may consider a proposal to base conference playoff seedings strictly on winning percentage, with the possibility a wild-card team could finish with a better record than a division winner. Under the current playoff structure, the division winners in each conference are automatically awarded the top four seeds.

Although center Shaun O'Hara and cornerback Sam Madison didn't dress against the Bucs in the opening-round playoff matchup due to injuries suffered in Week 17, the Giants wouldn't look back in anger.

Instead, they took the high road into Tampa, Dallas and Green Bay, applauding Coughlin's aggressive stance and rewarding their coach's faith with a stirring postseason run.

"I know everybody thinks the NFL is a bunch of prima donnas," receiver Amani Toomer said, "but we showed what a good team can do. Up and down, we are a team."

Reporter Ira Kaufman can be reached at (813) 259-7833 or ikaufman@tampatrib.com.

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