Submitted by Hal, Jul 17, 2007 15:00

I totally agree with Andy's comments. Tom Coughlin is a very good football coach. True, his gruff exterior and impatience have not helped endear him to the fans and media folks who cover the team. However, the last time I checked, Bill Belichick's media skills aren't so hot. Same for Vince Lombardi's. Yes, I know - the knee jerk response to that comment will be "yeah, but both of those guys won Super Bowls - what has Coughlin won?"

Well, while he hasn't won a Super Bowl yet, I think he has dealt fairly well with the cards he has been dealt. Over the last 2 years (a period in which the Giants made the playoffs for the first time since a guy named Parcells did it while coaching them), the Giants have been hammered with massive injuries to key players which clearly affected the team's ability to advance beyond the first round. Added to that, is a work in progress QB Eli Manning who was asked to shoulder much more than a young QB should have been asked to bear. Eli will be just fine and mark my words - he will have a break out year for the Giants this season.

The one constant with most Super Bowl wining teams is that they were relatively healthy in the stretch run of the playoffs. When you lose key players like Strahan, Umenyiora, Pierce, Toomer, Madison, Tuck, Pettigout, O'Hara, Emmons, etc. for many games, there is no way that that reality won't adversely affect the team's performance. In the era before free agency, teams were better able to compensate for key player losses with quality depth. Unfortunately, in today's NFL, teams just cannot afford to pay their quality back-ups so those players tend to leave for greener pastures. I'm sorry, but even if Belichick was coaching the Giants over the last 2 years with all of the key injuries they suffered, there is no way even a coach of his brilliance could have got them to the Super Bowl.

The sad reality of NY professional teams is that they play under a media microscope that is larger, more critical and less forgiving then any other media market in the country. That's a fact. Whereas the Seattle market may have several tv, radio and print media types, the NY market will have twenty times or more that amount.

The odds of the Giants suffering the great number of key injuries they've had the last couple of years are small and with a creative Offensive Coordinator in Kevin Gilbride who will devise plays to fit Eli's strengths, including many more long balls and play action, the return of an underappreciated Amani Toomer, a battering ram running back in Brandon Jacobs, who if he stays healthy could have a Larry Johnson type impact, with a change of pace scat back in Ahmad Bradshaw who in my estimation, was the steal of the draft, a healthy Jeremy Shockey and an offensive line that will be coming into its own - including David Diehl at LT, who will be just fine thank you, combined with a new defense devised by Steve Spagnolo which will be much more aggressive than that of Tim Lewis's and which will maximize the strengths of a number of Giants defenders, and a much easier schedule with no West Coast trips, this team will surprise alot of people when they go deep into the playoffs this year.

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