He becomes the first head coach to take the Giants to the Super Bowl since Bill Parcells. There will be countless questions during Super Bowl Week about The Guarantee, and he’ll gladly answer every single one of them. In New York sports lore, Jim Fassel is on the brink of joining Joe Namath and Mark Messier. All he has to do is guarantee one more victory, Super Bowl XXV over the Ravens, and he’s there.
There was applause for Fassel when he marched into the locker room a stunning 41-0 winner over the Vikings in yesterday’s NFC Championship Game, and now he said: “This has been the greatest time of my life with these guys, they’ve been unbelievable.”
Unbelievable will soon describe the size of his next Giant contract. The nice thing about it is he loves his job, loves New York, loves being Giants head coach and is dedicated to carrying on the tradition. The Jets would kill for a coach like this.
Someone asked Fassel whether this was more special because of where the Giants were a year ago. “I think so,” he began. “I think so . . . It’s the thrill of a lifetime, to come out and play like that in a championship game, and heading to the Super Bowl.
“But I’ll tell you one thing: I think all of us feel we got a game left. We got a game left.
“We’re not done. We’ve got a game to play, and we’re gonna go right back to work and get that game.”
He had quelled the mutiny in his midst, broke down the barrier between the offense and defense, handed over the playcalling to Sean Payton, and become the head coach of all Giants. He is 7-0 since the famous Guarantee, which came at a time when some wondered if he had lost his mind.
“I don’t think one guarantee transformed them into a Super Bowl team,” Fassel said. “I think maybe the stand-up, make-a-stance, tell everybody to shut up, we’re gonna go about our business, I don’t want to hear from anybody, I don’t need their opinion . . . lit a match. And that fire has been burning since. I haven’t had to light another match.”
Jessie Armstead had surprised him with another Gatorade shower with a little over three minutes left. “I was hoping they would wait ’til the end, but I think that they thought they were gonna have to go back out on the field,” Fassel said. “The last time I got a picture of me getting the Gatorade, I had the culprits. The culprits (Armstead, Michael Strahan, Keith Hamilton) were in the picture.”