ARLINGTON, Texas — Yes, of course, there are reasons to be concerned, plenty of them. The star defensive end is home in Florida, tending to mending his battered hand, and it’s anybody’s guess when we will see Jason Pierre-Paul again. One of the star receivers will not be playing Sunday evening, and it’s anybody’s guess when we will see the return of Victor Cruz.
The secondary is scarier than a Wes Craven movie, and the rest of the defense doesn’t exactly inspire folks the way Huff and Robustelli and Modzelewski did. The offense? The quarterback got himself paid, and the other star receiver got himself the cover of a video game, but who really knows?
And it all starts in Jerry Jones’ den of iniquity, which isn’t exactly the softest launching spot anyone could have identified.
So why even play this Giants season then?
Here’s as good a reason as any: Because for the 12th straight season, the man who will try to make sense out of all of this is Thomas Richard Coughlin, which means that for the 12th straight season the Giants will have one of the handful of men in the world capable of figuring it out — sometimes on the fly, sometimes in the film room, at all times with a keen eye for halting the cynics and the skeptics in their tracks.
Coughlin is 69 now, possesses the energy and the intensity of a man a third of his age, and he is probably coaching for his future. The Maras and the Tisches aren’t just the best owners in town, they are the most patient owners in town. But another season like the two that preceded this one, and even their patience will be tested to the point where changes will surely need to be made.
Which, of course, is exactly the corner into which Coughlin best likes to find himself painted. He knows the terrain well.
“I don’t know much,” Coughlin said earlier this summer, “but I know that I believe, I firmly believe, that we have a very good football team here.”
Standard August stuff from all 32 camps, sure, standard optimism from any of the 32 men who hold the job Coughlin has held since 2004. But Coughlin’s is the one voice that carries longer and louder than the rest because he’s done it before. Because we’ve seen it before. Because even if he rather would be known for other things, this is the one element we absolutely know about Coughlin:
You send him to the canvas, he’s getting up.
You corner him, he’s going to sneak free.
And before you know it, you’re the one in the corner.
Eight years ago, he was coaching on borrowed time, a relic whose players either distrusted him or disliked him, take your pick, an old-school task-master who himself was tasked by bosses to master a different way … and he did, all the way to the playoffs, all the way to the greatest upset in Super Bowl history.
Four years ago, same clock ticking in his ear, though different slings and arrows buffeting him: The Giants were trapped on a treadmill of good-but-not-great. He was getting older. The other coach in town, Rex Ryan, was younger, glibber, coming off two AFC Championship games, the kind of big personality Coughlin never would be — never would want to be — who was primed to take the town from Coughlin and the Giants once and for all …
And, well, Christmas Eve happened, and Cruz’s 99-yard dash happened, and those playoffs happened, and that second Super Bowl happened.
And … well, here we are, and the topography does look awfully familiar. Coughlin, general manager Jerry Reese and the rest of the operation were put on notice within days of the close of last season — gently, maybe; kindly, sure, but the message was clear. There are more question marks than on the Riddler’s dress uniform. And, for symmetry’s sale, the Giants get the AFC East again this year, just like ’07, just like ’11. All of that is interesting.
What’s important, though, is the man under the headset. If he isn’t the best coach the Giants ever have had, he is in an awfully small group photo. It’s one thing to talk about overcoming the kind of obstacles the Giants face. It’s another to do it. Better to try with a man who actually has done it. Twice.