Super Bowl 
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Romilly Evans / 01 February 2012 /
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Tom Coughlin has a habit of delivering when it matters most
"The trouble with Coughlin, is that he seldom gets the results in flashy fashion. Nor does he even get them consistently. Apart from when it matters most."
Romilly Evans profiles Giants coach, Tom Coughlin, who faces old adversary Bill Belichick in Sunday's big one looking to once again turn the odds on their head
Tom Coughlin is something of a maverick. Less the shiny, happy NFL coach of slick soundbites and slicker hair. More the gnarled, gritty war veteran of one too many tours of duty. The kind of pugnacious pooch you'd gladly let have a scamper round the park, but would never take to Crufts.
Fortunately for Coughlin, he plies he trade on the park, not a conformation show. Nevertheless, it's taken a while for fans and commentators alike to appreciate just what this somewhat unfashionable coach has to offer. Which is strange when you look at his credentials that reflect some impressive work at both collegiate and professional level.
The trouble with Coughlin, though, is that he seldom gets the results in flashy fashion. Nor does he even get them consistently. Apart from when it matters most. After a three-year spell at Boston College, Coughlin got the inaugural head coaching gig as the Jacksonville Jaguars where he led his charges to the AFC Championship Game in only their second year of existence. Pretty impressive on paper, but even then the doubters were circling after Coughlin posted a mere 9-7 in the regular season. The play-off push silenced them, as did the Jags' return trip to the Conference Championship in 1999. Coughlin was building a reputation for training teams to punch above their weight when it mattered most.
However, after a few more seasons mired in mediocrity, the knives were again out for Coughlin. A change of scenery to the New York Giants did little to arrest the slide, as the Big Blue fell to 6-10 in his first season. Still, Coughlin only needs a year to get his teeth into the root of a problem. And he again managed to work the oracle, qualifying for the post-season in successive 2004/5 campaigns via the Wildcard Game.
Not that the snipers had lowered their sights. Consecutive losses in their play-off openers (coupled to average regular seasons) were deemed too small a return for the Giants, in spite of a three-star teamsheet. And when that trend continued with the Giants losing the first two games of 2007, Coughlin was a dead man walking. But this stubborn 65-year-old was too stubborn to hear.
"I just kept the blinders on," he would later comment. His team would follow suit, refocusing and rebounding to six straight wins. They were back in play-off country against the odds.
The rest, of course, is history. The Giants blazed a trail of on-the-road upsets all the way to the Vince Lombardi trophy. Coughlin had done it again, taking an ordinary side to extraordinary heights. In short, he welded a team which was greater than the sum of its parts. It's become his trademark.
The 2007 Giants even confounded the stats (for so long Coughlin's enemy) by becoming one of the happy few to have bested the top two seeds in their conference en route to Super Bowl glory. They said it wouldn't be done again. At least that was until the 2011 Giants scraped into the play-offs, before blasting past the hot favourites Green Bay and edging out the No.2 seeds of San Francisco. Here was a pinch-coacher, if you will, whose players feasted on pressure and exceeded expectations.
Few know this better than his opposite number this Sunday, Bill Belichick. Coughlin and Belichick go back to 1988 and their days as assistant coaches for the Giants under the great Bill Parcells. Their combined stint culminated in 1999 Super Bowl victory and effectively foreshadowed their futures.
Small wonder then that the pair have enormous respect for one another. Belichick's path has been the easier of the two (as evidenced by five Super Bowls with the Pats, three victories and three Coach of The Year awards) but he is the first to praise Coughlin.
"Our time together was very exceptional," explained Belichick.
"He knows my moves better than most."
That line was eloquently articulated when the Coughlin's Giants shocked his Patriots in the 2007 Super Bowl and again at fortress Foxboro this season. As befits a future hall-of-famer, Belichick has of course had his successes over his old colleague, but those recent high-profile failures must have been hard to swallow. Banal statistics suggest there is no comparison between the two (silverware aside, Belichick holds a 65% win-percentage to Coughlin's 55%) but Belichick knows he's the man most likely to foil him on the big occasions.
Speaking of big occasions, it's the 100th year since that pesky iceberg struck down The Titanic.
Towering, impressive, supposedly unsinkable: read Belichick. Jagged, ice-cold in temperament, supposedly irrelevant: read Coughlin.
And if you want to read more, you can do a lot worse than Thomas Hardy: "As the smart ship grew in stature, grace, and hue; In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too... They were bent by paths coincident; to become twin halves of one august event."
Events don't come more august than the Super Bowl. And while my mind is screaming New England, Coughlin could yet repeat history and return to break Belichick's heart. Not to mention my handicap bet.
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