Saturday, January 19, 2008
Packers coach Mike
McCarthy has also been
an unexpected success.
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Tom Coughlin was halfway out the coaching door heading into this season. Two games and two losses into the schedule, he barely had a toehold on his job.
On Sunday, Coughlin will be coaching for a spot in the Super Bowl.
The New York Giants’ head man has maneuvered around and even driven through some huge potholes on the way to the NFC championship game. When the Giants were 0-2 and coming off a lopsided home loss to the Green Bay Packers — their opponent for the conference title — the Coughlin Countdown was in full force.
Now, the countdown to a contract extension is on.
“He’s done a lot for us this year,” 1,000-yard rusher Brandon Jacobs said. “A lot of guys have really warmed up to him. We’re playing good football, and that’s what we need.”
What they needed when they were 0-2 was a quick turnaround. In the past, Coughlin might have come down even harder on his players. But he learned from New York’s spiraling from 6-2 to 8-8 in 2006, followed by a first-round playoff exit.
So Coughlin, who formed an 11-member advisory committee of veteran players this year, kept the communication lines open. He sought input from those around him, and the Giants responded with a six-game winning streak on the way to a 10-6 season and wild-card berth.
And they’ve won nine straight road games, including at Tampa and Dallas in the postseason.
“I think Tom has done a great job with that, really keeping us focused game in and game out,” punter Jeff Feagles said. “We do look at the big picture, but every week we look at the small picture and we just keep going.
“We have become a closer team. I think we all believed in each other after we started 0-2 and then ran off six in a row. When we got those six wins, everyone realized we have something special here.”
As they seem to in Green Bay. In fact, tight end Bubba Franks, now in his eighth season, saw it in training camp last summer.
He noted how coach Mike McCarthy, in his second year at the helm after more than a decade as an offensive assistant in various league outposts, made some necessary alterations to the offense.
“We adjusted a little bit to fit the players we had, and that’s important from a coach,” Franks said. “They went back and self-scouted and did enough to make it all work. I could see that in camp. I knew coming into this season the offense could take off.”
McCarthy’s best work was in persuading Brett Favre to rein in some of his riverboat gambler tendencies. But his stamp has been on every aspect of the Packers, who won their final four games of 2006 to finish 8-8, then went 13-3 during the season, 7-1 at Lambeau Field, before beating Seattle here last weekend.
“You feel like he cares about you as a person instead of just what you’re out there doing for him,” defensive lineman Cullen Jenkins said. “Since he came in here, the atmosphere’s just been great. Everybody’s been closer, the team is closer. He’s led us in what we feel is a good way.”
McCarthy’s main success before being hired by Green Bay was as a quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator. Coughlin built the expansion Jacksonville Jaguars into an AFC power in the late 1990s, getting to two AFC title games.
Neither seemed prime for so much success this season, though. The Packers are extremely young, and Favre had little familiarity with many of his receivers. Their running backs corps was depleted by injuries from the outset of the schedule until Ryan Grant, acquired in a trade with the Giants last summer, rescued it.