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http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/f...giants-better-tom-article-1.2050650?cid=bitly
There are few coaches who have benefited from patience and stability more than Jeff Fisher. He survived 17 years with the Tennessee Titans/Houston Oilers. He turned them into an AFC power, brought them literally to within a yard of potentially winning a Super Bowl. Then he oversaw their collapse.
Yet he still endured, even after that — as did Bud Adams, the late owner of that franchise. For three years in the mid-2000s, Fisher’s Titans went of 17-31, missed the playoffs, and even had double-digit losses twice.
The temptation and the pressure had to be there for Adams to fire him. And years later, as Fisher prepares to coach the St. Louis Rams against the Giants on Sunday, he said he still appreciates an owner who understands the importance of sticking to a plan, and is willing to avoid a knee-jerk reaction and go against the popular grain.
“I think you can answer that question by looking around the league,” he said. “There’s a handful of teams that have a revolving door, that are changing coaches every couple of years, and you can look at the success that they’re having. They’re not. You need continuity. You need a commitment and continuity.
“That’s what the Giants have given Tom (Coughlin) and that’s why he’s got two Super Bowls.”
It remains to be seen if the Giants will continue to give that to Coughlin after this season — although most team sources believe they inevitably will. Coughlin’s Giants are in the same multi-year malaise that Fisher’s Titans were once in. Coughlin has endured back-to-back losing seasons and five playoff misses in six years (albeit with a Super Bowl championship in between).
And as the Giants’ ownership ponders Coughlin’s fate, it’s worth noting that the Titans’ patience with Fisher paid off. After that 17-31 stretch from 2004-06 (including seasons of 5-11, 4-12 and 8-8), Fisher took two straight teams to the playoffs. Those teams went 10-6 and 13-3. And though he ended up getting fired after going 6-10 in 2010, Fisher said he doesn’t think it was difficult at all for his boss to stand by him during the franchise’s most difficult time.
“No, I don’t think so,” Fisher said. “It really would depend on the owner. But when you’ve got the stability like Tom has for so long, it’s just a great environment, a great situation.”
It can also continue to be great, the 56-year-old Fisher said, even though Coughlin’s voice and philosophy have been ringing through the Giants’ halls for 11 years. There’s a theory often parroted in sports that players start to tune out a coach after he’s been in one place for a while, or that his ideas or coaching techniques somehow grow stale.
Fisher — who got to know Coughlin when they took part in a U.S.O. trip to visit troops in Iraq in 2012 — not only disagreed with that, he found it impossible to justify given how much each NFL team changes from year to year.
“Well, there’s probably 20-25% turnover on your roster every year,” he said. “Multiply that out over four, five, six years and you’ve got a new football team, one that really has turned completely over with a few exceptions. So I don’t see that as a challenge.”
He’s right, of course. The only player on the roster who has had to listen to all 11 years of Coughlin is quarterback Eli Manning, and he seems to be one of Coughlin’s biggest supporters. Manning and long-snapper Zak DeOssie are the only ones left from Coughlin’s first championship team in 2007. There are only 12 more on the Giants’ roster left over from his second in 2011.
That means only 14 of the 75 players on the current roster (including the 22 on injured reserve) have been with Coughlin for more than three seasons. More than 81% of the current roster hasn’t really had enough time to grow tired of listening to Coughlin at all.
Of course that doesn’t mean it’s easy to keep coaching the same team year after year after year. “There’s going to be different kinds of challenges on a yearly basis,” Fisher said. “You’re going to have to overcome injuries, or you overcome a playoff loss or what have you. So there’s always challenges in this business.”
Fisher was given the chance to overcome them in Tennessee, and he paid his bosses back with two more trips to the playoffs — a place the franchise hasn’t been since Fisher left. So maybe there’s a lesson to be learned from that experience. The Titans thrived, for the most part, when they embraced stability.
Since then, they’ve learned life isn’t so wonderful while spinning around in a revolving door.
There are few coaches who have benefited from patience and stability more than Jeff Fisher. He survived 17 years with the Tennessee Titans/Houston Oilers. He turned them into an AFC power, brought them literally to within a yard of potentially winning a Super Bowl. Then he oversaw their collapse.
Yet he still endured, even after that — as did Bud Adams, the late owner of that franchise. For three years in the mid-2000s, Fisher’s Titans went of 17-31, missed the playoffs, and even had double-digit losses twice.
The temptation and the pressure had to be there for Adams to fire him. And years later, as Fisher prepares to coach the St. Louis Rams against the Giants on Sunday, he said he still appreciates an owner who understands the importance of sticking to a plan, and is willing to avoid a knee-jerk reaction and go against the popular grain.
“I think you can answer that question by looking around the league,” he said. “There’s a handful of teams that have a revolving door, that are changing coaches every couple of years, and you can look at the success that they’re having. They’re not. You need continuity. You need a commitment and continuity.
“That’s what the Giants have given Tom (Coughlin) and that’s why he’s got two Super Bowls.”
It remains to be seen if the Giants will continue to give that to Coughlin after this season — although most team sources believe they inevitably will. Coughlin’s Giants are in the same multi-year malaise that Fisher’s Titans were once in. Coughlin has endured back-to-back losing seasons and five playoff misses in six years (albeit with a Super Bowl championship in between).
And as the Giants’ ownership ponders Coughlin’s fate, it’s worth noting that the Titans’ patience with Fisher paid off. After that 17-31 stretch from 2004-06 (including seasons of 5-11, 4-12 and 8-8), Fisher took two straight teams to the playoffs. Those teams went 10-6 and 13-3. And though he ended up getting fired after going 6-10 in 2010, Fisher said he doesn’t think it was difficult at all for his boss to stand by him during the franchise’s most difficult time.
“No, I don’t think so,” Fisher said. “It really would depend on the owner. But when you’ve got the stability like Tom has for so long, it’s just a great environment, a great situation.”
It can also continue to be great, the 56-year-old Fisher said, even though Coughlin’s voice and philosophy have been ringing through the Giants’ halls for 11 years. There’s a theory often parroted in sports that players start to tune out a coach after he’s been in one place for a while, or that his ideas or coaching techniques somehow grow stale.
Fisher — who got to know Coughlin when they took part in a U.S.O. trip to visit troops in Iraq in 2012 — not only disagreed with that, he found it impossible to justify given how much each NFL team changes from year to year.
“Well, there’s probably 20-25% turnover on your roster every year,” he said. “Multiply that out over four, five, six years and you’ve got a new football team, one that really has turned completely over with a few exceptions. So I don’t see that as a challenge.”
He’s right, of course. The only player on the roster who has had to listen to all 11 years of Coughlin is quarterback Eli Manning, and he seems to be one of Coughlin’s biggest supporters. Manning and long-snapper Zak DeOssie are the only ones left from Coughlin’s first championship team in 2007. There are only 12 more on the Giants’ roster left over from his second in 2011.
That means only 14 of the 75 players on the current roster (including the 22 on injured reserve) have been with Coughlin for more than three seasons. More than 81% of the current roster hasn’t really had enough time to grow tired of listening to Coughlin at all.
Of course that doesn’t mean it’s easy to keep coaching the same team year after year after year. “There’s going to be different kinds of challenges on a yearly basis,” Fisher said. “You’re going to have to overcome injuries, or you overcome a playoff loss or what have you. So there’s always challenges in this business.”
Fisher was given the chance to overcome them in Tennessee, and he paid his bosses back with two more trips to the playoffs — a place the franchise hasn’t been since Fisher left. So maybe there’s a lesson to be learned from that experience. The Titans thrived, for the most part, when they embraced stability.
Since then, they’ve learned life isn’t so wonderful while spinning around in a revolving door.
