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NFL New York Giants

End Of An Era Is Near For New York Giants

By @AnthonyBeers

Tom Coughlin

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

As the New York Giants collapsed against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday afternoon, fans couldn’t help but feel that an era of Giants football had come to a close. Numerous mistakes tragically caused the Giants to lose to a team that had one win prior to the matchup. The Giants have officially dropped off a cliff; now everyone wants to point fingers.

The immediate instinct from fans is the departure of Tom Coughlin. Fans will forever love Coughlin, but the nature of the team lately has shown that they don’t know how to win games. The past three weeks were games there for the taking where the Giants failed to seize opportunities. Perhaps it was a lack of confidence, and if that’s the case, that falls on the coach.

The more intuitive fans recognize the Giants have real personnel issues. General manager Jerry Reese attempted to reconfigure the Giants’ damaged offensive line from last season but failed to do so. The retirement of Chris Snee and the injuries to Geoff Schwartz proved too dire to be offset throughout the season. The offensive line has looked worse every game, especially now with Justin Pugh out. Quarterback Eli Manning did not have nearly enough time to excel for the Giants. How can Coughlin be blamed when the Giants don’t have a fragment of what they need up front?

Regardless of the issue of personnel or coaching, this Giants team is bad. And when a team loses consistently, getting a victory feels more and more impossible. Last year the Giants lost six games in a row. This year they’re up to seven. This is not a trend that Giants fans know too well over the course of the Coughlin regime.

Overcoming the trend of losing sometimes makes firing a coach inevitable. If the Giants decide to part ways with Coughlin he’ll likely retire as opposed to being fired from the organization. He’s done a lot for Giants fans. In a way, he’s earned the right to lose here for the remainder of the season. Giants fans want to hear nothing of it, but that’s the truth: Coughlin owes the Giants nothing.

The agony for Giants fans has reached a height not seen in over a decade. Changes are going to be made. Perhaps it is time to part ways with Ol’ Tom, but if that’s the case, who do the Giants pursue as head coach? Skeptical rumors have proposed names like Bill Cowher and Jim Harbaugh. These rumors are likely unrealistic as the Giants still have four games to see who stays and who goes.

The Giants lack power up front on both sides of the ball. There’s no question they will do whatever they can to fix those issues after they failed to after last year’s season. But have the wounds gone too deep for Coughlin? “We could have knelt on the ball in the second half and had a better chance to win,” Coughlin said to the media following the loss.

It was an accurate yet unnecessary thing to say. Comments like that can be a sign of a coach on the way out. The Giants play the Tennessee Titans this Sunday. Fans likely won’t expect much better, but a lot will be revealed about the nature of Coughlin’s potential departure in games to come.

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