We have seen Angry Tom before, in the aftermath of especially dyspeptic Giants losses. Angry Tom squints his eyes shut. Angry Tom’s disappointment cuts through the nonsense. There are 285 visibly different shades of red, from alizarin to vermilion; Angry Tom has a face that can reach all 285 during the course of one 10-minute news conference.
Angry Tom is so convincing, you want to finish your blocks, hold onto the football, and write your column at least 15 percent better afterward.
Angry Tom made a rare appearance after the Week 1 opener in Dallas, a 60-minute wreck of a game in which the Giants turned the ball over six times and let the Cowboys end their skein of home-field futility. But we didn’t see Angry Tom Sunday, even after the Broncos walked into MetLife Stadium and laid a 41-23 hurting on the Giants.
This was time for Coach Coughlin.
“I thought it was a very good football game,” Coach Coughlin said. “Our defense played well, handled their tempo. It was a highly competitive game. And it turned into a sloppy finish.”
That was about as livid, cross, heated, disagreeable as he would get on this day. And it was the perfect way to be, of course. The Giants understood they were getting stiff tests back-to-back to open the year, their ancient rivals in Dallas backed up with Manning Bowl III, which meant the team that may be the NFL’s best was paying a visit in addition to the attendant fraternal football hoopla. Oh-and-two was an absolute possibility.
Nobody wants to start 0-2.
But if there has ever been a team that knows you can start 0-2 and still achieve everything you can out of a football season, it’s the Coughlin Giants. There are only a few holdovers from the 2007 team that started 0-2 (and came within a whisker of 0-3), but their legend remains: You can lose two in a row at the start of the season, but if you win four in a row at the end …
“I understand how the players feel,” Coach Coughlin said. “We’re 0-2 and we’ve been 0-2 before, we dug our heels in before. When we did that it was all about ‘team.’ But our performance has to be better.”
When they did that, in ’07, the only aspect of Tom Coughlin’s career anyone ever wanted to discuss was Angry Tom, because that was the part that had nearly cost him his job. But that team also showed the world what everyone in pro football already knew: This wasn’t merely a dictator who liked to motivate by agitation. This was a smart man who also well understood the human condition.
And is even better schooled in that now. So Coach Coughlin patiently reminded his players Sunday, minutes after the Broncos had turned them into a grease spot on their own home carpet, about ’07. He reminded them that two games shouldn’t change what they feel about themselves, which is …
“We know we’re good,” defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka said. “Certainly better than this.”
“Our confidence is good,” receiver Hakeem Nicks said. “And should be.”
“I can say what we are,” safety Antrel Rolle said, “but our record says otherwise.
The message is clear, and it is correct: 0-2 isn’t the end of anything — hope, optimism, certainly not the season. It can well be a fresh beginning. But that’s true only if they go to Carolina next week and handle a Panthers team that had its heart stomped on in Buffalo Sunday and went punch-for-punch with the NFC’s darlings from Seattle in Week 1.
In the end, amid the residue of Manning Bowl III, that is what the Giants must salvage from the MetLife Stadium turf. Kiwanuka said it bluntly: “We’ve shown we can play a good quarter or a good half. But we need to start playing whole games that way. And we need that to happen starting next week.”
They do. And history insists they will. The Coughlin Giants are always at their fiercest when there are questions shadowing them, when there is doubt stalking them, when their toes are touching the edge of the abyss. That’s no accident. Coach Coughlin sees to it far more often than not.
“I can stand up here and be fiery if that’s what everyone wants,” he said, drawing laughter, acknowledging his kinder, gentler, more common alter ego. “There’s a big hole in my stomach.”
It should be less so in the hearts and minds of the Giants and their fans. Angry Tom is locked in a film room somewhere, stewing. Coach Coughlin is on the case. The Giants are in good hands.