BRAIN TRUST: Giants coach Tom Coughlin (right), who tells The Post’s Steve Serby he’ll keep coaching as long as “the fire’s in the belly,” chats with quarterback Eli Manning (left) during practice yesterday as Big Blue prepare for the 2013 season having missed the playoffs three of the last four years. (Ron Antonelli)
BRAIN TRUST: Giants coach Tom Coughlin (right), who tells The Post’s Steve Serby he’ll keep coaching as long as “the fire’s in the belly,” chats with quarterback Eli Manning (left) during practice yesterday as Big Blue prepare for the 2013 season having missed the playoffs three of the last four years. (
)
Tom Coughlin is walking briskly across the practice field towards grandsons Dylan and Cooper Snee, who run up to greet “Pop Pop” excitedly.
Coughlin won his two Super Bowls with the Giants in eight years, same as Bill Parcells, who is four days away from his Hall of Fame induction. The difference is, Coughlin came back for a ninth year, and now a 10th, and because he will turn 67 years old next month, you ask him how much longer he wants to do this, be the head coach of the New York Football Giants.
“As long as the fire’s in the belly, as long as the excitement is there, as long as they want me, as long as the players respond to what I have to say and our leadership is able to accomplish, I don’t think about stopping,” he tells The Post. “I’m very fortunate in that my wife has good health, I’ve been blessed with good health — that’s a critical factor here.”
George Halas and Marv Levy each coached until 72, and only the prospect of winning a third Super Bowl (at MetLife Stadium) gives Coughlin the slightest pause when I ask him if he might then consider riding off into the sunset — and to Canton.
“I don’t know,” Coughlin says, and chuckles. “I hope we win a Super Bowl here this year, that’s as far as I’m going on that. … Of course, there’s 32 teams in the league saying the same thing.”
Eli Manning has been with Coughlin every step of the way.
“Obviously I don’t know what his mindset is, but I don’t see a retirement in my near future,” Manning says.
Do you think he would ride off into the sunset if he won the Super Bowl?
“No,” Manning says. “I think he’ll keep going. I think he loves what he’s doing. From what I see of him, he loves being here, and if he retired, he would drive [his wife] Judy crazy.”
Coughlin seems to understand this.
“She’s always graced herself on this subject by saying, ‘You’re always gonna have something to do, right? You’re gonna have a place to go and work, right? You’re not gonna completely …’ ” and here he laughs out loud.
Coughlin bends down to welcome Dylan, 9, and Cooper, 6. A short distance away, daughter Kate Snee is holding their 2-year-old baby brother, a curly-haired blond boy who already weighs 40 pounds.
“Look at this guy coming,” Coughlin says proudly. “That’s Walker.”
I ask him if he still has that fire in the belly.
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Oh, yeah. It gets close, and boy, it’s very exciting.”
Coughlin is asked to explain how he has been able to last this long in one place, the toughest place to last of all of them.
“Love of the game, love of the competition, love of the organization and the players that I work with, the people that I work with day in and day out,” he says. “It’s just a great sense of being excited about coming to work every day, just like anybody else that does it.”
As much as everybody on the Giants may be on notice, Coughlin has earned the right to leave on his own terms, barring something unforeseen.
“Probably he’ll be here longer than I will,” Chris Snee, Kate’s husband and Giants guard, says, and chuckles.
Would his father-in-law be tempted to ride off into the sunset after this season with a third championship?
“That’s a storybook ending, but if he wants to come back … I don’t know, you’re asking the wrong guy,” Snee says, and chuckles again.
Coughlin and Manning are The Pride and Passion of the Giants. Manning chuckles when you ask him who might retire first.
“I think it’s gonna be a close call,” Manning says. “I think Coach Coughlin and I truly love what we’re doing, and we feel energized and we appreciate every day being able to come out on the field and prepare and practice and all those things.”
It is to Coughlin’s credit his voice has not been tuned out.
“We change,” Coughlin says. “The message is not the same. I think that’s it. If they were hearing the same thing over and over, it certainly would be probably an issue. In this case, it’s not.”
Here Coughlin turns to trusted right-hand man, Pat Hanlon, and asks: “Pat, was Judy here? Where’d she go?” With his grandkids near, he asks aloud: “Where’d Grandma go?”
One of the boys says, “Bye Pop Pop.” Pop Pop has a football team to coach.