Giants ownership ended its public silence about Tom Coughlin and Big Blue’s 1-6 start Thursday, with Jonathan Tisch issuing a full-throated defense of the head coach and saying this season still is salvageable.
Speaking at a New York-New Jersey Super Bowl business breakfast in Times Square, Tisch, a co-owner and the team’s treasurer, showered the embattled Coughlin with praise and called him “one of the finest leaders in the NFL.”
The team’s most prominent co-owners — John Mara and Steve Tisch — have declined comment throughout the Giants’ awful start, but Jonathan Tisch said ownership considers the NFL a cyclical business and made it sound as if Coughlin has nothing to worry about in terms of job security.
“There’s nothing wrong with the New York Giants that a few more ‘Ws’ won’t fix,” Tisch told a group of regional business executives. “Obviously, we’ve gotten off to a very disappointing start, but … Tom Coughlin is one of the finest leaders in the NFL. We have two trophies in the lobby of our [practice facility] that we won in the last few years that attest to his leadership.”
The Giants, who avoided their first 0-7 start since 1976 on Monday with a 23-7 home win over the Vikings, travel to the Eagles on Sunday still just three games out of the NFC East lead despite their woes.
Tisch, also the chairman of Loews Hotels, told The Post after the breakfast the fact the division appears to be so weak is why ownership isn’t writing off the season just yet.
“We know we’ve gotten off to a very disappointing start, but we know Coach Coughlin is working with the other coaches and the other players to really turn the season around,” Tisch said. “We can still be there [in the playoffs].”
Tisch attributed the bad start to injuries, bad luck and the roller-coaster world typical of most NFL teams in the salary-cap era.
“Sports are a metaphor for life, and sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to,” he said. “But we know that we have very good players who come to practice every single day, work their rear ends off and want to win as much as the fans want them to win.”
But if the Giants continue to stumble and miss the playoffs for the fourth time in the past five years, Tisch refused to say whether ownership would insist on big changes.
That will be up to Mara and Steve Tisch, he said.
“Things like that aren’t in my purview,” Jonathan Tisch said.