david dieHl - New York Giants

The Coughlin Corner
Week 1
By Michael Eisen
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – The Coughlin Corner, Giants.com’s exclusive weekly interview with head
coach Tom Coughlin.
Q: When the Giants host the Cowboys Wednesday night, it will be your 17 th season-opening game as
an NFL head coach. What kind of emotions does that stir in you?
Coughlin: “It’s a mixture of all kinds of emotions. When you’re standing there, especially just before the
national anthem, and afterwards many times in these situations there’s been a flyover, which really
creates even more excitement. The idea of patriotism and the emotion that goes with standing there
and being grateful for the opportunity that you’ve been given to coach the great game of football, to be
in the National Football League. To have so much passion involved in the game and to have very, very
strong feelings about the way the game is played and the people that played for you and the people that
you work for and I think those are the things that I would say just in a wink of an eye that it all passes in
front of you. You think about your family; you’re always so grateful when your family is there with you.
A couple of my kids are spread out, but most of the time they’re there for the opening game and that’s a
good feeling, too. Those are the thoughts. The start of the new season and all that goes into that. You’ve
gone full circle now in terms of the conclusion of one season, all the work that occurs in the offseason,
training camp and you’re ready to embark again on something special. I heard somebody the other day
say that a football season is a sprint and a baseball season is a marathon. I have news for you, the NFL
season is a marathon as well. When you consider what these 32 teams go through during the course of
the year, just from the standpoint of trying to stay healthy, that’s some journey.”
Q: Your theme this year is “Build the Bridge.” With a 30 percent roster turnover, can you have a
carryover from the end of last season to the beginning of this one?
Coughlin: “I think there is, and I think your veteran players look at it that way. They perhaps don’t
recognize or notice as much as we do as coaches the number of new faces that are involved. For me, the
way in which we finished last year and the way in which the players were, the way in which they
practiced and performed and met and focused, I’m in search of that again. What’s really extremely
rewarding for me is being around that kind of focus, that kind of concentration, that kind of
cooperation, that kind of complete goal awareness on the part of everybody, and that’s what I’d like to
think would happen again. But you have an education. You’ve got to coach these newcomers and these
youngsters and you try to do it a little bit and you do have to involve something of the past to do it,
although you’re certainly not referring to that aspect of it for anything other than the bridge over to the
new season. The good examples we bring forward and the not-so-good examples we challenge with.”
Q: The cliché is that teams defending championships have a target on their backs. That might help get
an opponent motivated, but is it true once a game begins?
Coughlin: “I think during the course of the week, where that really makes sense to me, is that I think
everybody looks at the team that was the world champion and they say to themselves, ‘This is an
important game for us no matter when it occurs during the course of the season, because it’s going to
declare whether or not we can think of ourselves as a possible contender.’ That’s what that’s all about. If
you play well against the team that was the world champion the year before, then it’s reasonable to
think that you’re a pretty good football team and that you have a chance to be a contender.”