Keidel: Coughlin Cough, Rex Flex

By Jason Keidel
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2010 was an odd year for football in New York. Both teams sprinted to a 6-2 start and staggered to the end. The Jets were just slightly better, finishing 2-4, but won a big game in Pittsburgh that likely propelled them to the postseason. The Giants faced doom and buckled to Philadelphia and then collapsed in Green Bay, making yesterday's win in Washington rather cosmetic. The teams share a city and a stadium, and that's where the symmetry ends.

The two coaches are as contrasting as their physiques. Tom Coughlin is 64 and looks 48, fit, with the beet-red face of a man after a torturous turn on the treadmill. Rex Ryan is 48 and looks 64, built like a barrel, waddling along the sideline with the limp of limbs crunched by the weight of his body and the world. New York, New York, the melting pot, has room for all colors and characters. All we ask is that you win. But only Rex gets to flex for another week.

Tom Coughlin is often branded Old School – a euphemism for a brusque boss who has little time for small talk. Coughlin espouses preparation with Iversonian (practice!) redundancy. Yet the Giants were poorly prepared nearly all season, expressed by an appalling 42 turnovers. That falls on the coach.

Coughlin lost the team while they lost to Philadelphia. They were 9-4 and eight minutes from the NFC East title. We know what happened. At the end, Coughlin berated his punter midfield on national television – a bush-league move by a man who knows better. The Giants blew that game long before DeSean Jackson darted to a touchdown. And the team never recovered. They rolled over the next week and, ironically, needed Green Bay's help to stay alive. If you rely on foes to help you make the playoffs, you don't deserve to be in the playoffs.

A frothing fan base will call for Coughlin's job (even if John Mara announced that he's being retained), but Tom Coughlin is probably the best man to coach the Giants in 2011. Who else would you hire? Jon Gruden hardly hardens the pulse. Bill Cowher, who denied he has a wish list, is troubling because he has wish list. Cowher wants to be courted when he should be courting.

Angry fans will assert that the Giants haven't won a playoff game since they won the Super Bowl. But the point is that they won the Super Bowl, something the Jets haven't done since Janis Joplin performed at Woodstock.

Rex Ryan is New School, a media darling who croons to great quotes, and his players reflect his enthusiasm. Now they must produce on the road, against Peyton Manning, who lit up the Jets in last year's AFC title game. James Brown's "Big Payback" could be the soundtrack to the week.

Roger Goodell recently met with the Jets' brash brass, ordering them to gulp a chill pill for the playoffs, reminding them that the corporate refrain of the NFL extends beyond the gridiron, that coaches don't trip players or trip over the company line.

All year the Jets have toed the line between fun and foible. Starting with a vulgar docudrama on HBO last summer, the Jets talk and walk with great swagger, leaving many to hope they stagger. Ryan's foot-fetish video only became news because he was the cameraman.

Begging for the spotlight is not a part-time endeavor. Like all celebrities who loathe the attention they get when the cameras are off, Ryan is learning that stardom is constant, that we record the glory and the gory.

If the Jets win the Super Bowl, Ryan will be the guy with the guts to go for it, a New Yorker for life who gave beatniks a reason to revisit their youth and this generation a Lombardi Trophy of its own. If they lose, he will find the questions harder, the flashbulbs blinding, the wind a little colder, and his act a little older.

Last year was a surprise and a reprise of the Parcells era, a gleeful journey that found them thirty minutes from the Super Bowl. But with each declaration of dominance – he reiterated yesterday that the Jets were the best – Ryan fortifies his place as provocateur and burns a target across his broad back. He wants it that way. He's exactly what New York covets in a winner. But win he must.

With a younger, healthier, and better team, the Jets will be a failure should they lose in Indianapolis this weekend. This is the danger of fitting your fingers for a ring long before you get to the altar. A more humble coach gets the latitude of gracious losses. Rex Ryan only knows one deafening decibel, the roar of a Jet.

Chances are against any one team winning the Super Bowl. Ryan will be forgiven if the Jets falter this year. Next year is another matter. Just ask Tom Coughlin.

Feel free to email me: Jakster1@mac.com