Palladino: Beating Jets Could Take Heat Off Coughlin, For Now
By Ernie Palladino
» More Ernie Palladino Columns
After the Giant-sized egg Tom Coughlin's team laid at FedEx Field last Sunday, this week's matchup with the Jets has nothing to do with owning the town or bragging rights, or even stretching out a winning streak in this intra-stadium rivalry.
It's about making the playoffs and, not coincidentally, saving a job.
Granted, a Giants win Sunday guarantees neither. But at 5-6, with undefeated Carolina coming up in two weeks and a road game in Minnesota immediately thereafter, if they don't notch their sixth straight victory over the Jets, it will stand as just one more black mark on a team under a "win now" mandate from ownership.
MORE: Keidel: Jets Need To Beat Giants Not Only For Playoff Hopes, But For Reputation
Coughlin could well be in his last season anyway, playoffs or not. If the Giants do squeak in and take a quiet, first-round leave, John Mara and Steve Tisch could well make a change. And it's hard to believe the coach would survive a third straight sub-.500 record, unless 7-9 proves good enough to win an NFC East littered with losers. But if that happens, the Giants would almost certainly have to make a major splash in the postseason.
Just who they would get instead is the question, considering assumed in-house heir Ben McAdoo has not produced the expected, high-octane offense. It's too scary to imagine where that unit would be without Odell Beckham, Jr.
And defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo's group has been just this side of catastrophic.
At this point, neither of those guys would make a fitting replacement for the 69-year-old Coughlin who, despite all the troubles with injuries and execution, still has the players' respect.
So beating the Jets is important, not because they're the Jets, but because this game has so much more attached to it than sheer rivalry. In truth, this once-every-four-years meeting has never truly met the requirements of a true rivalry. It's not Ohio State-Michigan, after all. Neither coach loses a job because he can't beat the other.
The Giants would gladly trade a thousand wins over the Jets for a perennial spot in the postseason, and vice-versa
Not this year, though. There's just too much riding on this one.
"It's an important game, and a big one," Eli Manning said. "Not just because it's Giants versus Jets and both teams share a stadium in the same city, but it's important because of what it means for our playoff hunt."
Manning knows all about it. He found himself in an even hotter situation when the teams met in the penultimate game of 2011. The Giants came in 7-7, the 8-6 Cowboys within their sites at the top of the division.
The Giants won that day 29-14 as Victor Cruz turned a short, second-quarter completion into a franchise-record 99-yard touchdown. The catch-and-run put the Giants up 10-7. It went to 17-7 going into the fourth quarter.
Understand that the Giants had yet to fall into the habit of blowing fourth-quarter leads. That still remained four years in the future. On that Christmas Eve, Jason Pierre-Paul, Justin Tuck, and their defensive cohorts kept Mark Sanchez at bay and set themselves up for a winner-take-all matchup against Dallas.
The Giants won that one, 31-14. And any real Big Blue fan knows what happened after that.
That Lombardi Trophy is the reason Coughlin is still here, three playoff-less seasons later.
Lose this one, and the Giants will have to depend on the rest of the division to continue the generous heart the Cowboys and Eagles displayed on Thanksgiving. Otherwise, they'll probably be looking at a fourth straight January at home.
If that happens, someone other than Coughlin might be wearing the headset in the teams' preseason meeting next summer.
Kind of makes bragging rights look like small potatoes.
Follow Ernie on Twitter at @ErniePalladino
