Keidel: Coughlin Casts Shadow Over McAdoo By Sticking Around Giants

By Jason Keidel
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Tom Coughlin is the perfect emblem of a football coach. Red-faced, immune to the elements, perfectly attired in team gear, fit beyond his years, you won't find a more fitting football lifer. He was great for the Giants. He's great for the NFL.

But he needs to let Big Blue go. Or they need to let him go.

Word is the Giants have offered Coughlin a consulting gig, whatever that may be. He's considering it. In the meantime, he was reportedly on a plane to the combine with his replacement, Ben McAdoo.

Granted, he was on the jet for non-Giants business, but it seems Coughlin is also at the club's facilities every morning, sweating his cares away in their gym. As benign as that may sound, it's entirely unfair to their current coach.

Imagine if Coughlin, the quintessential control freak, glaring at Jim Fassel, or Dan Reeves, or Bill Parcells slithering around the team facilities every day. He would ask the most logical question: Am I running this show or what?

I took a front seat on the bandwagon to jettison Coughlin. Now, I'm not so sure how sound that logic was. But a decision was made, and the only way to verify your new corporate coda is to give McAdoo the keys to the car, while not placing Coughlin in the back seat.

Coughlin can get a coaching gig if he wants to; just maybe not in the NFL, where the needle always bends back in time. Coaches, like players, get younger. Dwelling on the cusp of 70 makes Coughlin sadly unqualified in the eyes of most general managers half his age.

But as Mike Francesa said, Coughlin can go back to college, which could be his best fit right now. No dealing with egomaniacal millionaires who become equal parts brand and baller. No sharing personnel decisions with the brass. Indeed, you could argue that Giants GM Jerry Reese was equally culpable in the team's plunge down the standings.

Coughlin can start his own fiefdom in college, where he has spent ample time already, including a good run at Boston College. Flash those two Super Bowl rings before a 5-star recruit, and watch him drool. Muse over your good times with Eli Manning, Victor Cruz, and Odell Beckham Jr.

During his time as big man of the Meadowlands, no one had the singular ability to bury the last game like Coughlin, who always dwells in the fertile space of the future.

It's one of the things we love about Coughlin, his unwillingness to accept losing. But there's one concept that trumps everything in Coughlin's world -- the team ethic. He was allergic to anything that could remotely distract or detract from the overall good of the club.

Hopefully, Coughlin realizes he's doing the one thing to the new coach that would have chafed the old coach.

Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel