Accorsi Book Reveals The True Coughlin

In a chapter about the Chicago Bears game last year, Accorsi rips Coughlin for his play calling, for his refusal to acknowledge his mistakes, and most of all for shifting the blame all onto Eli Manning.

Accorsi sets the scene. It was a rainy Monday night. The Giants hold a 13-3 lead with scoring "drives" of one yard, three yards, and nine yards. Petitgout is already out of the game and Eli is not just struggling, he is foundering. But the Giants hold a 13-3 lead and it is raining hard. Chicago has the ball on their own 28 facing a 3rd and 22 with 1:30 left to go in the half. And the Giants call a time out. As we all know the Bears took full advantage of that time to go on to score and make it 13-10 at the half. Accorsi was stunned. Not that the time out necessarily led to Chicago's score, but it showed absolutely no common sense.

"It's thirteen to three - the Bears don't think they're going to win the game because they have to beat us by intercepting the ball or causing some other turnover or, somehow, unleashing Hester. What do we do? We give them the opportunity. Why do we want the ball back for thirty-five seconds to begin with? It's raining. We could fumble the kick, we could commit a holding penalty. We could give them life. Our quarterback is having a terrible night. What was to be gained? Had there been a single sign that we could take the ball and march it down the field in thirty-five seconds? After that, it's third and twenty-three. Chicago's giving up the ghost, right? Get in the locker room, Tom, with our thirteen-to-three lead! And when the Bears ran into the locker room, they were a different team."

Then in the second half, the Bears leading by 24-20 with 11:49 to go in the game. The Giants have moved the ball to the Bears 29 yard line with a fresh set of downs. Accorsi has the following to say about what happens next:

"Now we've come back to twenty-four to twenty and we're first and ten on their twenty-nine. We've got control of the situation. We're running the ball and they can't stop us. We ran for a hundred and fifty yards - no one has stopped us from running the ball all year in those conditions - and why we're not using Jacobs, I have no idea. He was unopposed on both touchdowns. We're wearing them down. The weather is bad. Maybe we won't be able to hold them later, maybe we'll screw up on defense later - six starters are out, after all - but we're going to go ahead in the game for the moment at least, if we just play smart. But instead, for some unknown reason, against that pass rush, with Eli having a bad night, we try to throw. Now it's second and twenty-four. We've changed the game. We get to third and fifteen, and Hufnagel says, 'Oh, I think I'll try this pass play to Plax. That's part of my philosophy.'

"Finally, rather than hand the ball to Feagles and trust the best plus-punter in the league to spin the ball inside the twenty and give Grossman a chance to give away the game in bad weather, we try a fifty-two-yard field goal in the same direction a thirty-three-yarder had already been missed. Our big, slow field-goal protection guys then get to watch Devin Hester dance a hundred and eight yards untouched. He would have scored in a two-hand touch football game.

"We could have won a thirteen-to-ten game. That's our kind of game."

But most damning of all was Coughlin's refusal to acknowledge any responsibility for the way the game went and instead, amazingly, blaming Manning for forcing him to make the questionable decisions Accorsi was pointing out:

"Tom said, 'I Told Eli today [the day after the game] that you don't score points by running the ball, you score points by passing it.' That kills any chance of me sleeping tonight. Tom had this long talk with Eli in which he basically told him, 'You're the reason we lost and you're going to have to play much better or we won't win.' Do you think Bill Cowher ever said that to Ben Roethlisberger? Pittsburgh never asks Roethlisberger to win a game by himself. They ask him not to lose by himself. 'I told Eli,' Tom said, 'You know why I made that stupid decision on the field goal, Eli?' Now listen to this. 'Because you weren't playing well and I didn't know how we'd get down there again.' Now I have to go to Manning sometime today and try to reassure him that it's not all his fault."

Taking Accorsi at his word regarding the accuracy of the above, it is truly an amazing condemnation of Coughlin that he would choose to deflect blame against himself by placing it all onto the shoulders of his young struggling quarterback. I've been upset by Tiki Barber speaking out against Coughlin and, while I still don't like it, I am more disgusted by an ego-maniac coach who so willing to throw his young quarterback under the bus because the coach lacks the inner self-confidence to accept blame of criticism directed his way.