There has been a lot of debate recently about Bill Parcells being left out of the Hall of Fame on his first Ballot.  He’s already a Hall of Famer in many Giants fans' eyes, turning the franchise around from the abyss of the 70s and bringing the team 2 Super Bowls.

Dan Pompeii of National Football Post gives his take on all the ruckus of him not being voted in and why he will eventually be voted in.  What was remarkable about Parcells is he won wherever he went and turned teams around into contenders.  Pompeii added, “what makes Parcells stand out is not his record alone, but the footprint he left on the game. Greatness is measured in more than wins and losses.”  Just look at his coaching/GM tree: Belichick, Pioli, Crennel, Weis, Tannenbaum, Payton, Haley, Coughlin, Palmer and Zimmer.

Here is what Sean Payton had to say about Parcells:

“He was one of the greatest motivators of our time, and that resulted in him being able to get the best from his teams. Parcells’ greatest strength is he understood people and behavior, competitive behavior.  He understood what it took to practice well, play well and win, better than anyone I’ve ever been around. He knew how to stay on coaches, then at a certain point, when you might be getting frustrated, he’d be in your office talking about something funny. It was the same way with players. He’d have nicknames for everyone. He was extremely hard on you at times. He knew how to prepare a team to be at their best when they needed to be. He knew how to challenge players. I’ve seen him create a crisis.  Despite his image, Parcells was flexible, not a system coach like so many are today. He was able to take whatever he had and bend his philosophy to fit.  He was always looking to build his scheme based on the talent he had.”

Belichick:

“He was a turnaround specialist, making bad teams good ones. This was due mostly to his ability to see the big picture. He was able to go into a team and, even though there were a thousand problems, he could identify the ten most important things and get six or seven of them fixed right away and make the team competitive.”

Palmer:

“He was very good at identifying players who would fit his teams, and he had specific traits he was looking for in everything from a quarterback to a practice squad linebacker.  He has a distinct image of what each position should be, and he fits the player to the position.”

It is a damn shame Parcells is not a first ballot Hall of Famer.  This fraud of an election committee collectively decided to put personalities before principles.  Apparently, Parcells hurt the feelings of some of these hack "journalists".  This is the reason why the Tuna is not in the Hall of Fame.

Pete, one of our experts here at UltimateNYG, opines on the Parcells snub: 

I have struggled this year with professional football, the quality of the game, the lock out, and the treatment of players.

Nothing has made my blood boil like what happened!!!!

Bill Parcells was not admitted to the Hall Of Fame on the first ballot!! It has never been more clear about what ills the game I have played, the game I worked for, and the sports passion of my life, than this outrage!!

Bill Parcells by stats is one of at least the top five coaches to ever lead a team.  Parcells and George Young turned a miserable Giant franchise into a two time super bowl winner. He made a terrible Jet team a contender. He made Men out of boys, as people like Curtis Martin said after this shame.

Martin deservedly made the hall on the first ballot, which was “soiled” by the snub of the man he credits with his success. Martin credits Parcells with his HOF career and said ”it would be my honor to introduce him to the Hall.” People who made a difference like Gil Brandt, the men who played for Parcells and most other living HOF members were stunned by this outrage. Parcells was all about the game and was a hero of mine.

Sure, he made enemies as most people who excel do. Yes, he was and ”is” "eccentric,” as he went from the Giants to the Patriots, Jets, Cowboys, and the Dolphins. I felt betrayed when Mr. Bill left my Giants. I never really got over that and neither did this organization.

Parcells won everywhere he went. His players to a man respected him. He set records that most likely will never be broken. He dedicated his life to this game.

It was never about money for Bill.  It was about football, his players, and the game.

I would argue that greatness is measured in many ways but look at who worked for Bill and went on to become a head coach elsewhere. No one can boast that the likes of Payton, Crennel, Belichick, Haley, Coughlin, and even Garrett learned learned the game under Bill.

Both coaches in Super Bowl XLVI worked for Parcells, which speaks for itself.  Pro football will never be the same for the disgrace of their actions and disrespect for a man who earned the “Hall.”

If you are a New York sports fan and do not yet know who Jeremy Lin is, then you must be living under a rock.  Or not be a Knicks fan. 

Last night, mouth agape at how this kid has exploded onto the scene virtually overnight, I tried to summon up a comparable sense of someone coming from out of nowhere to take over a sport. My first thought was Kurt Warner but then I stopped.

Victor Cruz.

This kid Lin is doing a Cruz on the Knicks!

It has only been 4 games. Is it a flash in the pan? James Worthy doesn't think so. Will other teams defense him and expose him? Well, they didn't with Cruz. As we know, teams resorted to doubling him in order to stop him. If they have to do that with Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony coming back (oh, did I forget to mention that this kid is doing it w/o the "help" of two offensive powerhouses?!!!), then it is going to be a picKnick. 

Speaking about powerhouses, guess where Lin played basketball?  Yep, that Cambridge, Massachusetts hotbed of basketball recruiting, Harvard.

The Knicks have been wandering through the NBA Dolan desert for a while now.  Can Lin lift the Knicks the way that Cruz did it for the Giants in 2011?  That would not be a bad template, getting doubled in the NBA Championship. Time will tell.  For this moment, let's just enjoy the linsanity. 

Since the GMEN sang “we gotta’ ring” on their plane ride home there have been numerous articles dissecting the impact plays, the individual standouts, matchup breakdowns and what an opponent failed to execute versus the Giants.  But the one significant factor that developed in their turnaround from 7-7 to Super Bowl Champions was how cohesive the team became.  The groundwork for the turnaround may have started in November when a management consulting firm founded by a former US Air Force Pilot visited the NY Giants and gave them a seminar on process improvement. 

During a 4 game losing stretch and even up until the Jets win, there were many instances of blown secondary coverage and mental errors.  But through the playoffs and especially after the Super Bowl win, we heard players stating how they were playing as one and giving all the credit to the team.  The Giants players were confident in each other.  They believed in each other.  They had trust in one another.

Tom Coughlin historically has been described as a head coach who is rigid, inflexible, a disciplinarian, and “Mr. Five Minutes Early.”  In the film America’s Game- the 2007 New York Giants, Michael Strahan reminisced about the “tyrant” who players “weren’t willing to run through a wall for” when he started out with the Giants in 2004.  It is well documented that before the 2007 season Coughlin made adjustments to his approach and admitted he was intent on becoming more personable with his players. 

In Kurt Warner’s short tenure with the GMEN he witnessed the “softer” side of Coughlin when he spent time with Coughlin in his office after hours.  Warner reflected, “he could connect with his family on such an intimate level, but had no idea how to connect with his players. He was struggling badly.”  Coughlin requested Warner, “Go home and make a list of all the things you think I need to do better as a coach.”   One of Warner’s suggestions was, “rather than just make rules and enforce them, he had to show the players why a certain rule is important to him.” 

Tom Coughlin deserves much praise for his job this season keeping his team focused and playing hard to earn their 2^nd title in 4 years.  The evolving change in his approach to his relationship with his players was a major factor.

While much credit is owed to Coughlin, another factor that may have had a very significant impact on the unity of this team might very well have come from outsiders.  Back in early November a global management training team, Afterburner Inc., visited the Timex performance center.  The group gave a presentation and seminar based on their recent book, The Debriefing Imperative.  The theme of the book is continuous improvement and takes methods from the U.S. Navy fighter pilot programs. The objective of the debrief is to provide “a simple means of analyzing root causes while also yielding actionable lessons and addressing organizational weakness while empowering and reinforcing strengths.”

The players learned how to review game tape in a constructive and positive manner though “a ‘nameless, rankless’ tone.”  Further, “debriefing helps build leaders by helping them learn the skills to establish greater trust between themselves and their team. Leadership must be observed and practiced in order to be mastered.” Offensive lineman David Diehl added, “there is no better person to watch film with than your peers. Football is so much about accountability and selling out for the guy next to you. You don’t want to let the guy next to you down. When you can watch film as a group, people can stand up and say, hey, that was my mistake, I was responsible. That leads to a belief in one another.”  Furthermore, “when a team thoroughly discusses each other’s contribution to the execution of a task, they come to know each other and understand each other’s unique challenges and obstacles. They uncover the complexities that challenge them and learn how better to assist each other in managing those challenges.”

We witnessed lapses in coverage within the secondary over the course of the season.  The Debriefing process asks, “how long can you survive the repetition of the same mistake? What good does it do to have members of an organization contribute to a project or planning effort and then have no connection to the outcome, no part in the post mortem? How can individuals measure themselves? Groups? Debriefing sees to it that they are intimately connected and responsible for the outcomes.”  Is it coincidental that the secondary went from a weekly film review session with a few players earlier in the season to the entire group later on?  Aaron Ross gave his take on the goal of these sessions: “It wasn’t that we couldn’t play, but we were off by a little bit here or there. We weren’t reacting to the situations and the calls the way we were supposed to and we needed to get that straight and we had to do it amongst ourselves.”  They became empowered and learned to trust each other more.  In turn they were able to tell the Giants Defensive Coach, Perry Fewell, what worked and what wasn’t working for them based on their “nameless, rankless tone” approach to game review.  Fewell admitted, “when we watch the game and critique ourselves, I had to take off the title of defensive coordinator.”

Carl Banks spoke recently on WFAN and marveled about how this team overcame a 4 game losing streak which occurred versus the 49ers, Eagles, Saints and Packers.  In Banks experience, “most guys start to question things after a 3 game loss but after 4 games guys start quitting.  I saw it in my brief time in Washington when guys started quitting after our fourth loss in a row.” Banks gives a lot of credit to Coughlin.  But the Debriefing process may have added another positive boost.  The Debriefing process “provides an appropriate means of putting the past behind us, learning and growing from it, and moving on. And, when debriefing is performed regularly, it keeps the organization focused on the present and the future rather than the past.”

In the end, the Giants organization deserves tremendous credit for taking the initiative to expose their organization to the  methods of the debriefing imperative.  Credit is also due to the coaching staff for implementing the tools and methods into their system.  We now can see why the team’s theme was “all in” during the playoffs.

Sound FX from the NFL Network gives us player and coach comments on the field from the last 4 possessions of Super Bowl XLVI.

17-15 Patriots, Sound FX from the field.

Belichick: "This is still a Cruz and Nicks game.  I mean I know we're right on'em; it's tight.  But those are still the guys.  Make'em go to Manningham,  make'em go to Pascoe, all right.  But let's make sure we get Cruz and Nicks."

It's a couple of days since the end of Super Bowl XLVI, and we are entitled to enjoy the win for... well, a lifetime.  Each title is a gift of timeless memories.  Electric Simms in XXI.  3rd and 12 in XXV.  The Helmet catch (and 3rd and 11, my favorite) in XLII.  Super Mario's 38 yarder in XLVI.

Super Bowl XXI ended an entire childhood of chronically bad Giants football.  Super Bowl XXV buried Flipper Anderson.  Super Bowl XLII healed my wounds from the 49er Prevent Offense 38-14 insanity.  Super Bowl XLVI ends the Eagle playoff loss in Jan 2009.

It's better to be lucky than good.  In Super Bowl XLVI, it was better to be good and lucky.

The Giants had so much good fortune in that game.  I rewatched the game in condensed version, which took 36 minutes.  The number of times you see the ball get put on the ground is scary.  Bullet after bullet dodged.  The Giants ran the gauntlet and grabbed a championship.

If you want a view from the other side, this piece is a MUST READ.  I must have laughed out loud between 10 and 20 times, listening to the torment that Eli is now putting on Patriot fans.  This QB of ours is most definitely New England's daddy.  The only way to do it right is just to read the linked article.  You learn a lot about your team's mental toughness when you see the cracks on the other side.

Banner update: It may be a few weeks, but rest assured that we did not think for a minute about jinxing our chances with any preliminary work on the banner before the win was in the books.  When I did the banner before moving over to Bloguin, I purposefully made it so that we could celebrate EVERY title the Giants won with another notch.  This is the kind of intentional obsolescence that should happen to the site as regularly as possible! I like the idea of 4 titles becoming dated.  As they said yesterday at City Hall, see you next year.  That'll work.

I want to take a moment to thank the rest of our staff for a great season and a great year.  Many of you diehard supporters who are with us all year know that it wasn't easy posting through the entire NFL strike when we didn't even know if we would have a season.  That period dragged on and made blogging more like slogging.  We couldn't have made it through everything without the entire Giants community.  The writers, the readers, the commenters, the Giants, we got through.  This team and this blog are labors of love.  Getting rewarded with a title is just crazy good.  Thanks Paul, Glenn, Pete, Wonder, and Rich.  Celebrating a 4th Super Bowl title with our Giants community has made it a great ride.