What a difference a year -- and a Super Bowl championship -- makes!
The Giants are on the verge of giving Tom Coughlin a new four-year contract that will run through the 2011 season.
When you consider everything that has happened during Coughlin's tenure, that's amazing.
I began writing here at Big Blue View almost a year ago to the day. Leading up to the season we spent a lot of time debating Coughlin's fitness to be Giants' coach.
In fact, in a July post I referenced an article by Clark Judge of CBS Sportsline in which he said TC was the second-most likely coach to be fired following the 2007 season.
On July 15, I asked this question.
Even as late as the beginning of the 2007 playoffs many were wondering if Coughlin had done enough yet to deserve coming back for what would have been the final season of his contract.
No one could have foreseen the Giants' magical, unlikely Super Bowl run. You would have to say, though, that Coughlin has done enough now to deserve whatever the Giants give him.
You have to give Coughlin all the credit in the world. It's not easy for anyone, let alone a hard-nosed man in his 60s, to look in the mirror and realize the way he has always done things, the method he believes in, is no longer the right way. It's even more difficult to adapt at that point in your life.
Coughlin did, though. He reached out to his players. He relaxed, showed them more of his personal side. The players responded. They realized that Coughlin didn't want a team of robots who were there just to follow his rules. He wanted to win, and he would do whatever he could to do just that.
It was that attitude of togetherness, that they were a team, that carried the Giants through all those unlikely road victories and -- ultimately -- to a Super Bowl title.
Bravo, TC. You have earned this. Oh, and thanks again for helping to create the best memory of my life as a Giants fan.