There is, of course, lots of reaction today to the news that former New York Giants' defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo is now head coach of the St. Louis Rams.
- Plenty of praise from the Giants, including this from head coach Tom Coughlin.
“I’ve very happy for Steve. He did a great job in his two years with the Giants. We’ve been very, very aggressive on defense and we’ve been able to have two very successful years back-to-back. When Steve came in, he was obviously very energetic, very enthusiastic, very thorough, very knowledgeable and he knew exactly what he wanted to do. Steve is a very smart coach and he became a disciple, if you will, of the way I wanted the program to be handled as well as anybody I’ve ever seen in a first-year coach. He came in and assessed what I wanted out of a program and worked with our defensive coaches to get it done. He’s done an outstanding job both on and off the field, and he’s been a real Giant in terms of his contribution. We wish Steve well and we know he’s going to do very well as a head coach in the National Football League.”
- From Rams' GM Billy Devaney, who hired him.
"What it usually and what it should come down to is, at the end of the day, whether it’s me or whoever’s in that position, whoever the personnel guy is, they have to be joined at the hip with the head coach and be on the same page philosophically, how to put a team together, the vision for the team," he said. "You know how many hours [are] spent between those two guys. And the relationship that I’ve had with Spags over the years going back to, I wanna say, the late 80’s and we were in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and Charlie Casserly hired Spags as an intern out of Springfield College. You could tell right then the guy, he had special qualities about him and he and I hit it off way back then and we always thought it would be neat if we got in a position to work together and be able to put a team together would be special."
- Lots of reports today that the Giants have interest in veteran coach Dom Capers as Spagnuolo's replacement at defensive coordinator. If so, they appear to have lots of competition for Capers' services.
- Mike Garafolo reports this morning that Giants' offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride is still a strong candidate for the Oakland Raiders' job. Oh, and so is ex-Giant coach Jim Fassel.