Giants coach Tom Coughlin is usually more interested in talking about his team than his legacy, but he acknowledged at the league meeting that he thinks sometimes about whether he’ll one day have a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“You want to be the very, very best you can be,” Coughlin told Gary Myers of the New York Daily News. “If the highest point in recognition in our game is the Hall of Fame, then why not think about that? Do I think about it every day? No.”
Coughlin says winning two Super Bowls as head coach of the Giants gives him a case for enshrinement in Canton, but he’s careful to say he’s not lobbying for himself.
“I think it merits consideration, yeah, but that’s as far as I’m going,” he said. “I don’t think about it every day. I’d rather think about getting a group of players together that we can coach to win a game. That’s where I am. Just one year, one game. Let’s take care of today.”
Winning two Super Bowls doesn’t necessarily punch a ticket to the Hall of Fame. Tom Flores, George Seifert and Jimmy Johnson all won two Super Bowls and have been voted down, and two-time Super Bowl winner Mike Shanahan probably won’t get in either.
But Coughlin also deserves consideration for what he did as the coach of the Jaguars. He took over an expansion team in 1995 and after one year to build got them to the playoffs four straight seasons from 1996 to 1999. No coach has had that kind of success in the first five seasons of running an expansion team.
Overall, the 67-year-old Coughlin has probably done enough right now to get into the Hall of Fame. But there’s one thing he could do to eliminate any doubt: Lead the Giants to another title.