Giants coach Tom Coughlin has a contract that runs through the 2015 season and some people have opined that the two-time Super Bowl winner has earned the right to decide when his run as the team’s coach comes to an end.
One of the guys who pays Coughlin’s salary is not one of those people. In an interview with Steve Serby of the New York Post, Giants co-owner John Mara said that the furthest thing from his mind right now is making a change involving Coughlin and stressed that he wasn’t on the hot seat while also saying that he didn’t think any coach is guaranteed the right to choose their own departure date.
“Does anybody ever earn that right? That’s just not the way this business is in this day and age,” Mara said. “Let’s hope that it goes that way, but we haven’t even had that discussion yet. ... We’re just looking forward to the next couple of seasons.”
Mara said nothing to suggest that Coughlin has to reach a particular number of wins or the playoffs in order to keep his job, but the reality is that another year out of the postseason would be three in a row for the Giants. There aren’t many coaches who hold onto their jobs through runs like that, even ones with two Super Bowl rings, and there will surely be more questions for ownership about the future of the league’s oldest coach if things don’t go their way in 2014.