On his Sirius Satellite Radio show last night, "The Barber Shop," former Giants RB Tiki Barber took a few more shots at Tom Coughlin. Here goes:
“Tom Coughlin was a great guy. He was great for my career but as a coach I didn’t respect the way he treated players. And, literally, and this is something that I’ve said and it’s something that I think needed to be said because everyone asked about my retirement, why I was walking away, why I was foregoing the peak of my career."
Ok, why?
"It was because I didn’t feel like I was being respected as a player. As a person? Yes. As an accomplishment? Yes. Tom Coughlin is a good coach. He helped me in immeasurable ways but he also helped make me realize that I wanted to do other things. And that’s not a bad thing. People take statements, and especially with the New York media, they take statements that are often innocuous, often are just fact and they turn them around to fit what makes a good story, what makes something controversial. And at my press conference at NBC when I announced [the TV deal] I thanked Tom Coughlin, first of all for giving me the career that I had but also it was his methods and the way that he coached that made me start looking at other things and realizing that I didn’t want to play football anymore, that I wanted to get into broadcast journalism, that I wanted to work for the Today Show and Football Night in America, stay within my passion of sports but not do it anymore. It’s just a fact. It’s nothing malicious.”
Sounds like Tiki is trying to have it both ways here. On the one hand, he credits Coughlin for making him a better player - Barber enjoyed by far his most successful seasons as a Giant - but as far as driving him out of the game? Look, football players aren't supposed to be your friend, you're not necessarily supposed to like them, and more often than not as a player, you don't like them.
But I think Barber was just ready to move on, period. Did Coughlin nudge him a bit with his hard-driving style? Probably so. But Barber is far more intelligent than the average football player, and it just seems he didn't like the constant harping from the coach. Hey, it happens. But Barber said a number of times that the physical pounding was getting to him, and that it just wasn't as much fun doing everything to get ready to start the season.
Plus, he knew he was going to have a great career in the media, so why not get on with it sooner rather than later?
Comments (4)
I have not seen anyone write about the fact that we lost the game and a couple last year with poor clock management. When it is 3rd down and we are going in we have to use all the clock and not call stupid timeouts. With 59 ticks left we called timeout with 3rd and goal at the 5. A Parcell's coached team would have lined up and pretended to run a play then called timeout with under 20 seconds. We need to do the same darn thing. Second thing>>when we have 2nd and goal or 2nd and 3 close to the goal line do we not run Jacobs 2 or 3 times? This type of methodology made Parcell's successful. Are we trying to pad Eli's stats or be REAL smart and fool everyone? It has not worked well in this situation last season and again last night it BARELY did. Don't overthink it, run Joe Morris (Jacobs) behind our best guys and make the defense stop us.
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