Winners and Losers | Career Angles

For much more, visit TheBigGameHunter.us and NoBSCoachingAdvice.com AND become a fan on Medium.

As a New York Giants football fan, I had been fooled by media coverage for years. Every year, the media would come into training camp and proclaim the excellence of one player or another. “This season they would be good,” only for us to be disappointed get again.

There were exceptions during the time that Bill Parcells was their head coach and later, Tom Coughlin. Parcells was a no BS kind of guy and would say simple yet profound things that would communicate what he was thinking.

After one season where columnists would write about how close the Giants were to winning a few of the games they lost, and communicating all those “if only,” comments (if only they kicked that field goal, they would’ve won), Parcells proclaimed, “You are your record.” After all, they didn’t take that field goal and lost. They were 4–12, not 9–7

He nicknamed one player, “Toast,” because he got burned in pass coverage so many times.

But the real thing you started to see after he put his stamp on the team was an attitude. They became tough. In close games, they would find a way to win. The team got better and start to believe in itself.