Coughlin, Former Jags Coach, Returns to Jacksonville

You probably won’t be able to read this article until they fix the Internet, which Odell Beckham Jr. broke last week when our nation flocked to social media to OMG en masse after his one-handed catch against the Cowboys on Sunday night.

That game was on national television, so Beckham had the perfect stage to impress a whole slew of people. This Sunday’s game against the Jaguars is going to be on television in the Jacksonville and New York City markets, whose potential audiences have roughly 73 better things to do than watch the 1-10 Jaguars host the 3-8 Giants in the Tom Coughlin Bowl.

Yup, the former Jaguars coach returns to the city where he got his first NFL head coaching job. None of the players he had are still with the Jaguars, a franchise which also has a different ownership group than it had during Coughlin’s tenure. In short, Coughlin might recognize a couple faces among the fans – like that one rabid Jaguar fan, or that other big Jacksonville rooter – but it’s unlikely he’s going to get a hero’s welcome. Which is too bad, because Coughlin is a direct tie to the team’s greatest seasons.

He led the team to the AFC Championship Game in its second year in 1996, helped end the NFL careers of both Dan Marino and Jimmy Johnson when the Jags trounced the Dolphins 62-7 in the 1999 playoffs, and led the Titans 14-10 at halftime at home in that year’s AFC Championship Game before the 14-2 Jaguars were outscored 23-0 in the second half. At home. In the AFC Championship Game.

Yeah, I doubt we’ll see many highlights of that game on the jumbotron, although it’s the biggest home game in Jaguars history. This home game? Just one more thing that stands between the Jaguars and the potential No. 1 pick in the 2015 NFL Draft.

Still, the Jags have plenty of things to be hopeful for in the long term. First-year quarterback Blake Bortles has the look of a franchise guy, the wideouts – led by rookies Allen Robinson and Allen Hurns – are promising, and fan expectations have nowhere to go but up.

If I’m a Jaguars fan (thankfully, just a hypothetical), I’m pretty excited about the future, at least in comparison with the present and the past.

For the Giants, this was the portion of the schedule they’d been looking forward to. With games against Jacksonville, Tennessee, Washington and St. Louis, the underbelly of the Giants’ 2014 season was supposed to provide the late-season surge that could carry them into the playoffs.

But the team enters this Jacksonville game on a six-game losing streak, the longest in the NFL after the Raiders beat the Chiefs to snap their streak. Any time you’ve lost more consecutive games than the Raiders, you’re in bad shape.

But if I’m a Giants fan, I’m pretty excited about the future, too. Beckham is a transcendent talent, the secondary is talented when healthy, and because of injuries a lot of second- and third-string players are getting valuable playing time, which will benefit the team down the line.

But if the past few weeks were must-wins for the Giants’ 2014 playoff hopes – now dashed, of course – this week’s game against the 1-10 Jaguars is a must-win for Tom Coughlin’s 2015 employment hopes.

The Giants are a patient franchise, not given to the knee-jerk reactions that straddle franchises like the Redskins and Raiders. But the Giants are looking at a fifth season in six without making the playoffs. And though they used that lone playoff season to win a Super Bowl, “The Feast-or-Famine Franchise” is not a particularly dignified nickname.

But that’s what they are; the handle fits.

If nothing else, the Giants like to fashion themselves as a dignified franchise. It can come off as condescending and off-putting, but it’s a real thing. And losing to the 1-10 Jaguars would be the height of indignity in the Tom Coughlin era.

So while the Tom Coughlin Bowl might not mean much to fans of either franchise, it might mean a whole lot to its namesake.

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