Tom Coughlin's Weird Legacy, As Told Through His Greatest Upsets

How should we remember Tom Coughlin, who stepped down, in feisty fashion, as the Giants head coach on Tuesday after what might be the final season of his illustrious career? He was neither an innovator nor a great tactician, and not necessarily the most charismatic guy around.

Instead, Coughlin perfected the "disapproving grandpa" style of coaching: forever staring incredulously at his players from the sideline, mouth agape, arms spread apart in the classic "take me now, Jesus!" pose. Coughlin won two Super Bowls, lost more games than all but four coaches in NFL history, and has the distinction of being the most egregiously tart crabapple ever to fall from Bill Parcells' gnarled coaching tree. It's difficult to believe that this sour-ass font of old-school cliches could get through to the modern pro athlete, yet here we are:

He's a cliché, and he's an original. In other words, he'll be missed if he has coached his last NFL game. There's one group of people who probably aren't sad to see Coughlin go, however, and those are the oddsmakers. Whatever his faults as a coach—and there were more than a few—Coughlin's teams always had a knack for beating long odds. His name is all over any list of the biggest football upsets of the last 25 years.

Coughlin ranks among the coaching immortals when it comes to victories and Super Bowls, but those statistics hardly do the man justice. Instead, let us judge Tom Coughlin by the only numbers that truly matter to hardcore fans: betting lines. Here are the biggest upsets of his coaching career, based solely on the odds Vegas was giving out before the game. Betting lines may vary; I got the four most recent lines from Footballlocks.com, the Jaguars/Broncos line from this NFL.com video, and the Boston College/Notre Dame line from Les Krantz's book Dark Horses and Underdogs.

6. NFC Divisional Playoff, Giants vs. Cowboys: Jan. 13, 2008

Betting line: Cowboys -7

This was the win that really catapulted the Giants to the most absurd playoff run in NFL history, a fact which often gets undersold because the team did the almost exact same fucking thing four years later. It was also the scene of the greatest quip of Coughlin's career, which is not quite as short a list as you might expect.

So confident was Cowboys owner/swaggering petro-doofus Jerry Jones the morning of the game that he gave each of his players two tickets to the NFC Championship Game, to be used by friends and family as needed. Coughlin's deadpan recounting of the story in the Giants' Super Bowl retrospective is absolutely priceless:

"Now, did I make a big deal about it? No. But did I know that it happened, and did I make sure the players knew that that happened? Sure."

Later, Coughlin called his players together in the visitor's locker room after the 21-17 victory: "Now, I don't want anybody talking about this in the media… Jerry just sent the tickets over, so we're all set."

5. NFC Championship, Giants vs. Packers: Jan. 20, 2008

Betting line: Packers -8

4. NFC Divisional Playoff, Giants vs. Packers: Jan. 15, 2012

Betting line: Packers -8.5

Two January playoff games in the NFL Films wet dream that is Lambeau Field, against two different future-Hall of Fame Green Bay quarterbacks, and two Giants wins.

So why did Vegas believe in Coughlin's team slightly less in 2012? That year the Packers, 15-1, were the defending champs. Aaron Rodgers had yet to meet villainous succubus Olivia Munn, and was at the height of his powers.

More importantly, the line reflects an oft-overlooked difference between the 2007 and 2011 Giants. The 2007 squad finished the regular season a respectable 10-4 after dropping their first two, and had a positive overall point differential. The 2011 team, on the other hand, became the first and only Super Bowl champ to…

• Finish with fewer than 10 regular-season wins (9-7).
• Lose four games in a row (That's one-quarter of the entire season, by the way).
• Finish with a negative point differential (-6).

Coughlin's second championship team certainly felt like less of a fluke; by the numbers, however, it was way more of a fluke. Tom Coughlin teams are weird, is what I'm saying.

3. Super Bowl XLII, Giants vs. Patriots: Feb. 3, 2008

Betting line: Patriots -12.5

Only No. 3? This was arguably the greatest upset in professional sports history. The Giants beat an invincible Belichick/Brady team that was only 60 minutes from the first 18-0 season in the annals of pro football!

Yeah, sorry. This feels wrong to me too. But the line is the line, and Vegas doesn't lie. It gets Giants games wrong, but it doesn't lie.

2. AFC Divisional Playoff, Jaguars vs. Broncos: Jan. 4, 1997

Betting line: Broncos -14

As hard as it might be to imagine relative to today's smoothly corporate league, there was once an NFL team in the swampy outpost of Jacksonville.

…Sorry, what's that, you say?

Nearly 20 years later, this win remains the greatest moment in Jaguars history. Coughlin built this team from the ground up—the franchise had only existed for two seasons, and he was its first coach—and handed John Elway what turned out to be the final playoff loss of his career. Elway would win the next two Super Bowls, skipping out on meeting with Bill Clinton after the second one, which really jump-started his many forays into politics ("I don't believe in safety nets"). Stopping Elway that one year may have been Coughlin's finest gift to humanity.

1. Boston College vs. Notre Dame: Nov. 20, 1993

Betting line: Notre Dame -18

Coughlin has overcome some tough foes over the years—Favre, Elway, Brady, Belichick, Rex Grossman—but nothing has quite matched his 1993 triumph over God's Team, a.k.a the Fighting Irish. Notre Dame was ranked No. 1 in the country, fresh off defeating Florida State in another "Game of the Century." They had crushed Coughlin's Boston College team 54-7 the year before, while also taking time during the game to film scenes for Rudy. There are many sacred maxims in football, but none are more important than this: You do not film motherfucking Rudy against a Tom Coughlin team.

In many ways, this game was a microcosm of Coughlin's entire career. The Eagles were the better-prepared team, and stormed out to a 38-17 second-half lead. Then, as Coughlin teams usually did, they let their opponent back into the game. Notre Dame dropped 22 points on B.C. in the span of 10 minutes to take a one-point lead with 1:01 remaining.

Coughlin needed a clutch performance out of Eagles quarterback Glenn Foley that afternoon in South Bend, just as he would from Mark Brunell in Denver and from Eli Manning in Dallas, Green Bay, Glendale…all over the place, really. He needed a last-second field goal from walk-on kicker David Gordon, just as he needed overtime field goals from Lawrence Tynes to win the NFC championship in 2008 and 2012. And, as usual he got just that.

If Tom Coughlin has truly coached his last game, then here's hoping he can take comfort in the fact that he brought a bounty of indelible moments to football fans, and excruciating headaches to Vegas oddsmakers. It's something to smile about, if he decides to take up smiling in his retirement.