Coughlin: You are “somewhat’ wrong there. The players weren’t happy, but they didn’t revolt. Much like what happened with Vermeil in St. Louis (where they DID revolt) management called both coaches in (Vermeil in his 3rd year, Coughlin in his 4th) and told both coaches to "lighten up” a little. In Coughlin’s case, he backed off a his players being 5 minutes early for meetings, he set up a veteran players counsel and he started getting a little more personal with his players (asking about their families, talking about his grandkids, etc). He’s still just as demanding as before, as has been said by a number of his players (like Strahan).

Both coaches won a SB in that year. It’s a WHOLE lot easier to lighten up a little AFTER you’ve laid down a culture of hard work and discipline than it is to try to do what Wade Phillips is now trying to do: That is, after being a laid, back, easy going, discipline-less coach, he’ s now going to try to “get tough” with his team Good luck with that.

Don’t be stupid about Davis’s TD catch. You’re insulting my intelligence with your comment. I added the TD catch as a precursor to waht happened afterwards, when he hugged his coach on the sidelines and the next day said that Singletary was the best coach he’s ever had. No, I wasn’t suggesting that Singletary’s beat-down of Davis led him to be a better pass receiver.

Singletary did to Davis something similar to what Buddy Ryan did to Singletary early in his career. Singletary GREATLY credits Ryan for helping make him a HOF player. I have Singletary talking about that incident on DVD. I’d be happy to make a copy of that and send it to you. Let me know and I’ll give you my email address.

I’ll address Dungy. One of the classiest guys in the NFL. That said, he was fired in Tampa cause he wasn’t “tough enough” with his players. Warren Sapp, who played for and LOVES Dungy, very reluctantly said that “Dungy was far to easy going down there, especially with the offense.” Someone like Gruden coming in there to change the culture was needed for them to make the next step (Super Bowl). This opinion comes from one of Dungy’s BEST players, a player who still LOVES Dungy. Facts are facts. In INDY, Dungy was blessed to inherit one of the greatest QB’s of all time. That said, their playoff (and SB record) considering they had one of the all-time greats at QB, is pretty weak.

Now, the pants incident. Singletary played in an era where the locker room was sacred: “What happens in Vegas, I mean the lockerroom, stays in the locker room.” He quickly learned that that’s no longer the case. that said, if anybody thinks that was the strangest thing that’s happened in a locker room is crazy.

Go back to Lombardi/Landry and work forward. The list of SB winning coaches is dominated by “Hard A**” coaches, not by “nice guys.”

Here’s a quote from the great Jerry Rice, about his “nice guy” HC in Oakland (Norv Turner): “He (Turner) could not motivate the players. He had NO control.” OUCH!