Eli Manning will find out Thursday night if he has been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, with many assuming that the Giants quarterback will indeed be Canton bound once the latest nominees are announced.
While Evan Roberts has no problem with Manning’s Hall of Fame candidacy, he can’t help but feel like another benchmark of those Giants Super Bowl teams continues to be overlooked, a steady face of those teams that Evan believes is likely more deserving of induction than Manning himself.
“Tom Coughlin deserves more credit than even Eli Manning for the great success the Giants had in the mid-2000s,” Evan declared. “Eli Manning getting into the Hall of Fame is fine. But there feels something empty with Tom Coughlin not being there first.
“When I look at what Eli did and what Coughlin did here, call me crazy, but I put Coughlin ahead of Eli.”
Coughlin won two Super Bowls with the Giants, both with Manning as the quarterback, and had one of the franchise’s greatest runs of success while he was at the helm from 2004 to 2015. He was named among those eligible for induction in the coach’s category this year, but was ultimately not named a finalist. He finished with a career coaching record of 170-150, guided nine teams to the playoffs, and orchestrated the greatest upset in Super Bowl history before guiding Big Blue on another unprecedented run en route to an upset of the Patriots four years later.
Tiki believes Coughlin deserves a lot more Hall of Fame love than he is getting, but believes it is part of a larger problem when it comes to the Hall.
“Unless you’re like Bill Belichick…the coaches kind of get screwed,” Tiki said. “They really do.
“The fact that Tom Coughlin doesn’t get the love from the Hall of Fame that he deserves for turning two franchises around…it’s frustrating to anyone who played for him.”