Building a Champion: The New York Giants

As we enter the last few weeks of the NFL season, fans of contenders find themselves pondering whether or not their team has what it takes to win it all in February. I know this feeling from personal experience, as I watched the New York Giants end up as one of the NFC Wild Card teams heading into last year's playoffs.  

You look at the roster or at the headlines coming out of practice everyday and you think of how each story will affect your team's chances in the next round of the playoffs.  But what really determines those chances?

Is it how many reps the quarterback is taking each day or what the coach thinks about the other team's defense? No, it is how the team was assembled, and in the case of the New York Giants of a year ago, this assembly was perfect.

Let's start with the coach of the team: Tom Coughlin.

Although fairly successful prior to coming to New York, fans of the Giants wondered if Coughlin was the right man for the job when the G-Men picked him up. Would his disciplinary style work with veterans such as Michael Strahan and Tiki Barber? As we found out in the first few years of the Coughlin era, the czar-like attitude of a coach can backfire when working with players who have some experience under their belt.  

But fortunately for the Giants, Coughlin changed his style coming into the 2007 season and lightened up on the discipline. What Coughlin was able to do was find a balance between being an overbearing, overwhelming dictator-like presence and the personable coach who everyone loves.

This balance is what allowed him to implement his ideas and teach the young players, while still respecting the veterans on the team.

Next, we move on to the actual players on the field, and arguably the main reason the team was able to knock off the Patriots in Arizona: the defensive line and pass rush.  

The building of the personnel of the team needs to start in the trenches, more specifically the defensive line. A few years ago, fans (including myself) questioned the draft picks of Justin Tuck and Mathias Kiwanuka.

Because of these picks, however, the Giants were able to bring forth what was possibly the best defensive line in the league, which included sure-fire Hall of Famer Strahan, rising stars Osi Umenyiora, and Tuck, Kiwanuka, Defensive Tackles Fred Robbins, Barry Cofield, and rookie Jay Alford.  

Along with linebackers Antonio Pierce and Kawika Mitchell, the Giants' defense was able to create a pass rush that was unparalleled in the NFL. This pass rush was a major factor in the Super Bowl, as the Giants sacked Tom Brady a total of five times. This defensive front was also the reason that the Patriots could only manage 45 yards rushing throughout the game.

On the other side of the ball is the Offensive Line, which for the New York Giants, started to mesh well right at the end of the season. This cohesiveness allowed the Giants to gain no fewer than 90 yards on the ground in any playoff game, including a 134-yard performance against the Green Bay Packers in the NFC championship game.  

This running game allowed Eli Manning to manage the game from the quarterback's standpoint and set up big plays with the play-action pass.

And that brings us to the quarterback. Eli Manning's roller coaster career was well-documented coming into the second half of the 2007 season, and he was widely known as an inconsistent player who could not handle the pressures of being an NFL quarterback.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?