Jack Del Rio Fired: Will Tom Coughlin Follow Del Rio out the Door?

With Jack Del Rio finding himself with more time to get his Christmas shopping done, the football-adoring public is paying their respects to the first NFL head coach firing of the season. Del Rio's Jacksonville Jaguars obituary will read something like this: eight-plus years at the helm of the Jags, three winning seasons, one playoff win and a partridge in a pear tree.

Jack Del Rio: 2011's first NFL head coach firing.

So who's next on the chopping block?

One of the names that always seems to be kicked around this time of year is New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin. The first head coach the Jaguars ever had seems to be coaching on borrowed time, despite having won a Super Bowl less than four years ago. Although the Giants are only one game out of the NFC East lead, many critics of Coughlin feel that his team is underperforming.

Last night's effort from Coughlin's Giants didn't help the coach's cause. The Saints made a highlight reel out of the Giants' defense as Drew Brees and company lit them up for 577 yards in a 49-24 beatdown.

Coughlin's team looked lethargic on the field and defeated on the sidelines. Coughlin's explanation of his team's poor performance was rather concise, “We didn’t stop them. How much further explanation do you want?”

The Giants' season isn't over. The Cowboys and their mercurial quarterback lead New York by just one game and those two teams will meet twice in the coming weeks (Week 14 and Week 17). But one wonders if, with this team's underperforming ways, the division title is within reach and whether Coughlin might be out of touch.

Tom Coughlin was college teammates with Larry Czonka at Syracuse. When Coughlin set the school's single-season receiving record in 1967, Michael Jackson was nine years old. The coach with whom most associate with Coughlin's discipleship, Bill Parcells, is only five years his senior. Coughlin will turn 66 in August.

Coughlin's reputation for treating his players like hired help precedes him. In a recent SportingNews poll of 111 NFL players, Tom Coughlin edged out Tony Sparano of the Miami Dolphins as the head coach for whom players would least like to play. One NFC defensive player was quoted as saying, “I don’t know that any player in the league would say they’d want to play for Tom Coughlin. I wouldn’t.”

Ouch.

But is that enough to fire a guy? When do you decide to let go of a head coach? Only five (whoops, make that four) of the league's other 31 head coaches have served longer and only one of those four—fellow Parcells protégé Bill Belichick—has taken his team to a championship.

But Coughlin's sensibilities weren't engineered with the modern-day athlete in mind. Giants players griped in 2004 about having to come to meetings five minutes before their scheduled start time.

But his stern ways were one of the reasons that Coughlin got the job to begin with. Since 2004, the Giants have not had a losing season. Even Michael Strahan, one of the stars of that 2007 Super Bowl team, has reversed his position on Coughlin and said so in his autobiography.

Oh, and that players' poll? Jack Del Rio didn't even make the list. I guess the Jaguars players will miss losing games with that guy.