Will Tom Coughlin Lose His Job If He Can't Beat the Jets?

Predicting a head coach's demise in the NFL is difficult, even for the so-called "hot seat" coaches. We were all certain that Todd Haley and Tony Sparano wouldn't survive through the season, but to know exactly when a general manager decides to give his man the axe. Personally, I thought Haley would have been canned a few months sooner. I thought Sparano could have finished out the season, and like the rest of America, I hadn't given any real thought to Jack Del Rio. (Jacksonville is like the FCS of the NFL. It's not necessarily their fault. They just are.)

But I won't let that stop me from making another coaching prediction, this one regarding a former Jaguars head coach: if the New York Giants lose on Christmas Eve Saturday, head coach Tom Coughlin won't be coming back for 2012.

The Giants will be the visiting team in a game played in their own stadium, a quirk stemming from the fact that they share a stadium with the New York Jets. The new MetLife Stadium replaced what was previously home to both teams, a joint which carried the name Giants Stadium. That's all you need to know about the relationship between these two teams.

Since the Jets came into existence as the "Titans of New York" in the old AFL in 1960, they've not only fought to finish first in their league, but first in their own city. In a metropolitan area surrounded by folks whose parents (and grandparents) grew up watching the Giants, the team has long been thought of as the city's second football banana. The team changed its name to "Jets" in 1963, five years before it beat the NFL's Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

But while the Jets were playing out their schedule every fall, they also had to do battle with the other established powers in the city. When the team played their home games in Shea Stadium through the early 1970s, they had to wait for the Mets to finish theirs. When the team moved to New Jersey in the early 1980s, fans had hoped that the name "Giants Stadium" would be changed to acknowledge their new tenant. The Giants said no. 

Even a professional sports franchise can be homeless in New York. 

When the Jets saw their lease at Giants Stadium expiring in 2008, the club sought to build their own stadium on the west side of Manhattan. To make a long story less nauseating, the team couldn't grease enough palms to get the deal done. As a result, they got back into bed with the Giants, but this time to jointly build a new New Jersey stadium, adjacent to the old structure, which was demolished in 2010.

Coughlin has to do his part to keep the Jets under the Giants' thumb in a game that resembles more of a late-November college football rivalry than a Week 16 interconference tilt. The game's result will carry playoff implications for both teams. The Jets currently cling to the AFC's No. 6 seed, with four other teams hot on their tail.

The Giants can still win their division, but also could still lose it spectacularly as well, either this weekend or next weekend when they host Dallas at MetLife on New Year's Day. For all intents and purposes, the Giants will be the home team in that game.

Should the G-Men miss the playoffs, it will be their third straight January sitting at home, and (most likely) their second of three seasons without a winning record. Despite great seasons from Eli Manning and rookie sensation Jason Pierre-Paul, the general sentiment is that the team has underperformed. Coughlin received a one-year contract extension on a deal that was set to expire at the end of this season. That's hardly a ringing endorsement from management.

And if you don't think that the Giants would make that coaching change without a high-profile replacement, just remember that this is the same organization that kept Jim Fassel as head coach for 112 games. This Saturday will be Coughlin's 126th game wearing the Giants headset. Only Bill Parcells and some guy named Steve Owen have coached more games for Big Blue.