GIANTS’ TIME IS NOW
Shurmur turns back clock to Coughlin era
The Giants are no longer on Coughlin Time. They’re on Shurmur Time, better known as your regular old Eastern Standard Time.
Coughlin famously kept all of the clocks running five minutes fast at the team’s East Rutherford facility during his 12 seasons as head coach. And Ben McAdoo followed suit, running five minutes fast, as Coughlin’s immediate successor through his firing last December.
Shurmur, however, has reset all the clocks to reflect the correct time. But he said Thursday that it has nothing to do with erasing the legacy of Coughlin, far from it.
“I just can’t function that way,” Shurmur said with a grin, just three days out from Coughlin’s first return as a Giants opponent in his post as the Jacksonville Jaguars’ executive VP of football operations. “In other words, I’m always five minutes early, but I want to know the real time. The other thing I found is OK, when you’re on the road, do you change clocks? Do you change it with the hotels? Everybody really looks to their phone for the time. So they’re looking at that and clocks. I wanted to just simplify that.”
Shurmur added: “I still think right is right. We all gotta be on time. But I just wanted to make sure that all the times were the same everywhere.”
Fair enough. All the same, isn’t it very ‘Coughlin’ of Shurmur to come in as the Giants’ new coach and tweak any and every rule or routine as he sees fit? Is it possible that Shurmur — arriving like Coughlin did in 2004 with the charge of restoring order inside the building and on the field — is showing signs of being Tom 2.0?
Well, like Coughlin, he certainly means business.
Take, for example, how Shurmur has told his players there is no need for them to be wearing tinted visors on their helmets in practices. The coach cited his no-visor rule in a radio interview a couple weeks ago as an example of how if something doesn’t help the Giants win games, it doesn’t need to be a part of their routine.
In other words, Shurmur wants his players to practice how they will play. And he’ll make a rule like that even if the two players it affects the most are two of his biggest stars: Odell Beckham Jr. and Landon Collins, who in the past have worn dark visors in both practices and warmups. “I tried to talk to him about it, just because I like having a dark visor,” Odell Beckham Jr. told the Daily News with a smirk on Thursday. “I have like a light sensitivity, so I’m out there and it’s bright. When you have that little bit of tint over there, it just relaxes a little bit more. Your face isn’t just like trying to squeeze for the ball … staring into the lights or sunlight. But they were rules he put in so we just have to go with it.”
Beckham also admitted that yes, Shurmur’s emphasis on rules and structure does have a Coughlin feel to it.
“I feel that in a sense,” Beckham said of the Coughlin comparison. “(Shurmur) kind of just came in and set the tone, and we’ve just all bought in and followed him. So whatever he’s got going for us he’s been doing a great job, so we trust him.
“I didn’t go down without a fight,” Beckham added with a smile. “I did ask him about the visor, though, that’s for sure.”
Comparing resumes, Coughlin brings Lombardi hardware to the table while Shurmur is still searching for head coaching success, but that’s not what this is about.
It’s about a culture change that was required coming off last year’s lawless environment that saw three defensive backs suspended — one for walking out on the coach, another for not even showing up to a practice — and a locker room that got “ugly,” as coowner John Mara said last week.
Shurmur, as the Daily News has written before, reminded one staffer this offseason of Coughlin with his emphasis on players having manners, being polite, being as the coach called it, “good citizens.”
“The culture’s gone back to when (Tom) Coughlin was here,” the staffer said. “Coughlin, he used to ask around if players were being polite. This staff does that, too.”
Mara told the Daily News last week that he feels better and better about hiring Shurmur with every day that passes, in part due to his “maturity level, experience and demeanor.” And players have embraced Shurmur’s rules since the early offseason.
“I think with us being the Giants, there’s always a lot of coverage of us,” Eli Apple said this summer. “(So Shurmur) always reminds us to know
what you’re representing. It’s more than just yourself. We’re all a team and everybody has to be one and understand that.”
Coughlin’s return on Sunday, of course, in itself is a major storyline, Shurmur aside.
Coughlin would not comment for this story or any other because the Jaguars said he will not be doing interviews in-season. It’s easy to assume how much this game means to Coughlin, though, both because of what he accomplished here and how he left.
When the Giants let him go after the 2015 season, Coughlin was naturally upset but also ticked that the team was canning him and not GM Jerry Reese — a point validated just two seasons later when the lack of quality drafts caught up with the Giants in last year’s 3-13 mess.
Then on Nov. 14, 2016, when Coughlin was inducted into the Giants’ Ring of Honor, he stood his ground as players emerged from the locker rooms for warm-ups, master of ceremonies Michael Strahan rushed his introduction, but Coughlin still had more to say. Ernie Accorsi and Justin Tuck had spoken prior.
“I know the players are back on the field, but I’m not gonna get cheated,” Coughlin said, proceeding to read his entire prepared speech, speaking for so long that he was still talking when the halftime clock struck zero.
Coughlin has moved on successfully, of course, having turned in his Giants gym membership card. Jacksonville extended the contracts of Coughlin, GM Dave Caldwell and coach Doug Marrone through the 2021 season this past winter after the Jaguars reached the AFC Championship Game.
Shurmur also has “great respect” for what Coughlin accomplished here. Shurmur said he has a “professional friendship” with Coughlin.
But did Shurmur share with Coughlin that he was going to change the clocks back? Surely he told Tom he was undoing one of his signature symbols, no?
“No,” Shurmur laughed. “He didn’t ask me about it, and I didn’t tell him. So, it’s just a little thing.”
No such thing as a little thing, though, Coughlin believes that, and Shurmur clearly does, too.