Tom Coughlin takes blame for passing on 3rd down
New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin is shouldering the full blame for his team’s loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night.
Up three points with 1:43 remaining in the game, the Giants called a passing play on 3rd-and-goal from the 1-yard line. Rather than calling a run play that would result in a touchdown at best and chewing up more clock at worst, Coughlin called for a pass.
It fell incomplete, and the Giants settled for a field goal.
“It’s my fault at the end of the game,” Coughlin told reporters after the game, via Gregg Rosenthal of NFL.com. “There’s nobody else to blame but me. I take full responsibility for it because the strategy was wrong at the end.”
The Cowboys were out of timeouts, but that didn’t stop them from putting together a game-winning drive with 1:29 left in the fourth quarter. While Coughlin insists he should have called a different play to allow the clock to tick below one minute, Eli Manning was also quick to take responsibility.
“I gotta know that (to take a sack), 100 percent. I gotta know that,” Manning said. “I gotta know the circumstance and just don’t take a chance and take that sack and go into the next one; get a field goal and leave just a little bit of time left on the clock.”
No team makes or breaks its season in Week 1, but losing to a division rival like that has to sting. That said, it certainly wasn’t the most controversial goal-line play call we have seen this year.
