There is no head coach NFL players would less rather play for than Tom Coughlin. That’s not to say his current players don’t respect him and want to skip town — except Brandon Jacobs of course — but a Sporting News poll revealed on Thursday that Coughlin is the NFL head coach players would least like to play for. He received 22 votes from the 111 players polled (spanning 31 teams).
“Coughlin is that old school, Bill Parcells, my way or the highway type,” Bears defensive tackle Anthony Adams explained. “He won’t bend at all. That’s not the kind of coach you’d like to play for.”
“Looking at it from the outside, I don’t know that any player in the league would say they’d want to play for Tom Coughlin,” an unnamed NFC defensive player added. “I wouldn’t.”
Tony Sparano was a close second with 21 votes and Bill Belichick, unsurprisingly, finished third with 15.
On the flip side, Rex Ryan and Mike Tomlin were voted the coaches players would most want to play for, tying for first with 22 votes each. Bill Belichick also finished third on that list with 11 votes, so as you can see there are a variety of opinions across the NFL as to what players want in a coach. Some players like discipline while others need freedom.
I can understand not wanting to play for a guy like Sparano because he doesn’t seem like much of a players’ coach, and doesn’t win many games, but not wanting to play for guys like Coughlin and Belichick shows how soft some NFL players can be. How can a guy like Marvin Lewis, who is in his ninth year as head coach of the Bengals and has never won a playoff game, only receive two votes for the person players would least want to play for?
Many NFL players don’t want to be told what to do, even if it translates into a winning formula. A lot of them are grown men who need to be coddled. Many of them would rather play for an unsuccessful coach than a successful one, if the successful one has a dictator’s style. That, my friends, is the embarrassing truth.
