A Winning Relationship
I had been playing for the New York Giants for more than a decade when Tom Coughlin was named head coach in 2004. Tom has since been recognized as one of the greatest coaches in NFL history, but at the beginning, our relationship was tough: I hated him. Hate is a strong word, but that’s the way I felt. He was hard on everybody; he seemed to be overly concerned about petty things that made no difference, like being five minutes early to every meeting, wearing the same color practice jerseys, having your helmet strap buttoned up even when we weren’t in practice. The players didn’t think that he was treating us as professionals. He also wasn’t open to any discussion about his tactics. His attitude was, This is what it is and this is what it’s going to be. Period. After my first season playing for him I didn’t know if I wanted to come back.
While I was making my decision, I happened to hear a Coldplay song, “Clocks.” There is a line in that song that caused me to pause: “Am I part of the cure, or am I part of the disease?” I thought about that, and I had to wonder, Was I doing what I could to improve the situation or was I making it worse? I could either continue rebelling and fighting against him, or I could decide that those things were insignificant and just do my job to the best of my ability and see what happened.
I started to look at Tom Coughlin differently. What are his objectives? I wondered. What are his goals? Is he just trying to make us miserable with all these rules? Clearly his objective was to win. I thought about that and realized, Okay, we have that in common. What else do we have in common? It turned out that there were a lot of things: We both liked to do things the right way, we both were hard workers, we both enjoyed being leaders, and we both loved what we were fortunate enough to be doing.
When I began adding it all up, I realized, You know what? Maybe I haven’t been seeing this guy the right way. Maybe there’s more to this guy than I originally believed.
At that same time Tom’s wife, Judy, must have been listening to the same Coldplay song, because apparently she told him that he had to make some changes too. I think that was harder for him than it was for us. But he tried. At first it was strange. He would try to crack jokes and fit in. He stood in front of the team and did jumping jacks. We couldn’t figure out what was going on; that definitely wasn’t the Tom Coughlin we knew. But eventually we learned that that’s exactly who he is.
Probably the biggest change he made was to allow his leaders to be leaders. He formed a leadership council and gave us real decision-making responsibility. When there was a problem, he would tell us, “I need you to handle this.” And when we had a suggestion, he listened to us. The more responsibility he gave us, the better the team responded. He didn’t demand any less; he demanded the same amount of commitment, focus, the same amount of work, but for the first time there was a feeling that he really cared about us. As a player, when you know that a coach cares about you, you are willing to go above and beyond for him. From a cold and distant figure, he became the man none of us wanted to disappoint.
We learned that there was a purpose behind his system. He didn’t enforce the rules because he wanted to catch people and punish them but rather to make sure that everyone was committed to the same purpose. At first we were accountable to the rules, but gradually we became accountable to one another. If my teammate could make the commitment to be at work five minutes early, why couldn’t I? Eventually we began to draw pride from getting it done Tom Coughlin’s way.
He is not a physically demanding coach. Physically, he was the easiest coach I ever played for. But mentally, I’ve known few people like him. Once we learned to stop fighting his system, and instead mentally adjusted to it, the little things stopped bothering us. They became habits. What difference did it make if you did it Tom’s way rather than the old way? What difference did it make if you got to a meeting five minutes earlier? That allowed us to focus our attention on our opponents. We became a team that knew how to have fun, but also one that understood that when it was time to work, it was definitely time to work. Eventually we developed a unity of purpose, a common commitment to success that took us directly to the Super Bowl.
We never went into a game feeling unprepared. Winning was not all about lifting the most weights or being faster. The way to win was to be mentally prepared to handle the grind, to handle any challenge. Tom Coughlin challenged us from the day he got to New York and prepared us to handle anything that was thrown at us.
He’ll never talk about himself this way, which is why I’m writing this. He believes everything that he’s done has been accomplished as part of a team. That team mentality is an essential part of the way he coaches. We were all part of something much bigger than any one of us. We were a family. And if anybody in our family needed help, the rest of us were right there to provide it, knowing that people would be there for us. If someone got hurt, someone else would step in, but all of us helped that substitute player until he got comfortable. To me, that’s the perfect model for an organization.
Toward the end of my playing career, I would sometimes find myself listening to a younger player complaining about something. “Let me explain something to you,” I’d respond. “You got it easy. We had to break him down. We got the hard Coughlin!” What we learned was that there was a reason for everything he did. That through his experience and the strength of his personality he had created a system that encouraged every player to perform to the best of his ability and to become a winning team. The most difficult thing for us had been to recognize that and then accept it.
And what I eventually discovered was that the lessons I learned from him weren’t limited to football, that they were applicable to every aspect of my life. I still draw on them today, and they have made a great difference for me.
I remember being in the locker room after we’d won the Super Bowl, looking around at my teammates and feeling such incredible emotion, knowing what we had been through together. I told them, “I didn’t win the Super Bowl. You didn’t win the Super Bowl. We won the Super Bowl. As a team!” Tom and I didn’t say too much to each other in that locker room; we didn’t have to. Both of us knew where we’d started and how far we’d come.
When I look back on our relationship now, I tell people proudly that I love the man. I love him, and if I could, I would play for him any day. And together, we would win.
—Michael Strahan