How do you remember the Fassel era?

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he had more losses as the -4.5 favorite than any Giant coach. He could never consistently get the team that would show up to beat the great teams to show up and beat lesser competition.

I wanted him out years before

Fassel ended the offensive futility of the mid-90s.

His teams always beat up divisional opponents for the most part.

Always played their best football in December.

It always sucks to lose a Super Bowl, but the 2000 Ravens place in NFL history tells me the better team won that day and that not a whole was going to be done to change that outcome. I do think things maybe snowballed a little bit and the score could’ve been a lot closer but I’m thinking a solid 8 out of 10 times that Raven team would come out on top in that matchup.

The other 2 playoff losses we can definitely quibble about. We had not business losing 97 or 02 when we did, but again, fun to my head I don’t think we’re talking Super Bowl teams there.

The Fassel years were just a good, solid yet unspectacular era of Giants football. Definitely lots of excitement.

My first year up at Albany while my old man and I were walking around UAlbany campus and one of the first things we stumbled upon was a softball game with all the beat writers and journalists. Fassel and Bob Tisch (both fine now) were sitting on a golf cart watching and they were really cool to me. Chatted for a couple of minutes and signed my hat.

(Both gone now) obviously

that was fun to watch, that ended with a gut wrenching choke job in the playoffs.

Kinda encapsulates his entire tenure, lot of unexpected wins and fun moments, and a lot of brutal choke jobs

But in retrospect

What would we give to have a coach make the playoffs 3 out of their first 6 years including a SB and the other seasons be 8-8 or 7-9.

Same with Coughlin.

We thought their bad years were bad

Little dud we know what bad was….

Lombardies.

Prior to 2003, his worst season was 7-9. He got the Giants to a Super Bowl with Kerry Collins at QB.

Time has made the Fassel era look much better considering the last decade.

If you read some of the posts by our resident clown, the high water mark recently was the Gettleman years. Under that lense, Fassel was a veritable Don Shula.

It’s was a comparative golden age of giants football

getting a real QB helped him go even further but always one thread away from unraveling.

Everything else is a blur and barely remmeber any of it. Including the beat down we gave Minny.

That SF game ruined any productivity I jad in me for a week.

I worked at a Starbucks in college and I remmeber being on the espresso bar the next day making drinks. When I heard someone on the line to order talking about the game, I was straming a pitcher of milk for cappuccinos. I started staring into space contemplating how on Earth that could have happened and burned my jand because the milk was boiling over about 35 degrees anove foaming tenp and shooting hot milk all over the place.

It was embarassing, but also the truest example of being in a state of shock that I can fathom.

but he looks like prime Belichick compared to what we’ve seen most of the past decade. I agree that his teams regularly played down to the competition, but he put together some good seasons. Won a division title with Danny Freaking Kanell as his QB.

His teams are good but very undisciplined. The Viking and SF playoff losses were prime examples of that.

Got to watch that team pummel the falcons down here in Georgia.

It was fun. Didn't feel like watching them play was some kind of punishment, like these days.

I am extremely positive on his tenure since he was the coach for my entire high school time into college.

Before that I went through the end of elementary school and all of middle school with the inept offenses of Dan Reeves and being subjected to QB play of Dave Brown. I HATED Dan Reeves, partly because he was so conservative and also because he never so much tried to trust his QBs. The offensive output was putrid.

By comparison I was excited that this seeming Bill Gates-esque nerd who was some offensive savant and QB whisper was coming to New York. It was like Christ coming down to fix our embarrassing team at that point.

The highs were high and the lows were low but it was exciting football! Not boring dog shit. He revived the team, offense with Collins-Tiki-Amani-Ike-Shockey, had an eye for coaches with Payton and Fox and I think was a much better coach than given credit for.

I can write more about him, but I’ll stop there. I really enjoyed his stay especially after Reeves and was sad to see him go since he really was the first coach I truly liked. I was a tad young for the Parcells tenure.

Pretty accurately

I thought he lost the games he was expecting to lose and generally won the games he was expected to win. I dont think they won games because if his coaching. Probably he was an average coach even when the talent was above average

We met him in person as we came out of the bathroom at the end of practice. I was with my wife and two young kids, we wanted him to sign an autograph for the kids and all we had was a Mickey Mouse Disney book as we had just returned from there. We shared a laugh about that and he was great with the kids.

With Shockey dropping a decisive pass and then looking at his hands.

I’d take any of the teams he coached over what we have had in recent years. At least they were competitive.

Maddengily inconsistent

In comment 16388659 yalebowl said:

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With Shockey dropping a decisive pass and then looking at his hands.

That one where he changed his gloves and gave the finger.

Shockey was also awesome in that hame

In comment 16388572 Mayo2JZ said:

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but the Vikings game was brutal. I don’t blame him for the SB. NO ONE was going to beat the Ravens that year

I think they would have lost regardless, but I hated the gameplan they went in with for that SB.

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Which O-line was worse Fassel's or today's ?

The Frisco debacle should haver never happened; Giants killed the Niners all day, then with lead, couldn't hold it because the line couldn't run to kill the clock.

O-line coach "Mouse" McNally tried hard with that bunch of impersonators, but just couldn't pull it off.

My last memory of Jim was his last game. He had so many players hurt, it seemed like he had to hire dog catchers to play for him. After he got fired, he still showed up in a Giants jacket, doing his best to win the game (and almost did, as I recall).

Great defenses, mostly meh offenses.

If I were a Steelers fan that would make him the worst coach.

As a Giants fan that makes him pretty darn good! Especially since the two better ones are or should be in the Hall of Fame.

He was a breath of fresh air after some pretty bad football. That first season, going perfect against the NFCE was awesome!

That sticks out is he came out the one year very aggressive. And the team failed him every time. It culminated with the pick 6 just before halftime vs the Cards (I think), but he was going in 4th, very much like today’s coaches but the team let him didn’t come through.

No one was beating that Ravens team. They knocked out or hurt every QB they faced and Collins was playing hurt by the 2nd half.

The way the Giants owned the Eagles during his era was a huge positive. The SB loss was against a lethal defence which was coached by a younger, less toxic Wink Matindale, and they had the murderer Ray Lewis to deal with.

and completely unpredictable. There were times when I'd thought he was brilliant, getting the team to play above their potential, and there were times they were maddeningly frustrating and - to borrow Fassels' term - befuddling.

One thing he was not was boring. Whether they were up or down, the Giants were always interesting under his watch.

In comment 16388693 NormanAllen_95 said:

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In comment 16388659 yalebowl said: Quote: With Shockey dropping a decisive pass and then looking at his hands. That one where he changed his gloves and gave the finger. Shockey was also awesome in that hame

Shockey cost them the game. he dropped a sure TD. maybe if he spent more time focused on his his job instead getting i fihhts with fans they would have been better off.

Fassel teams were incredibly undisciplined, just like him.

Wish I coulda shook his hand.

from them almost every year.
Prior to the total collapse in 2003 Fassel's December record was an impressive 19-7.
If he could have extracted that kind of record out of them from September through November he'd have been a legend.

a team that could consistently beat the Eagles!

But also as a coach who was in charge of wildly inconsistent teams, which was frustrating. At least he brought excitement back to a franchise that had become stale and boring during the Dan Reevs era. He also knew how to get the best out of Shockey. Couglin didn't like to feature the TE as the focal point of his offensive's by the time he got to the Giants-much to Shockey's chagrin. The two playoffs collapses in 97 and 02 stung a lot. The big loss in the SB sucked as well. But as I said, I give Fassel credit for bringing back excitement and making the team a contender for most of his tenure.

actually punched each other on the sideline during the game. This is totally unacceptable.

interesting trivia, Fassel was also on the sideline of the Stanford marching band debacle.

In comment 16388778 Victor in CT said:

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In comment 16388693 NormanAllen_95 said: Quote: In comment 16388659 yalebowl said: Quote: With Shockey dropping a decisive pass and then looking at his hands. That one where he changed his gloves and gave the finger. Shockey was also awesome in that hame Shockey cost them the game. he dropped a sure TD. maybe if he spent more time focused on his his job instead getting i fihhts with fans they would have been better off. Fassel teams were incredibly undisciplined, just like him.

Oh B.S. in a 38-14 game, one dropped TD pass shouldn't have mattered. The defense cost them the game for letting Jeff freaking Garcia look like Steve Young in the second half. Also, the ref screw job at the end.

In comment 16388771 Fishmanjim57 said:

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The way the Giants owned the Eagles during his era was a huge positive. The SB loss was against a lethal defence which was coached by a younger, less toxic Wink Matindale, and they had the murderer Ray Lewis to deal with.

What? Wink wasn't a coach on that Ravens team.

As a kid, I was a Giants fan in a school full of Cowboys and Niners fans. Fassel's era started off with the first team to ever go undefeated in the NFC East in '97, and the Fassel tenure coincided with the end of the Cowboys era of dominance. The 2000 Super Bowl run will always be among my best sports memories, as I was 6 when the Giants won SB25, so I had never seen them play at that level before. Obviously the result sucked in SB35, but winning the top seed, handily beating the Eagles and absolutely destroying the Vikings in the NFC Championship game were excellent memories.

My dad, on the other hand, was always frustrated by Fassel, to the point where he referred to him as "Fasshole" lol

played down to the level of the opponent constantly. Alot of big wins and good times too, but also often teams significantly overrated by NYG fans.

whenever I thought they would have a good season, they were lousy and whenever I thought they'd be lousy they were good.

these days I would kill for it. Funny how time and circumstance can change one's opinion.

our worst drafting era ever.

I would love to get the full story on why Fassel never got another HC job.

Coaches with way less a resume and success have gotten multiple chances...

In comment 16388696 steve in ky said:

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amen.

was the NFC East was a cream puff from 97-99. 2000 Philly was showing serious promise but NYG were still the better and tougher team. By 01 Philly had taken the reigns but even 2000-2003 the East still wasn't that good at all. Skins were always a joke back then. Dallas sucked. Philly was the only good team and they weren't even good until 00.

Coughlin won in a much tougher division. So did Parcells, obviously.

LEt's see how Daboll does. The east is good again. We need to be good again too.

Jim Lee Howell forward, he probably would be ranked above the middle of the pack. Maybe slightly below Perkins and above Reeves.

Seriously. Coming off the likes of Dave Brown, Danny Kanell and Kent Graham, the Fassel/Collins/Barber era were downright electric. My amazing mother lucked into being able to acquire season tickets in section 305 from a family friend from 1999 through 2001 and that was a great window to see a lot of games in person, including the 2000 NFCC beatdown. Sure it ended terribly and with a major meltdown blown playoff game, but I wouldn't call that era anything less than interesting and at times extremely satisfying.

for reestablishing a measure of competency around the team after the Reeves years, even if he was up-and-down as a coach (never had consecutive winning seasons). It's ironic that like the Giants teams of the late 50s, his assistant coaches (Lombardi and Landry, Payton and Fox) ended up going on to much more successful careers than the guy who was their boss.

The D was the lead unit as Young had drafted some really good D players. Fassel did great work building Kerry back up and he had plenty of issues to deal with. 2002 O was pretty exciting. They found a "formula" in his words with Tiki, Jeremy and Amani (his best season).

The NFCE was also on a downturn. Dallas was fading. WFT had been down and Reid was just getting going so he never had that really good NFCE to contend with.

The SB season was great. It did though expose some weaknesses. Two biggest ones were the OL and QB. Then the 2003 meltdown but that led to TC and Eli. TC made sure that the Giants were not going to get pushed around up front again and Eli was the big game QB they needed when the critical times called for it.

I think the 2007 or 08 team would deal with that Ravens D of 2000 just fine. The OL would stand strong and Eli wouldn't buckle.

The Fassel era was fun, and I have great memories from those years. Scrappy, likable teams playing over their heads at times. Always competitive. Getting Collins from the scrap heap and leading them to a Super Bowl in his first full year as a starter was impressive. Really only one bad season. Glad he was a Giant.