Back-page Tom.

That's what Giants coach Tom Coughlin became last season. The tabloids seared him, mocked him and lampooned him, which made for one heck of a trying season.

Most of all, they seemed to want him gone.

Coughlin is trying to be more personable, but hasn't exactly mellowed out. (Getty Images)

"It put a real strain on my family," Coughlin said.

At one point, they asked him if it was worth it to continue. Of course, they knew the answer.

Coughlin was born to coach; this is a man who knows little else. It's family, faith and coaching. That's why when it appeared he might be fired after an 8-8 season in 2006, there was talk his career would be over. He was 60, and there aren't a lot of chances for a guy that age fired by two NFL teams.

Ten months later, Coughlin is sticking it to those who doubted him, proving once again that despite all of his idiosyncrasies -- and the list is a scroll -- he knows the game.

After back-to-back losses to open this season, Coughlin was Dead Man Coaching. But just as the obituaries on his coaching career were being readied, Coughlin led the Giants to five consecutive victories, stating a case as a legitimate Super Bowl contender in the NFC.

Put that on the back page.

"There's no question (the doubters) inspired me," Coughlin said this week. "But it did more than that. I made up my mind that to change some things, I had to communicate with the players better. I had to be more accommodating with the media. I had to understand better that the media has a job to do."

Coughlin was prodded by the Giants front office to be better on both counts when they agreed to give him a one-year extension last January. Coughlin is now signed through the 2008 season, and a Super Bowl run could lead to a multi-year extension.

It didn't help Coughlin's cause last year when first-year New York Jets coach Eric Mangini led the Jets to the playoffs playing in the same stadium as the Giants. The name "Man-genius" was tossed around. (By the way, with the Jets 1-6, does anybody still think Mangini is a better coach than Coughlin?

And that's just it. Because of Coughlin's reputation as a hard-ass, well deserved I might add, he doesn't get the due he deserves. I know. He still blames me for his reputation.

As the beat guy covering his first team in Jacksonville, I wrote many stories about his coaching pettiness, like refusing to allow coaches to wear sunglasses, sticking the media in a box during practice, forbidding players from wearing shoes without socks and giving out more speeding tickets than a cop trying to hit his quota. That, Coughlin insists to this day, is how his reputation spread around the league.

"It's all you," he says to me all the time.

No, Tom. It was all you. But that's OK. That's who he was -- and is. However, he has evolved.

The new Coughlin is supposed to be a kinder, gentler man with his players. He now has a Giants leadership council he meets with regularly. In the past, he has always met with a handful of players, but this is structured.

Antonio Pierce and Osi Umenyiora help the Giants to a league-best 27 sacks. (US Presswire)

It helps that Tiki Barber isn't on the team anymore. Barber constantly took shots at the coach. Some we know of because his name was on them. Coughlin thinks there were more as an unnamed source from last season.

Coughlin hated that Barber announced his retirement during the season and made himself the focal point of the team. Barber hated that Coughlin had full-contact practices in December.

On and on it went. Tiki vs. Tom.

Coughlin didn't want to get into the Barber feud, but he did say, "It's a good locker room. They're all on the same page for the right reason, the right purpose. They're very positive with each other. The players are unselfish and check their egos at the door."

That sounds like a Tiki zinger to me.

Coughlin came to training camp this summer a different man. Smiled more, scowled less. He even took the team bowling. Bowling? Tom Coughlin? Isn't this the same man who ran stalag Coughlin in Jacksonville and the first few years in New York?

"I picked a spot during training camp where it was a great changeup," Coughlin said. "We picked teams. So we were still competing."

There's a Coughlin-ism: always competing. The man is driven. It kills him that limited time has prevented him from a chance to master his golf game. The stories are legendary about his anger on the golf course when he hits a bad shot.

That drive is a big reason why the Giants have turned things around. It helps he now has two coordinators with whom he's comfortable. Kevin Gilbride runs the offense, which he did for Coughlin in Jacksonville for two years, and Steve Spagnuolo runs the defense. Spagnuolo brings a blitzing, attacking style with him, which he learned while working under Philadelphia Eagles defense coordinator Jim Johnson.

"It's a system I admired," Coughlin said.

The Giants now have one of the best pass rushes, leading the NFL with 27 sacks. The offense, with an emerging Eli Manning, is fourth in the league in scoring at 26.7 points per game.

Credit has to go to Coughlin for the Giants' success. But you would be hard-pressed to find many out there who think he's a top-tier coach. The late Sid Gillman, arguably one of the greatest passing minds in football history, once said Coughlin ran the best offense of any coach in the league. That's high praise.

Yet a scene at the league meetings last March in Phoenix said a lot about the way he is perceived. At the NFC coaches breakfast, where each of the conference's 16 coaches sit at a table surrounded by the media who move from table to table, Coughlin sat with one or two writers in front of him the entire session.

Around the plush grounds, writers laughed and chuckled along with the other coaches, swarming some, even going two deep around other tables.

Just a couple weeks ago in Dallas, sitting with some writers before the Cowboys-Patriots game, Coughlin's name came up. I commented on what a good coach he was, what a good job he was doing in New York. Most of those at the table frowned. Yet when Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher was mentioned, they all piped up about how good a coach he is.

Fisher is a good coach. But when you compare his career to Coughlin's, there isn't much difference.

• Counting this season, his 14th, Fisher is 109-95 for a winning percentage of .534. In Coughlin's 12 seasons, he is 98-85 (.536).

• Coughlin has taken five teams to the playoffs, Fisher four.

• Both have four seasons with double-digit victories.

• The edge for Fisher is a 5-4 record in the playoffs and a trip to the Super Bowl -- beating Coughlin to get there -- while Coughlin is 4-6 in the postseason.

That difference in perspective has a lot to do with Coughlin's persona. It shouldn't matter. His brutish style can get old. It wears on people. His tyrannical ways can be trivial and he can be confrontational with the media and his players, but cast that aside and look at the man as a coach.

He's a good one. Maybe someday that might even make it onto the back page of a New York tabloid.