A man once lauded, once deified around these parts is having his name dragged through the mud, all because he isn’t allowed to be a head coach anymore.

It is funny how the narrative has changed this past week regarding Tom Coughlin, the longtime New York Giants head coach who “resigned” this year after a fourth straight season without the playoffs. Up until Week 17 of this past year, Coughlin still had plenty of admirers both among the fanbase and in the media, and rightly so. He was seen as a throwback coach, the tough, ever-so-slightly curmudgeon type who found enough success to lead this team to two Super Bowl titles.

It was hard not to like Coughlin even when the going got tough over the past couple of seasons. It was even harder not to respect him.

But now, suddenly, Coughlin is the bad guy, painted as some sort of a villain after a series of radio interviews that made a number of headlines. In these interviews, he expressed that he didn’t agree with being fired.

Then again, who ever has agreed with being fired?

As a competitor, it would be against his very being to agree about being canned, being tossed to the side and truthfully, perhaps he shouldn’t have been. The teams he’s had the past three seasons haven’t been very good. Free agency has landed a couple stinkers and the NFL Draft? Yikes, some of those have been pretty bad for this team.

So Coughlin has every reason to be upset that he got fired – who wouldn’t be? He was known as a tireless worker, someone who never lacked for effort. He gave his all the team and yet still, they have been on quite a slide for the past four years.

Nowhere in his comments does Coughlin criticize his old team or lash out at them, instead he voiced his displeasure at what happened, that he didn’t agree with their decision. And if he did sound bitter about being let go by the Giants in a job interview with the Philadelphia Eagles, then let him be – bitter is not the same as vindictive. Coughlin can have every right to be angry and bitter, he’s earned that.

But publicly he hasn’t said anything that would shame himself or the organization. Time to stop this witch hunt and characterizing Coughlin as some sort of a ghoul or a fiend. It just isn’t there.

Let him be upset, let him be bitter. Let the man feel that he shouldn’t be fired because chances are that every one of us would feel the same way. The moment he attacks the organization or the process, then he can be scrutinized.

But not here, not now. He hasn’t crossed that line yet and likely never will.

And certainly not with a team that he has loved as much as this one.