Many football players today encounter issues with personnel decisions and coaching adjustments made by staff members and owners of professional teams. Tempers rise between players and managers and lead to team dilemmas, hatred, and discontent. Media and news are largely kept out of the loop as much as the teams are capable of doing, who then try to solve their issues within their organization without alerting fans and the media. However, fans do sometimes hear about these things, and become uncomfortable about how their beloved team is faring. These immature problems extend past youth sports into professional leagues, where players and staff members are traded, fired, cut, or criticized for a small slip of the tongue during both regular seasons and offseasons. The New York Giants, a professional football team, ran into these types of problems in the past ten years, mainly having to do with their star running back Tiki Barber, and their Super Bowl winning coach Tom Coughlin. Frustrations ran high after several incidents between the two men over a complex and diverse amount of issues. Tiki was unhappy with coach Tom Coughlin’s personnel decisions, gametime plans, teaching strategies, his overall personality, and ego. In Tiki Barber’s book, “Tiki: My Life in the Game and Beyond,” he voices his opinions about his relationship with Tom Coughlin. Coughlins handling of the New York Giants discouraged Tiki Barber from continuing his career, and ultimately led to his decision to retire on February 13th, 2007. His coach ruined his love for football and changed his attitude towards Sundays. Tom Coughlin’s trading decisions and personnel choices, offensive selection, and coaching strategies eroded Tiki Barber’s passion for the game he had always enjoyed and ushered in Tiki’s retirement.

In “TikI: My Life in the Game and Beyond,” Tiki Barber highlights several big-name trades and player releases made by coach Tom Coughlin that angered him. Some of Tiki’s favorite fellow players, including other running-backs, were either traded or cut by Tom Coughlin. Tiki talks about how angry he was at Coughlin for sending them away. Based on talent alone, Barber felt like the Giants were missing out on great players by getting rid of his fellow athletes, but Coughlin felt otherwise. Barber discusses how angry he was at Coughlin for making these decisions, and writes a narrative in the middle of the book, describing how he talked to the coaches and expressed his irritation towards the personnel decisions that they had made. These decisions then had an impact on Tiki Barber’s performance in the games that followed. His vexation caused him to run the ball poorly in a couple competitions, and had emotional effects as well. For the first time in his professional football career, he was uncomfortable about where he stood as a player with the New York Giants organization and wasn’t sure if he himself was going to get shipped away. Barbers wife was not satisfied with how the Giant’s organization was being run either, and was worried for her husband, who she felt could be cut of off the team as well. During this time of his career, Tiki was suffering from a couple minor injuries, and he felt as if they could give Coughlin a reason to expunge him from the active roster. Tiki’s outlined his feelings on his weekly talk show that he held with his twin brother, Ronde Barber, which infuriated Coughlin. All of the “terrible” personnel choices that the Giants made irritated Tiki, and all the dissatisfaction that resonated from him was targeted at Tom Coughlin. Tiki was attacking Tom at times, while in other instances he held his tongue. It was evident that Barber was uncomfortable about how things were being handled from a personnel standpoint, thus causing him to lash out at Coughlin. Early on in his career, Barber was already uneasy and irritated about what his future was, due to the personnel decisions and player transactions of coaches and staff members, mainly being Tom Coughlin.
Offensive play calling and formation sets were an irritating part of Tiki Barber’s football career as well. Early on, when he was selected by the Giants and after he made the team, New York was a run-first offense. Passing the ball was an afterthought that was seldom used due to lack of deep-threat receivers and playmakers. Often times it would only be utilized when they were in need of a big play, such as if they faced a 3rd and 17, or late in games, if they were trailing the opponent. However, a couple months after Barber was made an important part of the offensive game, the Giants made the transition to becoming a pass-first team. Eli Manning was their quarterback, receivers started to pick up the slack, and by passing, the Giants were suddenly clicking on all cylinders. Many times Tiki Barber would not even be handed the ball during an offensive possession, which enraged Tiki. He wasn’t getting the carries that he thought he should of been getting, especially since he was ascending to the top of the NFL in rushing yards per carry. When the Giants would run the ball, many times other running backs and fullbacks would take Tiki’s spot in the backfield, thus limiting his playing time even more. His role with the New York Giants was quickly altering due to the fact that they were deviating from running the ball so much, as many teams in the NFL had begun to do. The advent of the quarterback driven league was upon the NFL. Barbers statistics dropped, his playing time and snap counts plummeted, and his infuriation boiled over. There was no reason why he wasn’t getting the ball more often in his eyes, and he didn’t understand why these other, less-talented running backs and fullbacks were getting more carries than he was. He wanted to run every down of every offensive drive, but the New York Giants had other ideas.The offensive coordinator was calling the shots on offense, but did so under the watchful eye of Tom Coughlin. It was Coughlins idea to stray from running the ball so often and to become a more pass-based team, and it was his idea to give the ball off to other running backs instead of Tiki Barber. These play selections and formation groupings only served to tick off Tiki even further, who responded by criticizing the New York Giants organization repeatedly during his playing years. Barber describes the cause, the offensive play calling, and the effect, his criticism, in greater detail in his book. The insults he fired at the Giants created more friction between himself and Tom Coughlin and set the two men farther apart than a star running back and a two time Super Bowl winning coach should ever be.

In the Giants’ practices, Tiki details the organizations every day processes. One aspect that he would spotlight was the teaching and coaching strategies that Tom Coughlin utilized to explain new playbook changes and outline different formations that the Giants would be using in games. Tiki Barber described how annoyed and irritated he was by Coughlins methods. The players were instructed as if they were learning football from scratch. Tom would walk the players through where they were supposed to go and who they were supposed to block, but he did so in a fashion that was condescending and insulting to anyone that he was teaching. Tiki says he felt as if Tom was holding his hand through each play and making him relearn how to compete in the game that he had been involved in since elementary school. It angered not only Tiki, but all the other players, so much in fact that they began to echo Tiki’s feelings. After one of the losses that the Giants suffered during Tiki’s years, the media was looking for answers from the players and coaches. Tiki decided it would be a good idea to go to the podium and criticize Tom Coughlin’s condescending coaching methods, and after broadcasting all his thoughts, he was called into Coughlins office by Coughlin himself. The next day, the headlines on Sportscenter were that Tiki and Coughlin had a screaming match after the press conference. Tom was outraged that Barber had gone to the press and leaked about their team issues, instead of coming to him to try and hash out their problems like men. Tiki was indifferent about what Coughlin thought, and was still furious at him for his coaching methods. This occurred towards the end of Tiki Barber’s football career, and was one of the final straws that pushed him into retirement. He could no longer stand to be a player for Tom Coughlin, who he said had ruined his football career and his passion for the game that he once loved.

Tiki Barber’s career lasted only ten years, but his entire career was spent with the New York Giant’s. The possibility of his NFL career lasting longer was always there. However, according to him, the chances were hindered, due in large part to Tom Coughlin. Nothing that the head coach could do pleased Tiki Barber. He made personnel moves and player transactions that lowered team morale and disappointed Tiki greatly, whose statistics dropped after these types of events happened. His play selection and formation groupings infuriated Tiki Barber, who thought that the Giants should remain a run-first team and that he should be getting more touches per game. The coaching methods he used were condescending walkthroughs that enraged and annoyed most of the players of the New York Giants, including Tiki Barber. These led to Tiki Barber’s criticism of Tom Coughlin and the Giants organization through press conferences, and weekly radio talk shows, and ushered in his premature retirement that shocked the football world. Barber was never able to play cohesively under Tom Coughlin’s coaching without being worried about his team, worried for his own future, or being frustrated in general with Tom Coughlin. The friction that had developed between him and Tom Coughlin destroyed Tiki Barber’s football career and chipped away at the love he had for the game that he had been playing his whole life.