Tag: Bill Arnsparger

Giants can set several unwanted franchise records in Week 15 vs. Ravens

The New York Giants can set or tie several ugly franchise records in Week 15 against the Baltimore Ravens at MetLife Stadium.

It’s been that kind of year for the New York Giants. One for the record books.

And not the good kind of records.

The Giants were hoping to etch some exciting new team records into the books in their 100th season as a franchise. Instead, they’re likely to enter the books on the negative side of the ledger.

One record they are closing in on is consecutive losses. They are currently on an eight-game skid and face the explosive Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens as 14.5-point underdogs this Sunday at MetLife Stadium.

The franchise record for consecutive losses is nine, first set in 1976 and then tied in 2003-2004 and again in 2019.

The odds of the Giants winning this game are +700, or in layman’s terms, not a chance. The rest of their schedule offers no safe harbor, either.

Their final three games are: at Atlanta, home versus Indianapolis, and a trip down the Turnpike to face Saquon Barkley and the Philadelphia Eagles.

“Unfortunately, I’ve been part of some losing streaks like this and some winning streaks. I think you are part of a lot of different things when you do it for as long as I have,” head coach Brian Daboll told reporters on Monday.

“You get a little bit of roll; you start playing good. Turnovers are a big, usually a big factor in that. Situational football is usually a big factor in that. Whether that be red zone, third down, and that helps scoring points, or preventing points. I’ve been part of a few of them where we started out and had a fair amount of losses, finished strong. Again, every season’s different, every game’s different.”

The Giants are also on the verge of setting a record for home losses in a season. They are 0-7 this year with two games remaining. They are currently tied for the franchise record, which was set back in 1974 and equaled in both 1983 and 2003.

In 1974, the Giants were winless (0-7) at home under first-year head coach Bill Arnsparger. It’s the only time in their 100 years of existence that they did not win a game at home.

In 1983, they went 1-7 at home under another first-year head coach, Bill Parcells. In 2003, the Giants went 1-7 in Jim Fassel’s final year as head coach.

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Giants legend Tom Coughlin named semifinalist for Hall of Fame

Retired New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin has been named a semifinalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame alongside three other ex-Giants.

Former New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin, who led Big Blue to two Super Bowl championships, is among nine semifinalists in the coaches’ category for the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025.

One of the nine candidates will be selected as a finalist for the Class of 2025 on November 19.

Other candidates who advanced on the list, which was cut down from 14 to nine on Thursday, include two other former Giant head coaches — Bill Arnsparger and Dan Reeves, and a former assistant Marty Schottenheimer.

Mike Shanahan, Mike Holmgren, George Seifert, Chuck Knox, and Clark Shaughnessy round out the list.

Along with being a two-time Super Bowl champ, Coughlin was the first head coach of the expansion Jacksonville Jaguars, taking them to two AFC Championship Games. His overall NFL record is 182-157 over a span of 20 seasons.

Arnsparger coached the Giants from 1974-76, compiling a 7-28 record but made his name as a coordinator of the Miami Dolphins’ No-Name defense of the early 1970s. He passed away in 2015.

Reeves coached Big Blue from 1993-96, compiling a 31-33 record. He is noted for taking the Denver Broncos to three Super Bowls and the Atlanta Falcons to another. He passed away in 2022.

Schottenheimer compiled a 205-139-1 record over 21 seasons as a head coach for Cleveland, Kansas City, San Diego, and Washington. He was a defensive assistant for the Giants in the mid-1970s where he developed Harry Carson and Brad Van Pelt into Pro Bowl linebackers.

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Ranking the 7 best coaches in LSU football history

Taking era into account, as well as long-term consistency vs. short-term peaks, here’s how LSU’s all-time greatest coaches stack up.

There’s a joke about LSU Football coaches.

“It’s so easy, anyone can win there.”

It does look like that with three different LSU coaches having won titles this century. Is it the coach? The program? Both?

We’re going to take a look at that and rank the seven best coaches in LSU history.

This was tough. It was difficult to balance long-term success with shorter tenures that reached greater peaks. Coaches also took over at different points in the program, meaning some coaching jobs were tougher than others.

I’ve tried to take everything into account here. With that in mind, let’s jump right in.

Friday Flashback: Bill Arnsparger leaves Dolphins for Giants

In the latest Giants Wire Flashback Friday, we go back to the 70s when the New York Giants poached Bill Arnsparger from the Miami Dolphins.

The New York Giants and the Miami Dolphins have a scant history, but the Giants have always admired the Dolphins’ model for success. In 1979, they hired George Young, Miami’s director of player personnel, as their general manager.

We all know how that worked out, but it wasn’t the first time the Giants had poached from Don Shula’s team.

In 1974, the Giants hired Bill Arnsparger, the mastermind behind the Dolphins’ “No-Name Defense” that was the key consecutive Super Bowl titles the previous two seasons.

Arnsparger knew defense better than just about anyone in the game at the time, but offense was not his thing, and the Giants knew that. General manager Andy Robustelli told reporters at a press conference at the iconic 21 Club restaurant that Arnsparger would have control of team and a large role in the draft process.

They were overpaying Arnsparger to leave Miami and take on the unenviable task of turning the Giants, who had won just two games in 1973, into winners again.

“We felt to ask a man to leave the Super Bowl champions he needed some kind of security, so that’s what we offered him,” Wellington Mara, the team’s president, said of the three-year contract, which would pay Arnsparger an estimated $70,000 per year. “It’s not something he demanded.”

It didn’t matter. The Giants’ next three drafts, whoever ran them, produced no impact offensive players. If they did anything, they strengthened the defense with players such as Harry Carson, George Martin, Dan Lloyd, Ray Rhodes and Troy Archer.

The Giants signed an aging Larry Csonka and traded their 1975 first-round pick to Dallas in exchange for quarterback Craig Morton, a move that will go down as one of the franchise’s worst of all time.

Morton got rocked on a weekly basis as the punchless Giants played home games in three different states. Dallas used that pick, which was second overall in 1975, to select future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Randy White.

The Giants pulled the plug on the Arnsparger era seven games into his third season after the team was whacked, 27-0, by the Pittsburgh Steelers at the new Giants Stadium.

Even against the struggling Super Bowl champions, the Giants offense was not “competitive.” When most of the 69,783 spectators began leaving the new Giants Stadium the drizzle of the third quarter, Bill Arnsparger might well have left, too. The shame is that he remains an excellent coach of defensive football. He organized the defensive unit that helped the Miami Dolphins win two consecutive Super Bowls, once with a perfect 17‐0 record. And he was reorganizing the Giants’ defensive unit. He’ll probably return to the Dolphins as Don Shula’s defensive coach again. But he betrayed the Giants offense by not hiring dominant offensive coordinator.

Bill Arnsparger knows offense, but apparently from the viewpoint of a defensive coach, not from the attack viewpoint that offense demands. With the Giants’ difficult schedule, points were a necessity.

The Giants scored 20 points or fewer in 28 of Arnsparger’s 35 games as head coach, which amounted to just seven victories. Arnsparger went back to Miami to caddie for Shula and enjoyed more success, helping the Dolphins get back to the Super Bowl in the 1982 season.

Arnsparger went on to be the head coach at LSU from 1984-86 and from there became the athletic director at the University of Florida.

In 1992, he took the defensive coordinator job under Bobby Ross’ staff with the San Diego Chargers. Two years later, the Chargers made their first Super Bowl appearance.

Arnsparger had a great career in football. The only blemish was that 35-game hiccup with the snakebit, dysfunctional Giants of the mid-1970s.

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Ex-Giants coach Bill Arnsparger named 2020 ‘Dr. Z’ Award winner by PFWA

Former New York Giants head coach Bill Arnsparger has won the 2020 ‘Dr. Z’ Award winner for his time with the Dolphins and Chargers.

Former New York Giants head coach, the late Bill Arnsparger, has won the Paul “Dr. Z” Zimmerman Award from the Professional Football Writers of America alongside Houston Texans associate head coach Romeo Crennel.

The PFWA made the official announcement on Monday.

The Dr. Z Award is “given for lifetime achievement as an assistant coach in the NFL”

Arnsparger joined forces with Don Shula in 1964 in Baltimore, joining the Colts as Shula’s defensive line coach. He followed Shula to Miami in 1970, and the Dolphins reached their greatest heights over the next four seasons (1970-73). Arnsparger pulled the levers on defense as Miami was perfect in 1972 and won the Super Bowl again in 1973. He left to become the New York Giants’ head coach from 1974-76.

When Arnsparger was fired by the Giants at midseason in 1976, Shula rehired him immediately as defensive coordinator, and he stayed with the Dolphins through 1983, including another Super Bowl berth in 1982. After a stint as LSU head coach and as athletic director at Florida, Arnsparger returned to the NFL with San Diego for three seasons as defensive coordinator (1992-94), and his defense led the Chargers to their only Super Bowl appearance to date in 1994. He coached in six Super Bowls with three different franchises (III with Baltimore, VI, VII, VIII, XVII with Miami and XXIX with San Diego) with two victories with the Dolphins.

Although Arnsparger’s time with the Giants (7-28) was far less fruitful than his time with the Miami Dolphins or San Diego Chargers, he still left a lasting imprint on the franchise.

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Former Dolphins coach named 2020 Dr. Z award winner

Former Dolphins coach named 2020 Dr. Z award winner

The Miami Dolphins’ proud legacy of successes through the 1970s and 1980s has officially added another feather to their cap. Former Dolphins defensive coordinator Bill Arnsparger has been named the co-winner of the Pro Football Writers of America’s ‘Paul “Dr. Z” Zimmerman award for lifetime achievement by the Pro Football Writers Association.

The PFWA identifies the award as one specifically geared towards assistant coaches at the NFL level and with Arnsparger and Romeo Crennel splitting the award this year, they join past winners such as Wade Phillips, Dante Scarnecchia, Howard Mudd, Dick LeBeau, Jim Johnson, Bud Carson and others.

To be named co-winners, Arnsparger and Crennel had to beat out a field of six other nominees:

  • Dick Hoak
  • Rod Marinelli
  • Bobb McKittrick
  • Floyd Peters
  • Buddy Ryan
  • Bobby Turner

Between the “No Name” Dolphins defense of the 1970s and the “Killer B’s” defense of the 1980s, Arnsparger quietly carved out an impressive resume in South Florida while working alongside Don Shula with the Dolphins. His tenure as a head coach was not quite as graceful — Arnsparger logged a 7-28 record over the course of three seasons as the New York Giants’ head coach from 1974 to 1976. But that shortcoming led him back to Miami for nearly another decade of calling the shots with the Dolphins’ defense and helped him further cement his legacy as an all-time great assistant head coach.

That title is further cemented with his winning of the Dr. Z Award this summer.

Arnsparger last coached in the NFL in 1994 as the defensive coordinator for the San Diego Chargers, a stop that was preceded by a three year stint with the LSU Tigers at the college level. In those three seasons, Arnsparger averaged 9 wins per season and twice won SEC Coach of the Year honors.

He passed away in 2015 at the age of 88, but his legacy is remembered today as he joins an exclusive list of NFL assistants to be recognized for their lifetime contributions to the game.

Eli Manning nominated for 2020 PFWA Good Guy Award

Retired New York Giants QB Eli Manning has been nominated for the 2020 PFWA Good Guy Award. Three other ex-Giants also earned nominations.

Former New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning may currently be enjoying retirement, but the two-time Super Bowl MVP is still being nominated for awards.

Despite being relegated to a backup role in 2019, Manning remained professional and courteous with the media, which earned him a nominated for the 2020 Pro Football Writers of America Good Guy Award.

The award is given to a player who exhibits professionalism “in helping pro football writers do their jobs.”

QB Eli Manning, New York Giants (retired) — Manning earned praise both for his body of work in his dealings with the media over the course of his career, and particularly in his approach during a difficult final season when he was moved in and out of the starting lineup bench as the Giants started Daniel Jones in 12 games.

The only Giant to ever win the PFWA Good Guy Award was running back Tiki Barber in 2006.

In addition to Manning, three former Giants — Bill Arnsparger, Floyd Peters and Romeo Crennel — were also nominated for the Paul “Dr. Z” Zimmerman Award (lifetime achievement as an assistant coach in the NFL).

Arnsparger served as Giants head coach from 1974-1976, while Crennel served as the Giants’ special teams coach from 1981-1989 and defensive line coach from 1990-1992. Peters spent one season with the Giants in 1974, serving as their defensive coordinator.

Winners of the PFWA 2020 Off-Field Awards will be announced on Monday, June 22.

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