COMMENTARY : May the Giants Rest in Peace

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to mourn the passing of an era. The New York Giants--to invoke the wisdom of the late Charles Dressen, who once quarterbacked the Decatur Staleys for George Halas--are dead. The team that provided New York with a decade of thrills and two Super Bowl championships is making its last trip to the end zone.

Move over, Jimmy Hoffa.

If another injury to Phil Simms didn’t put the final nail in the coffin, then the confirmation that Lawrence Taylor will retire at the end of the season did. The caretaker of the franchise, Coach Ray Handley, apparently was so overcome with emotion that he couldn’t or wouldn’t address the media, an act he later amended by announcing that in the future he will have less to say on two days of each week. As if that would relieve his or our burden.

Although Handley was around for much of the team’s exhilarating ride, he was strictly a passenger. In retrospect, the Giants that we remember today ceased to exist at the moment Bill Parcells retired as head coach 17 months ago. Whether he could have pushed or prodded them to another championship, or at least another playoff berth, is a matter for conjecture. It should not be assumed, not with an aging team.

We can conclude, however, that his successor extinguished the spirit of the offense when he invited Simms to take a seat. When Handley finally decided the man was good enough to play at the outset of this season, risking the destruction of Jeff Hostetler’s psyche, it was too late. And now the veteran will be lost for anywhere from one to six weeks and Hostetler has been asked to bail out a coach who is 1-3 and desperate.

Certainly, Taylor hasn’t been an irrepressible force since Parcells walked out of his Giants Stadium office for the last time. In fact, this season he has been only a shadow of his ghostly 1991 self. But the great linebacker stood for something and now, it can be said, the Giants stand only for the national anthem.

Let us pray.

The condition of Simms’ elbow may be a damaging blow to the team’s immediate prospects. But then the Giants have lost three of their first four games with the quarterback on the job and Hostetler has enjoyed great success against Sunday’s opponent, the Phoenix Cardinals. Besides, as the coach has often noted, the identity of the quarterback is “not an issue” with his team.

Those concerned that Taylor’s decision to make public his plans so early in the season should be aware that golf already rates ahead of team meetings on his list of priorities. That this day would come was inevitable. Neither he nor the diligent Simms has been able to defeat time.

What makes the situation at the Meadowlands so intolerable is that the disclosures came on the same day that Handley gave a performance suggesting he has been talking to pictures of Andy Robustelli and Y.A. Tittle hung in the team’s offices. Perhaps it’s time to check his desk drawer for the kind of steel balls Capt. Queeg rolled around in his hand.

There’s something inherently disturbing about the decision of a professional coach, however burdened, to withdraw from public scrutiny. By substituting a press release for his person at the allotted time Wednesday, by imposing new limits on future sessions with the media, Handley has displayed an absence of leadership. How should we expect the team to react to adversity if the man who oversees their conduct finds the traditional demands under which Giants coaches have operated for three decades “too disruptive”?

By hassling with photographers, by ducking media day, he has done a disservice to his team, which expects the coach to act as a buffer; to the franchise, whose place in the community is based as much upon goodwill as good results, and to the NFL, which is in the business of selling the sport. Yet, the greatest harm he may have done was to himself.

Boycotting a session to which camera grews already had been dispatched now will be cited as one more example of Handley’s inability to handle the demands of the position. And maybe that’s the case.

If there’s anything the world can do without, it’s another explanation of Giants ineptitude, especially when delivered by a coach who appears to be reading from a legal brief. I won’t miss it. You probably won’t miss it. And 200 million Chinese, as some other football coaches have pointed out, won’t be affected.

Still, it falls under the category of job description, one which Handley is at increasing pains to fill. The semi-comical walkout during questioning last season, his continued discomfort with any aspect of the quarterback competition and his failure to establish even a minimum of rapport with the media suggest a man overwhelmed by the peripheral matters.

None of this might be significant if he had a better relationship with the players, if the team had responded to his stewardship with something resembling the passion it demonstrated under Parcells. The latter won because he was provided with talent, he employed it to best advantage and he motivated -- even manipulated -- players to play. Handley said late last season that he didn’t regard motivation as his responsibility.

Apparently, he has the same regard for communication. What Handley has succeeded in doing is making an issue of his personality -- or lack of same -- not just his coaching. And that’s the last thing the Giants need at a time like this, with the pallbearers circling.

May they rest in peace.