Fassel Finds Expectations High as Year Two Begins

The only thing wrong with delivering a bravo performance is the encore, when the audience suddenly wants more than you’re probably capable of giving.

If Jim Fassel didn’t realize this before New York Giants training camp, he found out the day before camp ended, when he paused to sign autographs after another typically exhausting morning practice.

“Hey coach,” the lady said. “Super Bowl?”

A year after taking what appeared to be a dead-end job and making it work beyond anyone’s imagination, this is where Fassel finds himself. Tending to Super Bowl queries.

“I don’t make predictions, ma’am,” he replied politely. “I just keep working on results. I let the weather guys make ‘em and they’re not right very often.”

That said, the weather forecast for the 1998 Giants might be this: cloudy days ahead.

Molding a winner is one thing, maintaining one is another. As remarkable as Fassel was in his first season, he’s still saddled with a cream-cheese offense and now, here comes a killer schedule.

You wonder if the direction of the Giants this season is capable of turning as sharply as it did with four minutes left in ‘97, when a 19-3 lead over the Vikings became a 23-22 disaster.

What Fassel’s doing is the right thing. He’s approaching the season with the same prove-something attitude as he did the previous one. His players would be wise to follow the leader. The same challenges remain for the Giants, who aren’t guaranteed anything after going 10-5-1 and claiming a division title.

Fassel correctly realizes that there’s no time to catch a breath or count the coach of the year awards. For all the blistering momentum they built the last few months of ‘97, the Giants might as well be the 6-10 wreck he inherited a summer ago.

Remember, the quarterback is still Danny Kanell, not Phil Simms. Don’t forget, the team’s most gifted receiver (Ike Hilliard) hasn’t caught a ball in almost a year.

Last anyone checked, Tyrone Wheatley’s longest run from scrimmage was a student body right against Wisconsin.

And the schedule says the easiest Sunday for the Giants is the one that falls on the bye week.

There’s no massive crash being predicted here, but just the same, no January trip to Miami, either.

Without Pro Bowl talent at the key offensive positions, the Giants will be forced to rely once again on their Gibraltar defense and pray the unit will last longer than it did in the fourth quarter against Minnesota. It’ll be tougher now, with the two Super Bowl teams plus Kansas City and San Francisco spicing up a scary non-division schedule.

This is where Fassel must come in. He arrived in East Rutherford as an eager yet barely known career assistant who briefly put some pop in the Arizona Cardinals’ offense. He suffocated, at first, in the stout shadow of Bill Parcells. He promptly lost three of his first four games and New York wasn’t angry. It was worse than that.

New York didn’t care.

Then the Giants overcame a quarterback controversy, capitalized on the titanic season of the Cowboys, took the division and saw Fassel collect a bunch of coaching trophies.

He was impressive for a first-timer. Still, Fassel should’ve sawed his awards in half and given an equal share to coordinator John Fox, who threw more surprises with the Giants’ defense than Fassel did with the offense.

That’s why Fassel must improve his performance this year in order for his team to do the same.

“The job didn’t intimidate me when I took it,” Fassel said. “I said to myself, ‘You’re going to earn what you get.’ I’m constantly warning myself not to let my guard down.”

There’s much to like about Fassel as a coach. He can lend a soft shoulder to his players and swing a steel-tipped boot, too. He works long hours. Even a year after he upstaged the pompous Parcells, Fassel is refreshingly unaffected by his new status or sudden success.

That’s all good.

Now, can he put three touchdowns a game on the board?

Even Fassel admits his offense is still developing. Kanell doesn’t frighten other teams, neither do the running backs behind him. So far in camp, no halfback has managed to claim a job that’s wide open.

Wheatley talks a good game while giving 3.6 yards a carry. Tiki Barber looks more like a third-down back every day. Gary Brown, who knows?

None seem deserving of having his number called more than fullback Charles Way, the most reliable Giant with the ball.

There was plenty of camp curiosity surrounding the return of Hilliard from a serious spinal injury, and yet, he’s still unproven for the role the Giants sorely need, a big-play performer.

This is what faces Fassel, the challenge of getting his team to study a road map that leads to the end zone.

We’ll see if Fassel was wise when he declined to make predictions.

“I don’t mind high expectations,” Fassel said. “My expectations are high. But sometimes, the expectations far exceed what is realistically possible.”