NYT: Armstead Sympathizes With Fassel's Situation

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Armstead Sympathizes With Fassel's Situation

By STEVE POPPER

Published: December 4, 2003

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/sports/football/04GIAN.html

AST RUTHERFORD, N.J., Dec. 3 — The Giants were going through the motions of their practice Wednesday, and it was probably looser than Jim Fassel would have liked. When a penalty on an offensive drill drew laughter from some players, Fassel barked, "It ain't funny."

Some 200 miles away, Jessie Armstead could empathize with the frustration Fassel was feeling.

Armstead, the former Giants linebacker, is now a part of an equally disappointing Washington Redskins team that will face the Giants on Sunday. He knows what Fassel is going through, from the unacceptable losses and substandard play to the injuries. But the one certainty was that when Armstead was playing for the Giants, Fassel would not have had to bark at the team, because the intense Armstead would have undertaken the task.

Armstead was a part of the 2000 Giants team that was 7-4 and reeling from two straight losses before it embarked on an unlikely trip to the Super Bowl. Armstead remembered Wednesday what turned things around for Fassel and the Giants that year.

"He turned to his veteran guys," Armstead said in a conference call from the Redskins' camp in Ashburn, Va. "Like he told us, `I am putting all of the chips on the table and I am looking for you all to help me out, make sure everything goes right.' There is only so much a coach can do. You have to have the veterans to make sure that when the coach lays down the law, the law is abided by."

Mike Barrow, the Giants linebacker who played with Armstead for two seasons with the Giants after playing with him at the University of Miami, said: "Jessie is a great leader. He doesn't say that much, but when he does talk, it's like E. F. Hutton — people listen. He leads by example, also. The sacrifices that he made for this organization speak volumes. Whenever he did something, he had a way of saying it, not politically, but in a way that everybody could understand."

Fassel has tried both a demanding and a loose approach this season, but he has conceded that nothing has worked to improve the team, which has tumbled to a 4-8 record, identical to the mark the Redskins bring into Sunday's game. Armstead is disappointed to hear the rumors speculating that Fassel will not be brought back next season.

"One thing about Coach Fassel, he is a great coach," Armstead said. "Sometimes you stumble, and when you stumble, as long as you get back up and keep on running, you get picked up and maybe be the head coach on another team. You never know how things are going. It may work out for the best for him later on in the long run."

Armstead disagreed with any notion that the players had tired of Fassel.

"John Madden said that sometimes you need a new voice and a new person to say something sometimes to make guys play even harder and play better," he said. "I can't agree 100 percent on that. You look back in the day when you had Tom Landry, Don Shula, that went for years and years and had guys playing and competing. That is just an excuse for people to have a reason to get rid of somebody."

For Armstead, the motivation comes not from the coach, but from within.

"We will make this into a New York and Washington Super Bowl right here," he said, laughing.

"One thing about it, you have to play for the name on the back of your jersey. You don't want to sit there and mess up something that has taken so many years to build up."

[Could'a, Would'a, Should'a]

yea right, Armstead will have a huge smile on his face at the thought of Fassel being sacked, i can still feel the hate that he expressed when he was made available for the texans expansion draft without his knowledge