Did ex-Giants coach Tom Coughlin use PFF to win Super Bowl XLVI?

When you think about former New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin, you don’t generally think of someone who was technologically or analytically savvy.

Coughlin was an old-school football mind who did things in an old-school football way. That is, until a talk from his late wife, Judy, led to the coach showing a bit more of his personal side.

As it turns out, that wasn’t the only evolution Coughlin made during his time with the Giants.

In a brand new book, Football Is a Numbers Game: Pro Football Focus and How a Data-Driven Approach Shook Up the Sport, PFF’s Matthew Coller reveals that Coughlin was so enthralled with their analytical data that the company had to hire someone to deal solely with the Giants.

“The more they got the information, the more that Tom Coughlin wanted to go to (former Giants senior director of football information) Jon Berger and say, ‘Hey, can you get PFF to give us this? Can we find out that?’ (It got) to the point where PFF assigned one person just to answer Giants questions,” Coller elaborated on the Giants Huddle podcast.

Coughlin and the Giants were so pleased with the help provided by the PFF employee that they invited him to Super Bowl XLVI on their behalf.

“In the Super Bowl, the second time they went to the Super Bowl, they gave that guy a ticket to the Super Bowl because they felt he was so valuable in helping them out (and) answering whatever Tom Coughlin’s questions were,” Coller said.

Obviously, a lot more than PFF data went into defeating the New England Patriots for the second time in four years, but Coughlin, unbeknownst to many, consumed every bit of it he could. And it clearly paid dividends.