The real issue with Coughlin wasn't his coaching, it was ability to GM.

 

He wasn't a very good drafter outside the first rd and he destroyed our salary cap by relying so much on FA to build the team.

 

I don't think asking him to step down from being the GM was a realistic option. I think demoting him wouldn't have gone over very well. Typically people who are at the pentacle of running an organization have too much pride to accept a lesser role within that same organization. If they are going to accept a lesser role, they are going to accept it somewhere else.

---