Seahawks

Tom Coughlin was asked a loaded question not long after the Giants returned triumphantly from Green Bay and began preparing to face the 49ers in the NFC Championship Game. Did Coughlin, only weeks removed from possibly being a head coach in front of a firing squad, feel vindicated and tempted to say, "I told you so"?

Not one to take that question and run with it like Victor Cruz, Coughlin said that he just wished to move forward. Now he will. On his way to his second Super Bowl in four years after the Giants defeated the San Francisco 49ers, 20-17, in overtime Sunday at soggy Candlestick Park, Coughlin also knows that the decision on whether to coach again next season will be his and only his.

On the subject of told-you-so, we can assure you that he will be more than satisfied with that.

Redemption is a word we apply in sports to the point of cliché. But Coughlin recognizes that, first and foremost, redemption is a close relation to self-glorification — and beside the point when one's primary interest in going to work every day is to meet the challenge of the next game.

Or in the case of a Super Bowl rematch against New England, the Sunday after next.

After Lawrence Tynes kicked the Giants into February in overtime — just as he did four years ago in Green Bay — Coughlin could admit that he was so keyed up last week at the opportunity that had almost magically materialized, "at times it's difficult to contain yourself."

He watched Sunday's tough and tense defensive struggle on a squishy grass field and wondered, "How is this going to end up? Who's going to make a play to solidify a win?"

In Green Bay, it was Brett Favre throwing the ball to Corey Webster on the second play of overtime. Here, it was Kyle Williams — who had let a fourth-quarter punt graze his knee to set up a Giants touchdown, Eli Manning to Mario Manningham — fumbling a second punt to bring on Tynes to convert from 31 yards.

"Have you thought about how this is coming down?" defensive end Osi Umenyiora asked Coughlin in the locker room.

He meant the inescapable similarities to four years ago, but in the interests of moving forward Coughlin wasn't looking back.

"Too deep for me," he said, unwilling to work that theme.

Coughlin, who has never gone out of his way to recruit allies in the press box, may actually be one the few people in sports who will insist that he is not terribly preoccupied with what the world outside his locker room thinks and mean it.

But what of those critics and perhaps even a few colleagues within the Giants organization who looked at a 7-7 team a few weeks ago, in the midst of another second-half swoon, and expressed an opinion — for publication or in private — that the countdown on Coughlin's departure had surely begun after eight years in New Jersey?

Coughlin at the time was looking at a third consecutive season out of the playoffs. He was going to have to explain to the Maras and the Tisches why he should keep his job, at 65, when he hadn't won a playoff game since punching a hole in the face of New England's "Mona Lisa" of a 2007 season.

But the Giants beat Rex Ryan's Jets on Christmas Eve, routed the bumbling Dallas Cowboys to win the division, got healthy just in time for the playoffs and found themselves here, playing deeper into January than the shrewdest of football observers would have imagined.

"Staying the course, never saying never," Coughlin said, when asked what his mind-set had been. The good news was that Dallas couldn't put the Giants away and the Eagles woke up too late. But Coughlin conceded that "no denying any of the facts" was also part of the deal because the Giants were always a play or two from becoming extinct.

So, no, this Giants run demands no critics' mea culpa, because — as Coughlin would tell you — it was never about redemption. It was about seizing opportunity when the bodies finally healed and a few bounces of the ball went their way.

Go back over the Giants' season. Where would they be if Jason Pierre-Paul had not gotten a hand on a potential tying field-goal attempt in Dallas? Or if the Buffalo Bills, on first down at the Giants' 27 late in a tie game, didn't eschew the smart-money strategy of running the clock and positioning themselves for a field goal, allowing Harvard-educated Ryan Fitzpatrick to underthrow Stevie Johnson down the left sideline.

Webster made the interception that October day, the Giants stormed down the field to win by 3 and that was a perfect microcosm of how close this season was to ending with a news conference bidding farewell to Coughlin.

Instead, he spent the week leading to a conference title game exhorting his players to "keep the dream alive."

Note

• The Giants' overtime victory over the San Francisco 49ers was the third-most watched conference championship game in 30 years. New York's 20-17 win for the NFC title on Fox had a 30.6 fast national rating and 44 share, Nielsen Media Research said.

The rating was up 9 percent from the 28.1/50 for Green Bay's 21-14 win over Chicago in the early conference championship in 2011 on Fox and up 8 percent from the 28.3/43 for Pittsburgh's 24-19 win over the Jets in the last game on CBS.