Giants head coach Tom Coughlin is finished, and so is this season. Good riddance, Coughlin. Take your vaunted discipline with you. So long, Ernie Accorsi, thanks for leaving us with Rely Manning. This season has been a failure for the now 7-7 Giants who have lost five of their last six games, but even the wins were built largely on freak catches from Plaxico Burress or lucky breaks.

Coughlin doesn't even deserve the mercy of being allowed to finish this ruined season. An appropriate farewell might include running him out of New York City at the business end of a buffalo gun.

One thing is certain. Before the week's end, team owner John Mara needs to send Giants fans a strong message that incompetence will not be tolerated in New York. Fans are disgusted with a half-season of losses. They are disgusted that the authorities in the Giants franchise have repaid their loyalty with bothered sighs while the Giants spiral out of control.

They are tired of being teased with prospects of Giants greatness into which they invest heavily and build great expectations only to watch their expensive emotional purchases turn out to be infested with rot.

Watching the Giants this season has been more painful than surgery without anesthesia. Even their victories were ugly and amateurish. Their defeat at the hands of Philadelphia was particularly pathetic. The Giants continue to stay put or loose ground on first and second downs, and then they come up short on third-and-long. Manning continues to be a C- quarterback throwing perpetually out of shotgun, which was devised for A+ passers.

Aside from the impressive drives they mounted against Dallas a couple of weeks ago, their successes this year were merely the result of a series of good-luck plays strung together. Coughlin has shown little creativity in play calling.

The play calling under defensive coach Tim Lewis has been just as pathetic. Lewis has too often sent only four men on a pass rush while the remaining seven wander listlessly around in the secondary hoping the quarterback will get blown over by the wind before he can throw to any of the eventually three wide-open receivers.

The Giants deserved to lose yesterday, if only to highlight Coughlin's disgraceful job this year. At 36-22 the score would have looked worse if not for the singular successes of Well Demps. Demps intercepted to prevent the Eagles from scoring and later hit quarterback Jeff Garcia to force a turnover deep in Eagles territory.

Meanwhile Manning continues to lose control at key moments, and he's being allowed to throw too often, with too little merit for it besides his name. His emotions continue to get the better of him on the playing field, becoming manifest in sickly grimaces and dejected head-shakes.

The real shame is watching the talents of Shocky, Barber, Robinson, Umenyiora, Pierce and Jacobs go to seed under the little directionless dictator, Coughlin. The Giants need a coach who is young and charismatic like Sean Payton or Jon Gruden, and who can lead by winning the unwavering loyalty and confidence of his players; or someone formidable like Lovie Smith or Mike Holmgren.

Coughlin is as flimsy as the victim of a cold, which happens to be what his name suggests, and the Giants have been plagued with mutiny throughout the season-small wonder. So good riddance, Coughlin. If Mara has any hesitations about this course of action, he clearly hasn't heard an authentic Giants fan critique the team in German lately.