Sixteen weeks ago — sixteen long and generally painful weeks ago — I wrote about the Giants’ horrifying loss to the Dallas Cowboys in the first game of the NFL season. You may remember it. (Boy, I do.) The Giants had the Cowboys beaten when the coaches made an terrible call and threw away the win. The highly competitive, ruthless world of the NFL teaches us a few things about markets, I explained. Two of those lessons are how the market adjusts for human error and how it deals with the unpredictable in the way that produces the best result possible from the mess.

Sixteen weeks later, the Giants finished the season 6 and 10, when they could easily have been 10 and 6 or even 11 and 5. They could have won the division if they just won two more games. Two wins, when they lost five games in the last minute and 13 seconds? Is that really too much to ask? No, not at all.

But they didn’t do it, and their coach, the great Tom Coughlin, one of ESPN’s greatest coaches of all time, resigned after twelve years leading the team. He would have been fired otherwise.

Another lesson about markets

The bad season wasn’t really his fault, and that tells us something else about the way markets work. He did a good job and may have done a great job. But the Giants lost 4 more games than they won, after too many seasons of losing, and out he goes.

A Vikings Touchdown in the next to last game of the season, when the Vikings embarrassed the Giants 49 to 17 (and it wasn’t that close). (Youtube/NFL)

Should he be blamed for that record? He made a few bad calls at the end of some games, okay, but still: No, he shouldn’t.

Before the season started, the Giants lost four of the team’s six most crucial players: their star defensive end, who (literally) blew up his right hand on July 4th; their left tackle; their middle linebacker and defensive leader; and one of their two star receivers. They had pretty much no safeties at all and no real way of getting good ones. And then they were hit with injury after injury and had to start players from the practice squad and guys who hadn’t been playing for any team.

And yet, late in the season, they still came within seconds of beating the undefeated Super Bowl champion New England Patriots. That suggests a really good coach who made his team better than they were. But still, after three losing seasons, on Monday he had to leave.

Now that Coughlin’s gone, sports writers are beginning to notice how much of the team’s problem the last few years is the fault of the general manager, Jerry Reese, who drafted very badly and didn’t do that good a job picking up needed free agents. Had he done his job better, Coughlin would still be coach and the team might have picked up another Super Bowl or at least some more playoff wins. But he didn’t.

And yet he still has his job. The owners are peculiarly loyal to their general managers, which in this case seems to be a weakness. (And then Reese insulted him at his own press conference. Not a good sign.)

But I’m not bitter, really. Just resigned. Bitterly resigned. On the bright side, the Giants did finish ahead of the Cowboys. A Giants season is never completely lost when they beat the Cowboys.

What do we do now?

To the question of what does the Giants’ season and the fate of their great and beloved coach tell us about the world, and particularly about how markets work.

It tells us that often there’s no good answer to the question “So what do we do now?” We don’t always know very well why we’re in the shape we’re in. Coughlin might well have done the best job any coach could do with a team that beaten up and that weak. But it looks like he did a bad job, because 6 and 10 is a bad season, and the owners can only go on what they see.

If we don’t know exactly why we’re in the shape we’re in, we don’t know what to do to change the shape we’re in. Maybe we should just keep going as we were going. Maybe we should keep the same people and do something a little different. Maybe we need new people. But if we need new people, what people should they be? Maybe we should give up and go do something else.

Giants receiver Preston Parker chases the ball in a game against the Dallas Cowboys his team should have won, but didn’t. (Youtube/NFL)

On top of that, even if Coughlin did a great job, and everyone knew he did a great job, sometimes a team just has to start afresh. The team needs to do something different if they’re going to get better. The owners have to shake things up, break up the old ways of doing things, so the team can be rebuilt from the ground up.

But how do you know when that kind of radical change is necessary? You don’t, most of the time. You make a guess and it could well be wrong.

When there’s no good answer to the question “So what do we do now?” you can only do your best and you could bomb. If you bomb, you take down yourself and all those who depend upon you. That’s the reality. With Coughlin gone, his assistant coaches will soon lose their jobs as well, unless one of them gets hired to succeed him, which isn’t likely.

In other words, what most of us would consider justice is often impossible to attain. People don’t always get what they deserve. Sometimes even success is rewarded with failure, like getting fired. Too many fallible people have to make hard decisions without a lot of reliable evidence either way. They have to intuit, guess, gamble, give it their best shots.

A reason for markets

That is one reason for markets. They test the fallible decisions everyone has to make in competition with others, which produces — over time, and more or less — the best decision for the most people. When everyone’s giving it their best shot, the market eventually shows which shot was the right shot. There’s no other good way to do it.

If the Giants’ owners were wrong in forcing Coughlin out and keeping Reese, the team will keep losing. Other teams whose owners made better or luckier decisions will win. Or the owners might get lucky and win anyway. If they were right, the team will start winning again.

What about the individual, who may be unjustly treated? How does the market help him? It doesn’t always, which is one reason for a social safety net. What works out well for the whole may work out badly for some of the parts, especially in the short run. For some it will always work out badly. Some factors, like racial prejudice, will over-rule or distort the markets and make success even harder for many. Justice for everyone is impossible to attain.

But by making sure the whole works out as well as possible, the market creates the most chances for people to find their place and succeed. It creates opportunity. It helps more people get ahead. Already other teams want to talk to Coughlin about coaching for them. His leaving the Giants gives someone else a chance to coach the team.

Maybe, if the owners call the right coach, and Reese does better than he has done so far, the Giants go back to the playoffs next year. But there’s no good way to know. They can only do their best. That’s why the NFL has a season, and we have markets.

Next year, the playoffs. Maybe.