By Nick Fierro
Of The Morning Call

Blending in new faces up front in an attempt to clear the way for a running back with a bum foot was what New York Giants offensive line coach Pat Flaherty was up against this season.

By all accounts, none of them his own, the former East Stroudsburg University player and assistant coach has succeeded beyond all reasonable expectations in helping them reach the Super Bowl.

"What he did in coaching was miraculous this year," said ESU coach Denny Douds, who first brought Flaherty to campus in 1974, when Flaherty needed just four games to become the starting center for the rest of his days there. "They have some guys that were chewed up [with injuries], and it was a real challenge.

"You know, it's not what you know as a coach, it's what you can teach as a coach, and I think what he did this year was a great example of his ability to put players together."

Even former Giants center Shaun O'Hara, who was cut in July to make room for new center David Baas, had great things to say about a man who no doubt played a huge role in letting him go.

"Really, I think the guy who doesn't get enough credit is Pat Flaherty," O'Hara told the Asbury Park Press last week. "He's done a great job getting those guys ready to play. He's a guy that finds out two days before training camp that he doesn't have two of his starting linemen, so he's done a great job of trying to get that group to jell.

"Somewhere along the way he managed to get those guys prepared, and they're certainly playing a lot better now than they were not too long ago," he said.

Not too long ago they were forced to make a couple of radical changes, after tackle Will Beatty was felled by a season-ending eye injury in November.

But the last of five starting combinations has proved to be the best. The five-game winning streak that has carried them to Indianapolis has coincided with combining tackles David Diehl and Kareem McKenzie, guards Kevin Boothe and Chris Snee and Baas — formerly of the San Francisco 49ers — as starters together for the first time.

As the newest member of the line, Baas needed the most time to adjust to Flaherty and vice versa.

"I feel like he's still getting to know me," Baas said. "But I feel like he's starting to and I feel like we're going to be more and more on the same page and communicate better. But he's really helped me a lot and I just can't say enough about him and I'm looking forward to working with him for a long time."

Flaherty is York County born and bred, but his ties with East Stroudsburg are strongest in football. He consistently checks in with his former coach and former quarterback, Mike Terwilliger, now the Warriors' offensive coordinator.

The bonding of Flaherty and Terwilliger was instant and permanent.

"Pat and I were born on the same day and lived together for four years," Terwilliger said. "He was the best man at my wedding and he's the godfather of my four children. He never forgot where he came from. Every stop along the road, he's always stayed in touch with the guys at East Stroudsburg.

"I talked to him Sunday, and it was like, 'Now that you made it there, you've got to win it.' They're all really excited, and we're excited for him."

Flaherty became an All-America center at East Stroudsburg and later was an assistant under Douds for two seasons, before moving on to join Joe Paterno's Penn State staff in 1982, when the Nittany Lions won a national title.

After stops at Rutgers, East Carolina, Wake Forest and Iowa, Flaherty went to the NFL as a tight ends coach with Washington in 2000. The next three seasons were spent with the Chicago Bears before he arrived in New York, along with head coach Tom Coughlin, in 2004.

Not only has Flaherty found a stable home with the Giants, but he beat colon cancer in that first season, coaching his way through it.

"Pat's an everyday guy," Terwilliger said. "He just shows up to work, rolls up his sleeves and gets after it with fundamentals.

"He's a guy with strong belief in what he does, and if you look at the five guys up front, they're focused in and they play. That's because he's task-oriented."

Because of that, he'll always have fans at East Stroudsburg, where he was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2004.

"We're rooting for our guy," Douds said. "We always have to root for our guys."