Tom Coughlin caught a lot of flak from various players last year, but none as notable as Tiki Barber. The recently retired running back went on record, saying that Coughlin wore him down way too much last year.

“Coach Coughlin is very hard-nosed, and I didn’t get a lot of time off, couldn’t sit down and rest myself, and so it was a constant grind — a physical grind on me that started to take its toll,” Barber told reporters Tuesday after his introduction the “Today” show’s newest correspondent.

“The grind took its toll on me and really forced me to start thinking about what I wanted to do next. And that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing, for me at least. Maybe not for the Giants, because they lose one of their great players, but for me, it is,” Barber said.

“There’d be days where I couldn’t move on Tuesday or Wednesday at practice, and he’d get mad at me for going half-speed,” Barber said. “And I told him, ‘Coach, I can’t do it. I’m gonna be out here, I’m never gonna miss a practice, but I can’t give you what you want all the time.’ And he understood.”

This was probably the worst of all:

“We were in full pads for 17 weeks, and with the amount of injuries that we had, it just takes a toll on you. You just physically don’t want to be out there when your body feels the way you do in full pads,” Barber told reporters. “And while it probably doesn’t have a really detrimental effect on how you practice or how you play, it does on your mind. And if you lose your mind in this game, you lose a lot. And that’s something that [Coughlin] has to realize. And I think he does [now].”

I’ve never played football, because I can’t really tackle, catch or throw, so I can’t really speak from experience, but I imagine 17 straight weeks of padded, contact practices is probably asking a bit too much. When Plaxico Burress and Jeremy Shockey came out against Coughlin, everyone kind of shrugged it off, but that’s because Plaxico’s ideal practice would involve cars and strippers, and Shockey’s practice would involve a week of taking shots and calling everyone around him a pussy.

Now that Tiki’s come out against Coughlin, that already questionable one-year extension is now seeming even stranger.

Good luck to Tiki, who has finally retired, surrendering any chance of me actually thinking he’s going to be a good fantasy back and picking him in the first or second round. Now if I could just lose this fixation I have with Jamal Lewis, my team will be in good shape.