By Mike Lopresti
Gannett News Service

Know when a football coach earns his money, not to mention his good parking place? When there is a risk to take, and one of two things must happen: Either victory, or the fans and media are waiting outside with tomatoes.

This was last Sunday in the NFL. Imagine five guys at a poker table, gambling the grocery money. In one chair was Cincinnati's Dick LeBeau, pushing in the last chips of his credibility.

Who needs smelling salts more than the player from an 0-7 team who guarantees victory the next game? The coach who seconds it. He seemed like Noah predicting a high pressure system. What a fool he could have looked.

But ... Cincinnati 38, Houston 3.

"I just wanted to let them know I was proud of them and I believed that," LeBeau said.

In another chair was Jim Fassel of the New York Giants, responding to an offensive crisis - 13 points in two games for a fading 3-4 team - by taking over the play calling himself.

"I don't mind putting the pressure on me," he said. "If I put my head in a noose, so be it."

Had Sunday been punt-filled and futile on 3rd-and-5, the New York headlines would have used Fassel for target practice. But ... Giants 24, Jacksonville 17.

"I knew exactly what I wanted," Fassel said.

In another chair was Pittsburgh's Bill Cowher, hooted at in October when he pulled the plug on quarterback Kordell Stewart after a 1-2 beginning, replacing a Pro Bowler with a former insurance agent who had not started an NFL game in 10 years.

And though Tommy Maddox had gone 3-1 his first four games, Sunday was on the road against a Cleveland team that had seen him before and was prepared to go after him. A divisional crushing would reheat all the old doubts like a microwave oven. But ... Pittsburgh 23, Cleveland 20; the Steelers' fourth-straight victory.

"There are 52 guys in there that saved this season," Maddox said of the teammates in his locker room.

Plus one brazen coach. And in another chair was Herman Edwards, who boiled over last week at a press conference when asked if the 2-5 Jets might quit.

"Not on my watch," he said, as his voice went to the afterburners. "They know who the coach is."

It was a public calling out in the city that never sleeps, or forgets. Had his team faltered, Edwards would have looked only loudly impotent. But ... Jets 44, San Diego 13.

The last chair? New England's Bill Belichick, his team sinking after four straight defeats, having to go to Buffalo to face the raging inferno at quarterback - and the star Belichick turned into a benchwarmer - named Drew Bledsoe.

When the Patriots traded Bledsoe last offseason, instead of shipping him a couple of time zones away where he could be forgotten, they sent him down the road to a division rival. The Red Sox once tried that with Babe Ruth. It didn't work.

Belichick had no time for history last week because he was cooking up an exotic Bledsoe-confusing scheme that at times appeared to use about 14 linebackers.

Had Bledsoe shredded it, the Patriots' might have been done for good, finished by the quarterback they sent to a neighbor as leftovers. But ... New England 38, Buffalo 7.

So the five of them pulled in their winnings, gambling coaches with enough brass to beat the house.