Home Team

by Sean Payton

  The interview with Fassel and his staff went well. After the interview, he offered me the job. It was a good offer, a lot of money for me at the time—a two-year contract: $150,000 the first year, $170,000 the second. I didn’t know anyone up there other than Denny Marcin, the defensive line coach, who’d been with me at the University of Illinois. He was the person who recommended me for this position—back to the small coaching fraternity. Gruden was still battling for me in Oakland, but he didn’t have a definite yes from Al. So I bought Beth some flowers on the ride home to South Jersey and said, “Hey, you want to go to New York?”

  If you asked me, “Where were you put on the map?” I would say, “I was put on the map in New York.” And I wasn’t the first. Don Shula, Vince Lombardi, Bill Belichick, Tom Coughlin—so many other talented assistant coaches had career stops with the New York Giants. In the movie business, there always seems to be one breakout role where an actor gets spotted. This was going to be that role for me.

  I started as quarterbacks coach in 1999 and became the play caller later that season. The following year, 2000, I was promoted to offensive coordinator. That year we had an outstanding season—twelve wins, number one seed and we went to the Super Bowl in Tampa against the Baltimore Ravens.

  All of a sudden, I was on the radar.

  I was in New York for 9/11. The 2001 Giants opened that season at Denver. It was the first game ever played in the new Mile High Stadium and the first Monday Night Football game of the season. September 10, 2001. After the game was over, we flew overnight, west to east, in our United Airlines charter and landed back at Newark about six forty-five a.m. It was Tuesday morning, September 11. As we pulled up in Newark, we didn’t know it at the time, but the plane that went down in Pennsylvania was at the gate next to ours. It departed about forty-five minutes after we arrived. So here we are at the gate, and the plane next to ours was the one that would shortly be boarded by the terrorists.

  Tuesday was the players’ day off. They headed straight home after we landed. The coaches slept on the flight and then went directly to the offices at Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands across the Hudson River from downtown Manhattan. Coffee in hand, we began putting a game plan together for the Kansas City Chiefs.

  When the planes hit the towers we went up to the top of Giants Stadium. You could see the smoke clearly from there. Beth called to ask if everyone was OK. Then the buildings fell. All of us felt terribly vulnerable that day. At ten thirty that night, as I was leaving the stadium, I saw hundreds of cars in the Meadowlands park-and-ride commuter lot that normally wouldn’t be there at that time of night. Some people walked home, up Highway 3 from the city. Many people never made it out of Manhattan that day. The next morning most of those cars were still there.

  One of the lessons of 9/11 was that, ready or not, life went on. We all discovered that living—normally, proudly, unapologetically—was the right thing to do in the face of a terrible threat. Cowering in fear was no answer. For me and the other Giants coaches and the players, that meant returning to the game of football.

  2001 turned out to be a .500 season for us. 2002 was my most personally challenging year. We were struggling offensively from the start. In the first three weeks of the season, we were moving the ball effectively. But we weren’t scoring enough points.

  Week Four of the season, things were going to change. We were playing the Cardinals in Arizona. At the end of the half we got the ball back, deep in our own territory with time for just one play. We were ahead by seven.

  “What are you thinking here?” Fassel asked me.

  “We should take a knee,” I said.

  “No, no, let’s throw the ball and try to get out of bounds,” Fassel said.

  “Coach,” I answered, “we should take a knee.”

  Now, Fassel generally gave me complete freedom as a play caller. Nonetheless, we called the pass play. Cardinals defender Justin Lucas intercepted Kerry Collins’s pass and returned it for a game-tying touchdown with four seconds left on the clock. The call was obviously a mistake. We had no business running a play like that so late in the half.

  God knows I’ve made my share of bad calls over the years. So I know one when I hear one.

  On the bus after the game, I was just sitting there, absorbing the loss, when Beth called. I explained to her what had happened.

  “I was listening to the press conference,” she said. “They asked Jim, ‘Who made the call at the end of the half?’ He said, ‘Well, let’s just say I gave the green light.’ ”

  That wasn’t exactly right. I went in the next day and spoke to Jim.

  “Uh, Coach,” I said, “whoever takes the blame for that call is unimportant to me. But you know that when we discussed it on the sideline, I said, ‘We should take a knee.’ You’re the one who wanted to run the play. Listen, if you need me to jump on this, I will. But—”

  He looked awkward and a little embarrassed. But he couldn’t really deny it.

  About the same time, I was going through some struggles with my mom. She had just been diagnosed with cancer. After the Rams game in Week Two, I had driven to Nashville. We had won. I brought her the game ball signed by a bunch of the players. I had to tell her she had stage-four cancer. She knew she was sick, but I had to tell her, “This is more serious than we thought.” She was a big fighter. She was all gung ho on my bringing her medical reports back to Sloan-Kettering in New York, where the Giants were hooking me up with the best oncologist.

  “We’ll get all the eyes to look at it,” I told her.

  The harder message came about three weeks later when the doctors at Sloan-Kettering said, “There’s nothing we can do that’s different from what they’re doing for her in Nashville. The cancer is everywhere.”

  She deteriorated very quickly. We had a bye in Week Seven. We went down to Tennessee, my siblings and I, to get my mom squared away with in-home care. We got in there on Thursday. By Friday she was in a coma. Friday afternoon, she passed. We buried her on Monday. I went back to New York the next week. We played the Eagles, a Monday night game. We lost 17-3. Fassel called me in the next day and told me I was no longer going to be calling the plays. He was going to handle it.

  “I’m not going to sit still and watch us average one touchdown per game,” he told the media. The change he wanted to make was me.

  I thought Fassel actually did a great job with the plays. We gained momentum and fought our way into the play-offs. I had another year on my Giants contract. Team officials said they wanted me to stay on in my current role. I had great respect for the owners and for the entire Giants organization. But the head coach and I had such a gap in our relationship, I knew that would be my last year in New York.

  To his credit, he made a decision that was hard, and it helped our team. That very same thing happens all the time. I completely respect and grasp and understand the decision. But I really disdained the public ordeal he made of it. Although it ended on a bad note for me, my time in New York with the Giants organization would serve me well later. I remain grateful for the opportunities Jim gave me.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but there was a guy in Jupiter, Florida, who was paying close attention to all of this. His name was Bill Parcells, the future Hall of Fame coach who had won two Super Bowls with the Giants. Parcells remained close to Chris Mara, whose family founded and continues to own the team. Relationships again. Parcells was going to be the next head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Chris had told Bill he should hire me if he ever had the chance.

  At ten o’clock one night, the phone rang at our house in Northern New Jersey.

  “It’s Bill Parcells,” Beth said.

  I’d never met the man before. I knew who he was, of course.

  “Hypothetically,” Parcells said, “there might be a job that I have an interest in taking.” Everyone in New York knew that Bill Parcells had met with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones at nearby Teterboro Airport.

  “I may be looking for an offensive coach
,” Parcells said. “You’re someone I might have some interest in visiting with.”

  4

  PROFESSOR PARCELLS

  I LOVED WORKING FOR Bill Parcells, and it wasn’t just because he brought me to Dallas as his quarterbacks coach after my bad split with Jim Fassel.

  Parcells can be ornery. He can be difficult. He isn’t always friendly and loose. But Bill Parcells has the best coaching instincts of anyone I’ve ever worked for. He is gutsy. He is bright. He is inventive. He will take a risk. More important, he knows how to win. All this would become crucial to me when the Saints were going into the Super Bowl. At a time like that, there’s no one you’d want to be talking with more than Bill Parcells.

  Our personalities are different. I’m more exuberant. He’s a little more dour. When I was working for him, he didn’t always agree with some of my ideas on offense. But much of my style as a football coach can be traced back to him.

  When I went to work for Bill, it wasn’t just higher education for me. If Philly and New York had been like going to football college, this was more like enrolling in law school. The professor could be brutal. I had a whole lot to learn. But I would definitely be expanding my mind.

  We opened the 2003 Cowboys season with a loss at home to the Atlanta Falcons, 27-13. It was a game we should have won. To call Parcells displeased would be a ten-gallon understatement. He was seething. In the deepest part of his Jersey-born being, he was committed to making sure nothing like that ever happened again. And who did we have waiting for us next? My old buddy Jim Fassel and the New York Giants on Monday Night Football. We came from behind to win a game we had no business winning, slipping past the Giants in overtime, 35-32. This was more what Bill had in mind.

  I was back in Giants Stadium. It was, “Hi, remember me?” The game also dredged up some nostalgia in Bill. It was his first time back there since he’d coached the Jets and the Patriots. And here’s what made the victory even sweeter for both of us: Our team wasn’t as good as the team we beat. The Cowboys won because we played harder, played smarter and, yes, were better coached.

  Bill helped me understand something that night: It’s no great accomplishment to lead the stronger team to victory. The real credit comes when you arrive at a disadvantage—and you still win. That’s why the Atlanta defeat was so galling to him and why the New York victory was so sweet.

  In the coaches’ locker room following the game, Bill was saying what a big win this had been. He turned to me and said: “I know it was especially big for you.”

  That was the beginning of the end for Jim Fassel, letting Parcells and the Cowboys move past him in overtime like that. Fassel would not be back the following year. And defeating the Giants set a winning tone for the rest of the Cowboys’ season.

  That first year in Dallas, we won ten games, lost six and went to the play-offs with a very good defense, twice as many victories as the previous year. It was one of Bill Parcells’s best coaching jobs ever. It was outstanding. And every step of the way, he was agitated about something. Even after the great victory in the Giants game, he was mad. He’d given his relatives fifteen tickets that night, and they didn’t use all the seats. We were on the bus outside Giants Stadium and Bill had a scowl on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  “They didn’t use the seats,” he said.

  “Coach, we just beat the Giants.”

  “It’s the last fuckin’ time I get them tickets. They gave them away. They don’t know we paid for those.”

  I had a great three years in Dallas. I worked with three fine quarterbacks—Drew Bledsoe, Vinny Testaverde and an undrafted kid named Tony Romo, who’d gone to an out-of-the-way school called Eastern Illinois.

  But I don’t ever remember Parcells being totally satisfied. What I remember is that he never stopped thinking how to win. He said: “You have to look at each game individually and ask yourself: What do we have to accomplish here?” For Bill, fresh analysis beat conventional thinking every time. No preconceived notions. No “We always did it like that before.” He was brilliant at analyzing every opponent individually and then figuring out what it would take to win a game. How do we neutralize this team’s best players? What weakness of theirs can we exploit? What will they be expecting from us that we will not give them? How do we climb inside their heads—and screw around? Simply put, he knew how to give his team its best chance to win.

  If you lost a game 35-30, most coaches would say, “The defense let us down.” Bill might get upset at the offense for not scoring the final touchdown—because that’s the kind of game it was. If you lost a game 10-7, you would say, “The offense didn’t score enough points.” Bill might be angry with the defense. “You gave up that field goal!”

  He just knew. You have to pay attention to how the game is being played.

  He was very confrontational. That was how he grew up. He definitely enjoyed making a point. One thing about Bill: He was able to find out very early who had passion and who did not. If you lacked that passion as a player or a coach, you were probably never going to be a favorite of Bill Parcells. Or mine, as I continued to work with him.

  After the opening loss to Atlanta and the win in New York, we won three more games in a row. We were on a roll. We were getting ready to play the Detroit Lions in Week Seven. Most people would have called it the easiest game on the schedule. Bill hated talk like that. He’s old school. When you’re having success, he is all over you every moment. When you hit a rut, he’s building you up. We were playing a team that on paper we were supposed to beat easily. Yet he was on everyone all week: coaches, players, trainers, everyone.

  He saw this as a classic trap game. To illustrate his concern, he even had mousetraps hung in the locker room on Wednesday when our players arrived. “Smack!” he said, imitating the sound of a mousetrap. He was on the coaches as much as he was on the players. In a coaching staff meeting, he lit into his staff. “This has ‘sucker punch’ written all over it,” he insisted. “You guys aren’t ready. Your players aren’t ready. You’re not focused. We’re gonna get our asses kicked.”

  Everybody was getting sick of it. God, we couldn’t wait for this game to come. We went on to beat the Lions handily, 38-7.

  Bill understood the power of confrontation, the value of creating a crisis. Most people prefer to be pleasant. Most people would rather get along. But sometimes it really is more valuable to create the crisis, to face the confrontation. That’s what Bill did before the Detroit game. On a number of occasions in New Orleans, I would find myself doing much the same thing.

  5

  MEETING AL

  I GOT WORD THAT Al Davis wanted to interview me for the head-coaching job at the Oakland Raiders.

  This was after the 2003 season. I’d been in Dallas with Parcells just a year, a year of vast improvement for the Cowboys. But 2003 had been a tough year in Oakland. Their 4-12 record, coming after an 11-4 season in 2002 and a trip to San Diego for the Super Bowl, tied them with the Giants, the Chargers and the Cardinals for the worst in football. As an owner, Al Davis has never been shy about firing his coaches or overruling their decisions. This time, Bill Callahan was the one to pay with his job.

  I flew out to Oakland immediately and discovered: There is nothing quite like an Al Davis interview.

  One minute, it’s defense. The next minute, it’s offense. Then it’s away-game travel or the off-season program. He never stays on the same subject for very long. He wants to keep you on edge. “Tell me about your thoughts in regard to player tickets. . . . Tell me about your thoughts in regard to team travel. . . . Tell me about your thoughts in regard to your coach’s calendar as it pertains to off-season vacation. . . . What kind of defensive front do you think is the toughest to run against? . . . Give me your two best deep passes.” Al Davis may have a short attention span. But he’s in control of the conversation at all times.

  Al is unique among football owners in that he’s also been a head coach and a general manager. He w
as even commissioner of the American Football League. Whatever you think of Al Davis—and people have strong opinions—no one can say the man doesn’t know football.

  I arrived on Saturday. This was my first interview ever for a head-coaching job. We went well into the night. Around nine thirty California time—it was eleven thirty in Dallas, and I was starving—Al finally said: “Are you hungry?”

  “Sure, I’m hungry.”

  “Jimmy,” he called. “Come in here.”

  A young man appeared. “Mr. Davis, what can I get you?”

  “Jimmy,” Al said, “we want to get some cheeseburgers.” Then, looking at me: “You like cheeseburgers?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you get us those cheeseburgers and some of the coleslaw they sell with the cheeseburgers?”

  Jimmy looked confused. “Mr. Davis,” he said, “McDonald’s doesn’t sell coleslaw. That’s Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

  “Oh, I knew that,” Al said. “I knew that. All right, Jimmy. Just get us some of the cheeseburgers.”

  We continued talking. The assistant disappeared. He came back with a bag of cheeseburgers—not Quarter Pounders with Cheese or Big Macs. The kids-menu cheeseburgers—ten of them. Like the kind that come with the Happy Meal. And then there was another bag of Kentucky Fried Chicken coleslaw.

  Al was wearing a black sweat suit and his Super Bowl rings. He was a sloppy eater. He kept a towel in his lap. He was constantly wiping his face on the towel.