Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  Parcells, engrossed in the game, responded, “What was that, honey?”

  “You’re driving me nuts, Bill. I think it’s time you thought about getting back into football.”

  Parcells snapped to attention. He had been fantasizing about hearing those words since he had stepped off his Continental flight from New Jersey.

  The next evening, the couple was sitting at a restaurant bar, watching Monday Night Football, when Judy reiterated her thoughts, this time even more unequivocally.

  “We’ve got to get back to football.”

  Parcells responded, “I’m going to do it, honey, and someday I’m going to be a head coach in the NFL. And I’m going to win a Super Bowl.”

  “God, you haven’t even got a job, and you’re saying this?”

  6

  In mid-October of 1979, Parcells punched the digits he had contemplated dialing so often during his football purgatory. When Ray Perkins picked up, Parcells said, “I want to come back.”

  Perkins replied, “I figured you would, sooner or later.” Perkins added that the Giants were playing in Kansas City on October 21. Parcells responded that of course he already knew their schedule.

  Perkins asked, “You want to have breakfast?”

  Parcells flew to Kansas City to meet Perkins at the team hotel the morning of the game. He enjoyed running into some Giants players in the lobby. At breakfast Parcells reiterated his desire for an NFL return, hopefully with Big Blue. Perkins was candid. “I don’t have anything right now. And I’m not sure I’ll have anything after the season. Let’s stay in touch, and if I hear anything about other teams, I’ll let you know.”

  But Parcells became intent on obtaining a coaching job as soon as possible. In December, he put his home up for sale, and found a buyer committed to moving in on February 13. Parcells turned to his college connections, first phoning Steve Sloan, who was still at Mississippi. Sloan responded that he would get back to Parcells promptly with a sense of the college opportunities. After hanging up, Sloan began spreading the word that his talented ex-lieutenant was seeking employment.

  The next day, Stanford head coach Rod Dowhower phoned Parcells. “I hear you’re looking.”

  “You bet.”

  Ray Handley, who had joined Dowhower’s staff when Parcells left Air Force, strongly recommended his former boss, so Stanford’s head coach flew to Colorado Springs to meet Parcells, and during the get-together the two men reached an agreement; the new defensive coordinator merely needed to visit the school before making things official. Parcells flew into Palo Alto, and it took him only a few minutes to declare Stanford’s campus, including its buildings with red-tiled roofs dotting exquisitely manicured greenery, the most beautiful one he had ever seen. Parcells was convinced that Judy and the kids would be equally enamored of the surroundings. While he was still in Palo Alto, however, the possibility of working there evaporated as big news hit campus. Dowhower was leaving Stanford: he had accepted an offer from the Denver Broncos to be their offensive coordinator.

  Parcells’s disappointment eased slightly after he flew back to Colorado Springs and heard a message from Sloan about another possibility. Mississippi’s defensive coordinator position was open, and it had Bill Parcells’s name on it. The former real-estate agent wanted the gig, but Sloan gave him extra time to make certain, knowing that Parcells had cast a wide net. His expertise with the 3-4 scheme appealed to NFL coaches like Fritz Shurmur, New England’s defensive coordinator. So Perkins contacted the Patriots, where he had coached offense for four seasons under Chuck Fairbanks, to tell them that Parcells would be an excellent hire for their opening at linebackers coach.

  Perkins phoned Parcells to tell him that the Giants still had no openings, but that he should call Ron Erhardt, who needed a linebackers coach. Parcells was skeptical; he didn’t know the Patriots head coach. “I’ve got this offer from Steve at Mississippi.”

  Perkins responded, “Call Erhardt.”

  “This Mississippi thing is solid. I still really haven’t coached in the pros. I probably don’t have a chance to get the New England thing.”

  “Call Erhardt.”

  When Parcells contacted Erhardt, the Patriots coach told him to come up to the Boston area for an interview. On Thursday, February 7, Parcells flew to Boston before driving to Foxborough, where the Patriots headquarters was located. After the interview, Parcells asked how many people were up for the job. Erhardt told him that he was the first of several candidates, and that a decision would be made by Tuesday, February 12. Parcells conveyed a sense of urgency. “I can’t hold up Steve Sloan at Mississippi, and I have to be out of my house in, like, twenty minutes.”

  He returned to his hotel room still uncertain about his future, but within a few hours Erhardt telephoned with an offer. When Parcells informed Sloan, the Ole Miss coach said, “Give ’em hell. You’ve always belonged in pro football anyway.”

  The next few days were a whirlwind. On Friday, one day after the interview, New England announced Parcells as its new linebackers coach. Over the weekend Judy flew to Boston to look for a home. On Monday the family agreed on a place in Norfolk, Massachusetts, a rural town on Boston’s periphery, and Judy returned to Colorado to deal with the move. Suzy was only three months away from graduating at Air Academy High, so she stayed behind, moving in with the family of Al Groh, Air Force’s defensive coordinator, who had known Parcells since they were at Army.

  • • •

  At Patriots training camp, Parcells used the same razor-tongued intensity he’d employed as a college coach. During one practice, defensive back Rick Sanford offered a lame excuse after botching an assignment, and Parcells yelled, “Who do you think I am? Charlie the Tuna? I believe anything?” Parcells was alluding to the naive and affable cartoon mascot for StarKist, the canned tuna company, who was an icon of pop culture during the 1960s and 1970s. Parcells’s retort spurred laughter from the Patriots players, and from that day forward he was known as “the Tuna,” or “the Big Tuna.” His linebackers plastered Charlie-the-Tuna logos on a helmet, and each week during training camp one defensive player was chosen to wear the helmet at practice. Coincidentally, the nickname somewhat described Parcells’s physique: like a real tuna, the Big Tuna was stout in the middle, tapering off at both ends.

  Bill Parcells would also pick up something in New England far more important than a catchy moniker: formative training in how to evaluate personnel. The GM, Bucko Kilroy, and the director of college scouting, Mike Holovak, were both former NFL players well-regarded for their abilities to assess talent.

  Kilroy had starred as a two-way lineman for the Philadelphia Eagles, helping them capture the 1948 and 1949 NFL Championships. Some years after he retired because of a knee injury, the Redskins hired him as a personnel director in 1962, making him one of the league’s first full-time scouts. Kilroy showed great skill at spotting talent—for example, by using Washington’s first two picks in the rich 1964 draft to select two future Hall of Famers: halfback Charley Taylor, third overall, and defensive back Paul Krause, eighteenth. That was the same draft in which an offensive tackle named Bill Parcells was chosen eighty-ninth by Detroit.

  Until the late 1940s, football scouting lacked sophistication: it was mostly regional; and because of time constraints, coaching staffs focused on gathering available film on prospects. Some clubs resorted to plucking players off the college All-American list. The least myopic organizations also researched black-owned newspapers, such as the Baltimore Afro-American, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the Amsterdam News, based in the Harlem section of New York City.

  Although the Dallas Cowboys weren’t founded until 1960, the franchise was instantly at the forefront of personnel evaluation, thanks to the innovative duo at its helm: chief scout Gil Brandt and GM Tex Schramm. Brandt espoused targeting the best available athletes, even if they were basketball players or track stars. And he was among the first scouts to search for kickers in soccer leagues outside the United States, particularly
Latin America.

  Schramm attended the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, where he was intrigued by an IBM computer that compiled statistics, including medal standings and record times; the Cowboys executive believed the technology could be used to organize scouting data. On returning to Dallas, Schramm contacted IBM to explore his brainstorm and enlisted help from Salam Quereishi, one of its computer programmers from India. Their get-togethers were challenging because of the programmer’s thick Indian accent and the GM’s gruff manner, but they went beyond the standard metrics of height, weight, and speed to create five categories—agility and quickness, explosiveness and strength, mental alertness, character, and competitiveness—rating prospects from 1 to 9.

  The heavy expense of the nascent system prompted the need to share costs with other interested NFL organizations, so Schramm chose two teams from the Western Conference, who were therefore not direct competitors: the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams. Over the next four years, each club contributed a total of roughly $300,000 to create a computer model to be used in evaluating players. While awaiting the finished product, the group formed the first scouting combine: code name Troika.

  After the innovative system was implemented in 1964, the raw data was shared among the three teams. Depending on each club’s philosophy, critical factors were weighted differently. The computer also distilled information to create one list of the fifteen best college prospects. Atop the page was a cocksure, gunslinging quarterback at Alabama: Joe Namath.

  Meanwhile, Gil Brandt was taking notice of astute moves being made by Washington’s top scout, Bucko Kilroy. After the 1965 season Brandt lured him to the Cowboys. As computer technology evolved, Dallas tweaked the value placed on certain qualities. In 1965, the Cowboys counted speed as 14.6 percent of a tight end’s grade. The next year, the attribute dropped to 11 percent. Kilroy helped refine their scouting system, filling the roster with talented players who blended size and speed. By his second year in Dallas, Tom Landry’s Cowboys began their record streak of twenty winning seasons.

  Kilroy’s scouting genius increasingly gained attention, and in 1971, New England’s Upton Bell, the league’s youngest GM, enticed Kilroy to leave Dallas. The thirty-three-year-old was the son of Bert Bell, the founder of the Eagles, who had once employed Kilroy while serving as the NFL commissioner. Kilroy brought two protégés with him from Dallas, Dick Steinberg and Tom Boisture. After upgrading New England’s scouting system, they infused the team with talented players and hired Mike Holovak, their onetime coach and a former star fullback at Boston College, as Kilroy’s top college scout for the newly renamed New England Patriots.

  When Parcells joined the Patriots that season, Ron Erhardt tutored him about pro offenses, and defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur educated him on the NFL’s brand of two-gap defense. In this scheme, the defensive player is responsible for both sides, or gaps, of an offensive blocker. By contrast, the one-gap defense requires accountability for the space between two offensive players—for example, the guard and the center.

  Nonetheless, the ambitious young assistant quietly ached to learn about building a team. He intuitively understood that for all the importance of coaching, football is in many ways a personnel-acquisition business. The greatest coaches got the most out of a team regardless of its skill set, but boosting a club’s talent level elevated the chances at success. Vince Lombardi’s Packers were stacked with eleven future Hall of Famers, all acquired by an obscure GM, Jack Vainisi. Regardless of the era, winning organizations generally have top personnel departments that employ a distinct philosophy for acquiring talent.

  Erhardt’s staff of eight assistants all helped to evaluate college players. In personnel meetings, scouts read their reports aloud. While college linebackers were being assessed, Parcells took notes and listened intently, knowing he would be required to provide an opinion based on the disseminated information. Kilroy barely interacted with Parcells through normal channels. In between practices and meetings, however, Parcells sought out the GM, peppering him with questions about building a team. The interest was atypical for an assistant coach, particularly one in his first NFL season. Impressed by such passion, Kilroy responded with kindness, spending substantial time providing a primary education about scouting in pro football. Parcells confirmed many of the principles during separate conversations with Holovak. “They gave me a great foundation,” Parcells says of Kilroy and Holovak. “I was fortunate to be exposed to those people and that system in the beginning.”

  Kilroy’s first, and most important, lesson was the need for a personnel philosophy. Lack of guidelines for targeting talent usually led to failure. Parcells learned that roughly half the league’s teams had no blueprint for talent acquisition.

  The rookie NFL assistant didn’t bring attention to the private lessons. Decades later, when informed about Kilroy’s influence on Parcells, Erhardt expresses surprise: “I never heard that before. Evidently, Bill knew something that we didn’t know. I don’t remember him saying anything about Bucko.” But Erhardt adds quickly: “Bucko always had time for you. There were a lot of us that would talk to him about personnel.”

  Kilroy was well-organized, although one might not suspected it given the way his crinkly white shirts often hung from his suit pants. Barrel-chested and tall with a slapdash appearance, Kilroy stood out upon entering a room in his size 17 triple-E shoes. “A big ol’ Irishman,” Parcells recalls. Kilroy had a quick-trigger laugh, unleashing giggles like machine-gun bursts. Despite his sharp mind, the bespectacled scout with snow-white hair tended to utter “Bucko-isms,” malapropisms such as talking about “collision” between teams when he meant “collusion,” or a “re-thread” player instead of a “retread.” Some trades fell through, Kilroy explained, because they were “cost-prohibited” versus “cost-prohibitive.”

  After enlightening Parcells about the fundamentals of personnel evaluation, Kilroy delved into his intricate system for gauging talent. The Patriots stressed size and speed while also recognizing the five so-called critical factors of football skill, from agility to competitiveness. The sum of those qualities helped determine if a prospect had the desired makeup. Emphasis on certain qualities varied based on position, like a quarterback’s poise, or a wideout’s ability to run after the catch. “Bucko gave me the critical-factor exposure,” Parcells says, “and I grabbed hold of that quick. I still have copies of his breakdown, and I would never let them go.”

  Kilroy’s complicated approach to assessment was known in NFL parlance as a “typing system,” with alphanumeric scores that classify, or type, each prospect with precision. Grades help determine if a physical drawback will inhibit NFL success and, just as important, whether the ostensible disadvantage clashes with the team’s personnel philosophy.

  The numerical cutoff for NFL consideration is a 5.5, which equates to a late-round pick at best; 9.0 or higher signifies a player bound for the Hall of Fame. Kilroy wrote down the requirements for a prospect’s meriting a 9.0 to 9.9: “A first-year starter, Pro Bowl–type player. Must be a dominant impact player immediately. Ability to change outcome of the game. Must have 9 athletic ability. Must have height-weight-speed ratio of 7 or higher. Cornerback and wide receivers must have playing speed of 8 or higher.”

  It’s rare for an athlete to earn a 9.0; the mark usually occurs once in a generation. Entering the 1980 draft, Oklahoma tailback Billy Sims was graded an A9 by Kilroy and Holovak. As a college senior Sims led the nation with 1,896 rushing yards while scoring 22 touchdowns. He validated the rare grade by making the Pro Bowl as a rookie. Sims would end up being the only prospect to earn an A from any team connected to Parcells.

  Most NFL teams today use numeric-only assessments, which Parcells considers flawed although simpler than the alternative, which is adding a typing system of letters from A to K. Each letter is assigned a maximum number, from 2.0 to 9.9, and once letters are put together with numbers, NFL scouts have what they need to visualize a prospect.
In the typing system, K, the lowest letter grade, means that the prospect has only one redeeming feature. The highest number that can go with a K grade is a 3.9, so K-type players have virtually no shot at getting drafted.

  Parcells’s intelligence allowed him to grasp the system’s complex coding and contingencies in only one season. “A: He’s got it all, great. B: He’s got it all, great. C: He doesn’t have it all; he’s short, but he’s great. D: He’s got it all, but there’s one circumstance that you’re a little leery about. E: He’s got size and speed, but he’s an underachiever. F: He’s got everything but speed, meaning toughness and size. F’s are usually linemen. G means he’s a good player. You can give him up to a 6.9, but he’s like a C; he’s short. H: You can only give him a 6.4 ’cause he’s a projection. I: Size and speed; he’s like a D, only he’s not as good. J: He’s got size, but he doesn’t have bulk, he needs to fill out. K: One redeeming feature.”

  To better understand the complexities of the system, Parcells came up with maxims. “I’s and D’s before G’s and C’s.” Or, as Parcells explains, “That means take the size before you take the shorter guy.”

  Despite the intricacies of his system, Kilroy considered talent acquisition to be an inexact science involving intuition almost as much as information. No one in league history matched his experience as player, coach, and scout. He often dipped into this deep reservoir spanning generations to compare athletes. Kilroy taught this comparative mind-set to Parcells, whose extraordinary memory would become an asset in evaluating personnel. If a prospect didn’t evoke a past successful player, there were reservations. But when an athlete conjured a good player from the past, scouting interest rose.

  Kilroy also taught Parcells that some prospects who didn’t fit New England’s personnel philosophy might thrive on another team. “So we always had a special category of players,” Parcells says. “We called it: ‘Well, they’re good, but they’re not for us.’ They don’t fit our prototypical standards. We try not to compromise those.”