Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  Parcells began developing precise preferences: defensive linemen who were boxy, strong, and physical, yet possessed quickness; tall linebackers who were heavier, thus bulkier, than the average; defensive backs who were terrific tacklers. The common quality was toughness. Parcells’s template was strikingly similar to Lombardi’s. As early as 1962, Green Bay’s three starting linebackers, led by Ray Nitschke, were all six-foot-three and 235 pounds, close to the size of the team’s defensive ends. And Willie Wood, the star Packers safety, was among the surest tacklers in NFL history.

  Parcells’s bigger-is-better philosophy would transfer to the offensive side as a right tackle who was at least six-foot-six and 315 pounds. Besides those basic metrics, Parcells wanted offensive linemen with long arms and wide buttocks. His ideal runner was a relatively big, punishing back with a north–south mentality.

  After George Young was named Giants GM in 1979, he was intent on learning the system by poaching New England’s front office. Dick Steinberg was one of Kilroy’s top scouts, so Young offered Steinberg a job as Big Blue’s personnel director. Steinberg declined because of a simultaneous offer from the New Orleans Saints. Undeterred, Young courted Kilroy’s other protégé, and Tom Boisture accepted the job in 1980 to become Young’s right-hand man. Boisture taught Young the system in New York around the same time that Parcells was quietly getting lessons on it in New England.

  Erhardt’s Patriots went 10-6 to finish runner-up in the AFC East. Nonetheless, for the second straight season, they missed the playoffs by just a game. New England scored 441 points, a club record that would stand until 2007, eclipsed by an offense featuring quarterback Tom Brady and wideout Randy Moss. Seven of Erhardt’s Patriots were voted to the Pro Bowl, including linebacker Steve Nelson.

  7

  Despite New England’s postseason absence, Parcells enjoyed his experience learning the pro game. His contributions, including a key role in Steve Nelson’s breakout season, affirmed confidence in Parcells’s ability to coach at the highest level. He was eager to prepare for the 1981 draft and to better familiarize himself with the Boston area, but those plans were disrupted by a phone call from Ray Perkins. Only two years after Parcells had suddenly quit his new job as the Giants’ linebackers coach, a decision he feared would result in being blackballed, he received an even better offer: Big Blue’s defensive coordinator.

  Following a 6-10 record in his first season, Perkins’s Giants went 4-12 as injuries decimated the roster. Big Blue was outscored by 176 points while both the offense and defense proved anemic. Perkins was so convinced that Parcells would transform New York’s defense, and help turn the Giants into winners, that no interview was necessary. In the telephone conversation, he offered Parcells defensive carte blanche and reiterated his goal from their first go-round: “Mold a linebacking corps that I can build a defense on.”

  The Patriots linebackers coach immediately informed Erhardt about his new opportunity. Before departing New England, Parcells made copies of Kilroy’s grading scale and placed them in a black plastic folder. The typing system would serve Parcells well for the rest of his career.

  Parcells signed only a two-year deal, which tied him to the remainder of Perkins’s contract. Although its length wasn’t ideal, Parcells was pleased about getting a raise: his first child, Suzy, was headed to college in the fall, and the second, Dallas, was only months from being a high school senior.

  Parcells would earn his salary and more if he could turn around a defense that had allowed 425 points, an average of 26.5 per game, while ranking next to last in the 28-team league. With an interception-prone neophyte at quarterback in Phil Simms, and no standouts at tailback or wideout, Big Blue averaged 15.5 points for the league’s third-worst offense. Parcells noted that Perkins’s Giants record (10-22) was similar to that of his two predecessors, both of whom had been fired. If Big Blue floundered in 1981, Parcells surmised, Perkins’s entire staff would be dismissed. Yet he chose to focus on the positive: the potential recognition he’d get for revitalizing Big Blue’s defense.

  The New York Giants joined the NFL in 1925, five years after the league’s creation. Their addition fit with the NFL’s desire to reach bigger markets and gain more revenue, while dispelling the notion that it was a small-town endeavor. At the time, the NFL consisted of one division with twenty clubs, including several obscure ones based in Ohio: the Akron Indians, Canton Bulldogs, Columbus Tigers, and Dayton Triangles. Other teams included the Duluth (Minnesota) Kelleys, Hammond (Indiana) Pros, Pottsville (Pennsylvania) Maroons, Rock Island (Illinois) Independents, Chicago Bears, and Green Bay Packers, and clubs in Cleveland (Bulldogs) and Detroit (Panthers). The league champion was determined by the best record. In their first home game, the Giants lost to the Frankford Yellow Jackets, based in their namesake neighborhood of Philadelphia, who would capture the NFL title in 1926 by going 14-1-2. Their mark included two 6–0 victories versus the Giants within hours during a season in which back-to-back games were common. The Giants earned the 1927 championship with a record of 11-1-1.

  By the time the NFL became a two-division league in 1933, many of the smaller teams had disbanded: only ten clubs remained. In the first championship game pitting Eastern and Western finalists, the Bears defeated the Giants, 23–21. After a stellar stretch from 1955 to 1963, the Giants went into a free fall. When Bill Parcells was named defensive coordinator, Big Blue had endured eight consecutive losing seasons while averaging four victories. Within the organization, pressure to reverse course was immense.

  “For the most part, Ray Perkins treated everybody the same: the coaches were just like the players. We were all shit in Perkins’s eyes,” recalls ex-linebacker Harry Carson, the club’s fourth-round pick in 1976. “Everybody was a dog. The assistant coaches felt the pressure, and as they say, shit rolls downhill.”

  Big Blue’s decision on its top pick in the 1981 draft, second overall, was monumental for the franchise. The New Orleans Saints, coached by Bum Phillips, held the first selection. The prevailing notion was that the Giants would choose whoever remained of the top two prospects: North Carolina linebacker Lawrence Taylor and South Carolina tailback George Rogers. Giants GM George Young considered Taylor, an All-American with extraordinary athleticism, to be the best linebacking prospect he had ever evaluated. With a rare blend of size, speed, and power at six-three, 237 pounds, Taylor fit the ideal prototype at his position, leading to a grade of B8.2 in the Giants typing system. Young even suggested that Taylor’s physical gifts surpassed those of Dick Butkus, the legendary linebacker who had excelled with the Bears from 1965 to 1973.

  Young, a secretive person, was characteristically coy about his draft preference. Despite his effusive praise, the GM never quite publicly committed to Taylor while New Orleans remained open to the possibility of drafting Rogers, winner of the Heisman Trophy. As head coach of the Houston Oilers in 1978, Bum Phillips had used their top overall pick on Earl Campbell, who turned out to be one of the best runners of all time. But since subterfuge was typical of the draft, especially one without a unanimous top choice, the order of the first two selections maintained suspense.

  New York’s roster was already deep with linebackers. And the talented veterans on the unit remarked that using the team’s top pick on Taylor would be superfluous. Taylor’s agent declared his client’s contractual goal of $250,000 per season, or $750,000 over three years, which would make him among the league’s highest-paid defenders. Some Giants veterans hinted that they wouldn’t suit up in 1981 at a salary lower than that of a rookie’s. Offended by such sentiments, Taylor responded that the Giants should avoid drafting him so that their linebacking corps wouldn’t be disrupted; he hoped to be chosen by the Cowboys, although they would need to trade up from their twenty-sixth overall choice. Young deemed the public tit-for-tat and speculation irrelevant.

  The 1981 NFL draft was held in the basement ballroom of the New York Sheraton. Ed Croke, the Giants public relations director, was the team’s representative at the
televised event. Sitting at a table assigned to the Giants, Croke’s main duty was to relay their choice. Handing a card to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle was each team’s way of making a selection, which was then announced from a podium. At Big Blue’s draft war room in Giants Stadium, Young phoned Croke. “Listen. Get two cards. You’re gonna write down two names: ‘George Rogers, running back,’ and ‘Lawrence Taylor, linebacker.’ Just keep ’em in your lap. Whichever one Bum Phillips takes, get that second card in as fast as you can.”

  Rozelle announced New Orleans’s selection, George Rogers, delighting Big Blue’s front office and its fans. Scores of supporters among the spectators on the ballroom’s balcony chanted Taylor’s name. Rozelle had set aside the customary fifteen minutes for the Giants to make a choice, but within seconds Croke retrieved the alternate card from his lap and sprung from his seat to reach Rozelle. The commissioner announced the second overall pick as Giants Nation cheered triumphantly.

  Several weeks later, when Taylor reported to minicamp, Harry Carson reached out to him, arranging a sit-down for a long talk to reduce any animosity. The rookie wore number 56 because of his admiration for Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, a flashy linebacker who had helped the Cowboys reach three Super Bowls between 1975 and 1979, winning one in 1978, before being released mainly because of cocaine abuse.

  As a North Carolina Tar Heel, Lawrence Taylor played on the defensive line before moving to outside linebacker. By the end of his college career he was one of the best linebacker prospects in decades. Parcells expressed astonishment that one-third of Taylor’s tackles as a senior occurred behind the line of scrimmage. The reasons for the statistic came to life on the first snap of Giants training camp in Pleasantville, New York. Taylor attacked the ball like a cheetah. In no more than two steps, the six-three, 237-pounder seemed to be at full speed. Yet he possessed the strength of a sumo wrestler, power-rushing more effectively than defensive linemen who were at least fifty pounds heavier. Much of Taylor’s strength came from his lower body, from his buttocks to his knees. The linebacker shed tight ends Gary Shirk and Dave Young, two of the biggest Giants on the field, as if they were flyweights. Taylor matched his physical gifts with an ultracompetitive spirit that aimed at dominance. Suddenly it seemed confounding that New Orleans had bypassed Taylor, even for a star runner like Rogers.

  Taylor finished his first intrasquad game with four sacks and a fumble recovery. The performance was so otherworldly that even a passerby ignorant of the difference between a fumble and a sack could tell that he was the best player on the field. Over the years Giants veterans had witnessed ballyhooed prospects with terrific physical attributes that didn’t make it in the NFL, but the rookie linebacker from North Carolina eased any tensions with his new teammates by living up to the hype while showing a willingness to work hard.

  Perkins gave Bill Belichick permission to use Taylor on his special-teams unit. Giants coaches reviewed practice daily on film, and they sat riveted and amused by the special-teams footage, watching intrasquad opponents steer clear of Taylor. He played with kamikaze ferocity, yet he had an uncanny knack for avoiding injury. After almost a week of scrimmaging, Perkins sidled up to Parcells. The typically dour head coach grinned. “I came to camp wondering if he was everything he was cracked up to be.”

  Parcells said, “So?”

  “Well, he’s everything he’s cracked up to be.”

  They both laughed.

  Parcells said, “No shit. I gotta get this kid into the game.”

  Perkins nodded, agreeing that the standard approach of keeping error-prone rookies from starting didn’t apply to Taylor. Early in preseason, the rookie was promoted from backup to the Giants’ fourth linebacker in their new 3-4 scheme.

  The 3-4 defense was invented in the late 1940s by Oklahoma Sooners coach Bud Wilkinson, whose career Parcells had studied intensively as a college assistant. The base formation consists of a nose tackle between two defensive ends (the “three”), plus two inside linebackers flanked by both outside linebackers (the “four”). Before this, NFL linebackers didn’t need to be particularly athletic, big, or powerful. Their main duty was supporting the run defense and adjusting to the pass.

  As college coaches entered the NFL, though, the position evolved; during the 1970s, when the so-called Oklahoma defense reached the pros, the unconventional alignment began propelling linebackers to stardom. Now they not only had responsibility for stopping the run; they had to pass-rush like defensive linemen and contest passes like defensive backs. The wide range of duties required linebackers to be among the best athletes on the field. “They became attackers,” Parcells explains. “Hell, they became assassins, like Lawrence Taylor.”

  For decades before Parcells was hired as Giants defensive coordinator, the club had generally used a 4-3 defense. Created by Tom Landry during the 1950s when he was the team’s defensive coordinator, the alignment typically placed four defenders at the line of scrimmage and three linebackers behind them. Parcells’s planned change was “earth-shattering,” recalls former defensive end George Martin, who had played exclusively in the 4-3 since joining the Giants in 1975.

  Perkins expected the change to spur an aggressive defense while exploiting the increasingly athletic pool of college linebackers. But Parcells intended to revamp the defense’s mind-set as much as its alignment. The main objective was to force the ball carrier to the perimeter, just as Parcells had taught his initially resistant Texas Tech unit to do.

  Making the change even more drastic, Parcells also implemented the two-gap approach, which was foreign to most of the Giants. As a former Wichita linebacker, Parcells had played in the system before using it as a college coach. The two-gap system in the 3-4 alignment was brought to the Patriots, if not the NFL, by Chuck Fairbanks during the 1970s. His defensive coordinator, Hank Bullough, made key contributions to enhance the two-gap system, so NFL coaches now referred to the 3-4 version of it as the “Fairbanks-Bullough” defense. Introducing the two-gap approach to the Giants, Parcells required his defenders to play head-on instead of focusing on one assigned gap. “It’s not, ‘I got this gap, and you got that gap. And how come you weren’t in your gap?’ ” Parcells says. “I don’t like that. We all got these gaps. We all got the ball carrier.”

  New York’s defense had a strong veteran presence, linebackers set in their ways, so Parcells faced an early challenge. Instead of dealing with compliant student-athletes, Parcells now encountered “a different breed of animal,” as former linebacker Harry Carson recalls. When the Giants defense was informed of the seismic shift from the 4-3, some players grumbled, unhappy that the new coach was altering their traditional scheme. Oblivious to the barbs, Parcells exuded confidence as he explained his changes. First he expounded on how the 3-4 would play to the defensive unit’s strength. Although the Giants had allowed an average of 26.5 points the previous season, their starting linebackers made a terrific threesome of seasoned players: Harry Carson sandwiched by Brian Kelley and Brad Van Pelt.

  A fourth-round choice in 1976 by way of South Carolina State, Carson was among the league’s top linebackers, earning Pro Bowl status in 1978 and 1979. Van Pelt, a second-round pick in 1973 out of Michigan State, had garnered five consecutive Pro Bowls from 1976 to 1980; although he didn’t fully exert himself at practice, Van Pelt performed fiercely in games. Kelley, a graduate of California Lutheran, had been chosen in the fourteenth round during the same draft as Van Pelt. These incumbent linebackers had never won more than six games in a season, yet they regularly performed with fervor. Taylor’s dazzling performances from day one compelled Parcells to make him a starter, too. The defensive coordinator also envisioned having rookie linebacker Byron Hunt, a ninth-round pick via Southern Methodist, in the regular rotation by midseason.

  Parcells’s detailed breakdown of the new scheme often took place in one-on-one talks with leaders of the defense. Each day Parcells pulled a veteran aside to convey some particular aspect of his reasoning. He might discuss how
a player’s forte factored into a lineup change, for instance. “Fireside chatter,” Martin says of the conversations. Previous Giants coaches had never deigned to explain their alterations, and as the defensive boss, with influence in management decisions to jettison players, Parcells could have taken the same approach. But his inclusive approach helped minimize player resistance while promoting an understanding of his logic.

  Although Parcells had never played in an NFL regular-season game, his success as a college linebacker gave him currency with Giants players. Parcells’s most important attribute, though, was his expertise, conveyed by sharp teaching skills. He stressed fundamentals such as tackling and blocking to veterans surprised to be learning so many new things. “He was the first educational coach I had in my entire career,” says George Martin, who was in his seventh season when Parcells arrived.

  Parcells compares arranging—or rearranging—personnel for the 3-4 to working on a jigsaw puzzle. Brian Kelley switched to inside linebacker next to Harry Carson. Taylor was placed at outside linebacker, while fellow rookie Byron Hunt and Brad Van Pelt shared the opposite spot. George Martin and Gary Jeter, a Pro Bowl alternate in 1980, were capable defensive ends, but for the system to work, Parcells needed to find a nose tackle. The search was complicated by injuries and players who weren’t the right fit, but by early in preseason, Parcells had targeted a rookie defensive end: Bill Neill, drafted in the fifth round of the twelve-round draft. Parcells revealed his brainstorm at Big Blue’s first meeting of scouts and coaches to discuss players, where his idea was met with a chorus of skepticism.