In a discussion that stretched three hours, Young complimented the coordinator on the defense’s turnaround, and conveyed the organization’s desire for continuity. At Young’s suggestion, Parcells took a few minutes to read the organization’s corporate bylaws, which put the head coach under the GM’s supervision. When Young broached the topic of Perkins’s staff, Parcells felt momentum moving his way, and seized it.
“There are going to be a few guys on the staff I don’t want to retain.”
Young replied, “That’s completely up to you. Let’s just talk about any moves you make before you actually make them.”
“Fine.”
Finally, Young wrote down some figures for a prospective multiyear contract, averaging $125,000. He also promised to insert language giving Parcells the same authority held by Perkins, including significant input in the draft.
Young asked, “Would these terms be satisfactory to you?”
Parcells replied, “Do you want me to accept those terms?”
“This is a ballpark figure.”
“Is it the going rate?”
“Pretty close.”
Switching gears, Parcells said sternly, “Now, George, you’re not going to write anything in that contract that says I have to socialize or play golf, are you?” Young laughed at the remark, but when Parcells showed no sign of levity, the GM realized it wasn’t a joke. Young moved past the potential sticking point by replying that the last place he wanted to find his head coach during the season was on a golf course.
Parcells preferred not to sign a new contract until his current one expired on February 28, 1983, so to seal their agreement, the new head coach and the GM shook hands. Young was pleased that he’d settled on Perkins’s replacement so quickly, minimizing distractions for the upcoming Redskins game. Also, Young wanted to avoid losing Parcells to another club by waiting until after the season.
Young had first heard Parcells’s name mentioned in early 1979, soon after being hired as Giants GM from the Miami Dolphins. In his final day there as personnel director, Young was cleaning out his desk before leaving for a California-bound flight to interview Perkins. Dan Henning, the Dolphins quarterbacks coach, swung by to strongly recommend someone as an assistant coach.
“There’s a guy you ought to be interested in named Bill Parcells.”
Henning insisted that his ex–Florida State colleague would be Big Blue’s best assistant. Because Young respected Henning, he made a mental note of the remarks. The GM, though, didn’t want to force anyone on his new head coach. After hiring Perkins, Young never mentioned Parcells as a prospective candidate. But as the two discussed the key job of linebackers coach in early 1979, Young was pleased to hear that Perkins was targeting the head coach of Air Force.
The new Giants head coach drove home to Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, and greeted his wife with the news. Judy Parcells was thrilled for her husband. Parcells phoned his oldest daughter, Suzy, at Idaho State University, and then called his father in Oradell. “The name ‘Parcells’ may not be an asset around here anymore.”
Bill Parcells’s crack alluded to the criticism inherent in being the Giants head coach. Charles Parcells was a popular man in Bergen County, where his friends included mayors, judges, and the like. Jokes aside, Charles grasped the significance of his son’s new position, and he was characteristically laconic and even-keeled.
“Good luck.”
In a separate conversation, Bill Parcells told Ida excitedly, “Hey, Mom, I’m going to be head coach of the Giants.”
She responded, “When are you gonna get a real job, like your brother the banker? Aren’t you tired of those gymnasiums?”
Even as Parcells rose in his profession, Ida saw little value in coaching. Instead she constantly bragged to friends and relatives about her other son, Don, being managing director at Marine Midland Bank.
After informing his other close relatives, Parcells phoned Bobby Knight. Before hearing the news, Knight mentioned that the football head-coaching job at Indiana had just come open, and he’d been planning to call Parcells to gauge his interest. Parcells replied, “Thanks, but under the circumstances, I’m glad you didn’t. I’m going to be coach of the Giants.”
The Hoosiers coach was thrilled. Parcells told Knight that he had various options for structuring his new contract, so Knight suggested that Parcells visit Bloomington in a few weeks to discuss it. As Parcells’s salary increased, the financial aspect of the profession became increasingly important to him.
The next day the Giants held simultaneous press conferences announcing Perkins’s departure and Parcells’s ascension. Before reporters arrived in the press lounge, Harry Carson stopped by the podium to offer Parcells his congratulations. When Parcells toggled the face of his new nameplate, Carson laughed at the inside joke. As defensive coordinator Parcells had reminded his players about their expendability by noting the convenient design of locker-room nameplates.
Parcells put the twin developments of the day in perspective when he told reporters, “For Bill Parcells, coaching the New York Giants is what Alabama is for Ray Perkins. I would have done this for free.” During the press conference, linebacker Brian Kelley passed by and interjected: “All right. Way to move in, Tuna. I mean Sir Tuna.” Parcells grinned amid laughter from reporters and club officials.
Kelley’s lighthearted “Sir Tuna” contained an element of uncomfortable truth. Parcells’s new title demanded a level of deference. In the defensive coordinator’s meeting room, where expletives flew both ways, Parcells had seemed as much colleague as boss. Those loose interactions would have to end. “That was the biggest thing that we had to come to grips with,” Carson recalls. “Instead of, ‘Bill, you arrogant asshole,’ or ‘Bill, you dick,’ we had to call him ‘Coach Parcells’ and extend him a certain degree of respect.”
The defense understood that the move would help maintain continuity for a franchise that finally seemed headed in the right direction, but some players were concerned that Parcells’s new responsibilities would alter their relationship. “We didn’t want to share Bill Parcells,” George Martin explains. “We felt he was ours alone. We were upset when he was named head coach because now we had to share him with that sorry offense. How dare they!”
Many NFL pundits felt that the Giants needed an offensive-minded coach to become a championship-caliber team, but George Young pointed out that some of the top contemporary coaches came from defensive backgrounds, including Tom Landry, Chuck Noll, and Don Shula. “I’m not looking for a genius coach,” Young told reporters. “I’m not saying that Bill isn’t one. What I am saying is that we are not in the genius business. If you’re asking for a messiah in this business, forget it. That happened a long time ago.”
Naturally, Phil Simms hadn’t spent much time with Bill Parcells, yet the fourth-year quarterback knew the defensive coordinator well enough to imagine he’d make a good head coach. During downtime at Giants headquarters, Parcells and Simms had occasionally sat next to each other and talked. Once, Parcells described his ideal quarterback as strong-armed, unflappable, and confident. Simms was so psyched by the talks that when the quarterback arrived home he excitedly told wife, Diane, “He’s talking about me!” Simms had viewed Ray Perkins as forbidding, and he had watched enviously as Parcells balanced toughness and tenderness with his defensive players. So while acknowledging the outgoing Perkins’s tremendous contributions to the organization, Simms was pleased with the change. “I need some stroking,” he told reporters.
Parcells was eager to assume control for the upcoming critical game in Washington on December 19, but with the Giants in playoff contention, Young instructed Perkins to keep his lead role for the team’s final three games, all of which were on the road. The club needed to win at least two contests to make the postseason, and Young wanted to avoid throwing Parcells into the tail end of a topsy-turvy season. Despite being a lame duck, Perkins commanded respect for having guided the franchise to its first playoff appearance in
almost twenty years.
Their chances for a postseason berth dimmed when the Giants lost to the Redskins, 15–14, on a snowy afternoon at RFK Memorial Stadium. With four seconds left, Mark Moseley’s 42-yard field goal wobbled over the crossbar after being tipped. The kick sent the Redskins into the playoffs while giving Moseley an NFL record for 21 consecutive field goals.
During the flight to St. Louis for a December 26 game, Parcells and Perkins sat next to each other in the plane’s front row. Perkins mined Parcells for insights from his fifteen years coaching college football, while Parcells bombarded Perkins with inquiries about the Giants organization. “I was already grateful to Ray,” Parcells says, “for taking me by the scruff of the neck and dragging me back into pro football. Now I was grateful to him for leaving.”
The Giants lost to the Cardinals, 24–21, in a game that all but mathematically ended their postseason hopes. Perkins’s team won its finale, 26–24, versus Philadelphia to finish the season 4-5. And the transition period from Perkins to Parcells came to an end. After the game, the former defensive coordinator spoke candidly to the media about impending changes involving Giants assistants: “I don’t view them as my coaching staff; I view them as Coach Perkins’s staff.” Ultimately, Parcells retained five assistants, the roots of his coaching tree: Ron Erhardt (offensive coordinator), Bill Belichick (linebackers coach), Romeo Crennel (special teams), Pat Hodgson (receivers), and Lamar Leachman (defensive line).
8
Bill Parcells opened his first practice as Giants head coach on April 29, 1983, with his father at his side. Inside the team’s facility at East Rutherford, New Jersey, near where he raised his boy, Charles Parcells listened while the franchise’s thirteenth coach addressed players in a rookies-only session. The NFL newbies included linebacker Andy Headen, safety Terry Kinard, defensive end Leonard Marshall, offensive tackle Karl Nelson, kicker Ali Haji-Sheikh, and cornerback Perry Williams. Parcells boomed, “You’re not on scholarship anymore. No one’s going to wake you up in the morning, but just like any other guy in business, I’m interested in production and reliability. I don’t want guys who I have to get out of jail, or don’t know where they are.”
Parcells was no longer defensive coordinator of a team that barely missed the playoffs in the previous, strike-shortened season. He was the popular choice among Giants players to lead a franchise with high hopes of re-creating its 1981 playoff appearance. Later, in Perkins’s old office, Parcells experienced a surreal moment viewing a group photograph of himself among the head coaches entering the 1983 season: Tom Landry stood next to the Giants’ new leader, with Chuck Noll nearby. The former Hastings assistant had reached the upper echelon of his profession.
Parcells hired Bobby Knight’s son Tim to work as one of the Giants ball boys, joining two of Vince Lombardi’s grandsons for the plum gig. One day at practice, Parcells was flattered when Tim told him, “You coach just like my father.” While the firebrand basketball lord had already captured two NCAA Tournament titles, Parcells was just getting started as an NFL head coach. At training camp Parcells began tweaking the club in his image, and Giants veterans started calibrating their collegial approach.
The first hint of trouble came a few weeks before the regular-season opener. The new head coach faced a quarterback quandary—a choice between the talented yet oft-injured incumbent, Phil Simms, and the unspectacular though reliable backup, Scott Brunner. “There are a lot of things a new coach doesn’t need,” Parcells says, “and a quarterback controversy is one of the big ones. It’s just like stepping into a pile of shit.”
Simms had been drafted seventh overall in 1979, out of Morehead State in Kentucky. When Pete Rozelle announced his name on draft day at the Waldorf-Astoria, Giants supporters unleashed boos, viewing the blond, blue-eyed quarterback as an unsexy pick. They were unfamiliar with Simms and his public school of 7,200 in a rural area between Lexington, Kentucky, and Huntington, West Virginia. Even the Giants’ representative at the draft, promotions director Tom Power, wasn’t up to speed. When the surprise choice was relayed to him via telephone from the organization’s draft bunker at Giants Stadium, Power wrote “Moorehead” on the card that he handed to Rozelle for the official selection.
In four seasons with the Morehead State Eagles, Simms completed only 48.9 percent of his passes in a ball-control offense that never reached a bowl game. Nonetheless, his powerful arm and school-record 5,545 passing yards made the relatively obscure quarterback an NFL prospect. New 49ers coach Bill Walsh, who lacked a first-round pick, targeted Simms with San Francisco’s second-round choice, twenty-ninth overall. But after Simms was drafted early by New York, San Francisco switched gears and went after a Notre Dame quarterback named Joe Montana.
Young’s unpopular choice looked promising as a rookie, winning 6 of 11 starts in a season the Giants went 6-10. He was runner-up for Rookie of the Year, earned by tailback Ottis Anderson, who had been drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals one spot after Simms. The Giants quarterback showed even more promise in 1980 before separating his shoulder with three games left. A similar injury early during the 1981 season again forced Scott Brunner into a starting role.
Brunner was a heady if unspectacular quarterback, adroit at reading coverage. He came from a Division II team, the Delaware Fighting Blue Hens, having led them to the 1979 national title in his only season as starter. In 1980 the Giants plucked Brunner in the sixth round of a twelve-round draft. In 1981, while Simms was sidelined, Brunner was steady enough for Big Blue to reach an elusive playoff appearance. He guided the Giants to the upset victory at Philadelphia before their rollicking ride ended on the road against the Montana-quarterbacked 49ers.
In the 1982 preseason, Perkins had been inclined to stick with Brunner as his starter. It was a difficult choice for the coach who had convinced management to draft Simms. After an exhibition contest against Pittsburgh, Perkins informed his staff of his leanings. Before that decision was handed down, however, Simms suffered a season-ending knee injury, a setback that made Perkins’s decision moot, postponing the quarterback controversy.
Since he had joined the Giants in 1981, Parcells had seen more production from Brunner but intended to name Simms the starter if the quarterback reprised his earlier promise with a strong preseason. When both quarterbacks responded with so-so performances, Parcells faced his first major decision. Parcells sought input from his staff, but no assistant offered strong support for either candidate. In the absence of compelling evidence, the typically assertive coach turned wishy-washy.
When the Giants head coach called for each of his quarterbacks to visit his office the next morning for a decision, Simms assumed he would reclaim the starting job, especially after having undergone a grueling rehab. Plus the fifth-year veteran believed that being “a meat-and-potatoes guy” made him Parcells’s type of quarterback. Before leaving home for Giants Stadium, Simms told his anxious wife, “It’s going to be me, don’t even worry. I just can’t imagine it going any other way.”
As Simms walked down the hallway toward Parcells’s office, he saw Brunner stepping out. The incumbent didn’t scrutinize his challenger’s facial expression for any hint of a decision. Exuding confidence, Simms moved toward the seat opposite Parcells, who was skimming a Red Sox trivia book while wearing a white golf shirt emblazoned with the baseball team’s logo.
“Hey, Coach.”
Before Simms’s butt hit the chair, Parcells responded, “Phil, I’ve decided to go with Scott.”
Stunned, Simms said, “Excuse me?”
Parcells reiterated his decision.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
While Simms trembled with rage, Parcells offered an explanation. But the erstwhile starter felt betrayed.
Shaking his head, Simms blurted, “Trade me!”
“Is that really what you want?”
Simms, known for being a good soldier, responded loudly, “Yeah, that’s what I want.”
“We’ll see what I can do about i
t.”
The Brunner-quarterbacked Giants split their first four games, the last of which was an impressive 27–3 victory over Green Bay. But on October 2 against San Diego, Big Blue’s defense imploded in a 41–34 setback. Five days later, on October 7, the Giants experienced a more profound loss when running-backs coach Bob Ledbetter died of a brain hemorrhage. The forty-nine-year-old had suffered a stroke two weeks earlier, on his birthday.
Ledbetter, whom Parcells had met through Dan Henning, was in his first year with the Giants, having spent the previous six years as running-backs coach for Walt Michaels’s Jets. When Michaels hired him in 1977, Ledbetter was the first black coach in Jets history. A burly man with a reputation for inspiring players, Ledbetter brought a toughness to his job that he had developed as an army master sergeant during the Korean War.
Two busloads of players traveled from Giants Stadium for Ledbetter’s funeral in Fort Salonga, Long Island, where they were joined by an equal number of Jets. Parcells struggled to get through the next few days. A moment of silence for Ledbetter preceded the national anthem at Big Blue’s next home game, against Philadelphia. But after an emotional start, the Giants seemed headed for their second straight defeat as Ron Jaworski’s 18-yard pass to wideout Mike Quick gave Philadelphia a 14–6 lead in the third quarter.
Faced with the prospect of a 2-4 record, Parcells decided to yank Brunner, and the passed-over Simms made the most of the opportunity. He completed four of his first five throws, and Butch Woolfolk’s seven-yard run capped a drive that cut Philadelphia’s lead to 14–13. The impressive display filled Giants Stadium with hopes of a comeback victory, but on Big Blue’s next offensive series, Simms demonstrated his tendency to be brittle. After he took the snap on third-and-short, his right hand struck the massive arm of defensive end Dennis Harrison. Screaming in pain, Simms looked down and saw bone protruding from his throwing thumb. It was Simms’s third consecutive season-ending injury.
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