One year and a couple of days after the Giants introduced Parcells to the media as their new head coach, his return was uncertain. “What was supposed to be the best year of my life,” Parcells says, “turned out to be the worst. The year I spent out of football in Colorado was a picnic compared to 1983.”
By the season’s end, Parcells understood that he had compounded his buzzard’s luck with serious mistakes as a head coach. Operating under the assumption that NFL head coaches were supposed to have a big-picture mentality, he had delegated too much authority to his assistants, an approach that was out of character. Although players had shown Parcells more deference in his new leadership role, too much coziness remained from his time as defensive coordinator, a problem exacerbated by his efforts to avoid being pretentious. “I had some other things going on, too. That’s no excuse for doing a poor job, which I did,” Parcells says. “I didn’t really approach being head coach like I should have.” Regardless, the hard lessons learned from his rookie season would be for naught if the franchise dismissed him. Suspense mounted as management met to discuss the team’s future. On the Friday following the season’s last game, word finally came from on high. The Giants had decided to commit to Parcells for the 1984 season.
About one week later, January 2, Howard Schnellenberger’s Hurricanes handed top-ranked Nebraska its sole loss of the season, 31–30, in the Orange Bowl. The game, one of the most memorable in college football history, gave Miami its first national championship.
Years later, several months after the Giants won their first Super Bowl, George Young finally admitted that the organization had contemplated firing Parcells as a rookie head coach. In a New York Times article on September 6, 1987, Young said, “When you’re 3-12-1 and in the third-to-last game we had 51,000 no-shows, you have to think about those kinds of things.”
Parcells believes that the GM was under pressure to save his own job. Young tended to be conservative and risk-averse, traits that had led to his choice for Ray Perkins’s replacement. Parcells has “probably” forgiven Young, or at least come to terms with the GM’s shenanigans. “As I got older, I realized that these guys are businessmen,” says Parcells. “This may be the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in sports. We’re all part of the assembly line: owners, commissioners, coaches, and players. And when they ask you to get off the train, it stinks. ‘You mean me? You want me off after all I’ve done?’
“Like Brett Favre. He saw it right in front of him [in 2008]. It stung, and I don’t blame him. He busts his ass for the Green Bay Packers. He goes out there every Sunday, hurt, tired. He’s been a great player. That franchise owes him a tremendous amount, but he’s still not entitled. You are never entitled.
“And that’s what I learned. No matter whether you’re an owner, commissioner, player, coach, or general manager, you’re never entitled. As time went forward, that insight served me well, because I gained a great understanding of management, of what had to be done, a greater understanding of where you are in the pecking order. After one year, I knew where I was: win or get fired. That took a lot of the diplomacy out of my attitude.”
Linebackers coach Bill Belichick was being courted by the Minnesota Vikings, who had just hired Les Steckel to replace Bud Grant as head coach. New defensive coordinator Floyd Reese wanted his football pal to oversee the Vikings secondary. The pair had spent two seasons with the Detroit Lions in the mid-seventies, and in 1979, Reese declined Ray Perkins’s offer to come with Belichick to New York.
When Belichick informed Parcells about Minnesota’s interest, the response revealed the head coach’s tenuous situation, despite his official reprieve. “George Young is trying to screw me, so we might all be gone soon. If you want to go, and you get the right offer, you ought to take it.”
Belichick heeded Parcells’s advice and traveled to Minneapolis to spend a day with the Vikings. He came so close to accepting an offer that it was announced on local TV. But after sleeping on his decision, Belichick declined the offer in the morning when Reese came by to pick him up.
Since joining the Giants in 1981, Parcells had incrementally expanded the role of his ambitious assistant. Although Belichick was only eleven years his junior, Parcells felt a paternalistic responsibility, often describing him to Ray Perkins as being like a son. The Nashville native enjoyed the East Coast, especially Nantucket, the island south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he aspired to own property. So, despite the uncertainty in New York, Bill Belichick viewed working under Parcells as an ideal situation.
The good news regarding Parcells’s job was tempered by his father’s condition, but by late January 1984, Charles had shown surprising progress. After he’d gone three weeks without a violent reaction, doctors expressed guarded optimism that the infection was finally under control. If no setback occurred within several days, Charles would be sent home.
Parcells departed for Mobile, Alabama, for the Senior Bowl, where NFL coaches and scouts gathered annually to evaluate top college seniors. One week later he debarked from an afternoon flight to Newark International Airport, planning to head directly to Hackensack Medical Center. Enthusiastic about his father’s imminent release, he hadn’t even changed out of his coaching clothes after watching the final workout at Mobile that morning. Parcells wore tan slacks and a New York Giants sweater while clutching a duffel bag emblazoned with the team logo. It was unusual for him to wear team gear in public. “But I didn’t give a shit,” Parcells says. “I was just trying to get back to New Jersey.”
After the twenty-mile drive to the hospital, Parcells hurried to the nurses’ station.
“Mr. Parcells, I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“Your dad has been very upset. He’s sleeping now.”
“What’s the matter?”
The nurse explained that Charles had suffered yet another extreme reaction, preventing doctors from releasing him as hoped. With Charles still gravely ill and sullen, she urged his son to postpone the visit. Parcells declined, walking past her to find the door to his father’s room open. Charles was asleep, with his back to the entrance, tossing in discomfort. His son stood in the doorway, silently watching from a few feet away. After a few minutes, unwilling to disturb his father, Parcells left the hospital to head home.
“That was the saddest day. That was my lowest point,” Parcells recalls. “I think things are kind of taking a turn for the better. And then this happens. I was despondent.”
The Parcells clan believes that Charles’s infection stemmed from a blood transfusion during his bypass, and circumstantial evidence supports the theory. His renowned heart surgeon, John Hutchinson III, performed operations on several high-profile patients, including Arthur Ashe in 1979 and 1983. When the tennis legend revealed his bombshell about contracting HIV, he contended that it came from an ill-fated blood transfusion during the second bypass—in 1983. At the time, scientists hadn’t created a test to screen blood for transfusions. “I can’t definitely say what happened,” Parcells says of his father’s blood transfusion. “But the blood he got seems to have been contaminated, because he got some kind of infection in the process.”
Two days after his son’s visit, Charles was transferred to Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center for an emergency operation. Doctors warned the family of the strong possibility that he might not survive. A day before the surgery, his sons, arriving together, gathered at the hospital. When Bill, Don, and Doug entered Charles’s room, their father was sitting on the edge of his bed, upright, as if defiant of his condition. He perked up further as his boys provided updates on their lives. For several minutes Charles Parcells resembled their familiar father, the soft-spoken yet gregarious former athlete. “I don’t know if he was just putting up a good front,” Parcells says, “but he certainly didn’t seem to be.”
The FBI agent turned attorney expressed satisfaction about his marriage, his four children, his career, and his rich life experiences. Charles instructed his
oldest son to serve as executor of his will, if necessary. He asked his boys to look out for their little sister, Debbie, the family’s black sheep.
Finally, Charles said in a firm tone, “Don’t worry about it. I’m ready to go. If this is it, then this is it. It’s been great. It’s—”
Bill Parcells interrupted. “Dad, we’ll see you when you come out.”
The three sons wished their father luck, but two hours after surgery, Charles lapsed into a coma caused by hemorrhaging. He was placed on life support, and doctors gave him little chance of recovery. The next morning Charles Parcells died, only six weeks after his wife’s passing. “They think the infection settled in his aorta. They didn’t know,” says Bill Parcells, anger in his voice decades later. “The doctors couldn’t tell him what the hell was going on.”
Former defensive end George Martin recalls Parcells’s tumultuous season. “Looking back now, I wonder how he stood up under the pressure, especially given the deaths of both parents in such a short period of time. I looked at Bill that year, and it was like seeing a friend suffer and you’re helpless to lend him a hand. We gained tremendous respect for each other, as a result of the ordeal we all went through that year, but particularly for Bill. He weathered that storm like no one I ever saw.”
9
Linebacker Carl Banks didn’t dare wipe the sweat dripping down his face and into his eyes. The rookie’s only concession was blinking; he feared being caught looking away, even momentarily. On the opening day of training camp, in July 1984, Bill Parcells had gathered his team into a semicircle at practice. As he addressed the Giants players, his white-hot glare matched the heat in Pleasantville, New York. Although management had kept Parcells on, for him the distress of nearly losing his job to Howard Schnellenberger lingered. The second-year coach knew that his reprieve came only because the Miami Hurricanes coach passed on his job. Parcells told his players, “I’m going to be fired if I don’t win.”
It was less a win-one-for-the-Gipper plea than a matter-of-fact remark. Fallout from the 3-12-1 meltdown meant that players and coaches needed to win for each other. In his speech Parcells promised to become the authentic, if rawer, version of the former defensive coordinator, instead of the conflicted head coach, and failed actor, of 1983. Parcells’s right shoe contained a pebble, the quirky habit to sustain alertness, and crabbiness, that he had shelved as a rookie head coach.
“I really wasted my first year,” Parcells admits. His ideas about the new position hadn’t meshed with his personality. So the second-year coach abandoned his own preconceived notions and decided to lead on his own aggressive terms. He recalls, “This is what I actually said to myself, and I’m not making this up: ‘I don’t know who these people are that are trying to get me. But they’re not getting me. I’m getting them.’ ”
His demeanor shifted from tough yet affable to almost exclusively acerbic. Players, especially on defense, were forced to shed any sentimentality left over from Parcells’s former role. “That’s when,” he says of 1984, “I got my reputation for being brusque, but I was fighting for my professional survival. You’re not politically correct and you’re not as sensitive to other people’s feelings when you’re fighting for your own life. I got a little overzealous, a little overaggressive, a little dissatisfied with anything. Even when we were doing well, I was on their asses.”
The hard-ass approach could have caused a backlash, particularly from veterans, but one factor preventing a player rebellion was the nucleus that had grown accustomed to Parcells since 1981. It included defensive tackle Jim Burt, linebacker Harry Carson, and defensive end George Martin. Being able to see past the nastiness, the incumbents helped new teammates acclimate. And once in a blue moon, Parcells offered kudos that boosted morale.
His first two major moves occurred several months before training camp. Disturbed by the previous year’s inordinate number of injuries, Parcells decided to add a strength-and-conditioning coach. He interviewed several candidates before choosing Johnny Parker, who had been working for the University of Mississippi after stops at South Carolina, Indiana, and Louisiana State. The decision was influenced by Bobby Knight’s recommendation during a phone conversation when the Indiana basketball coach told his friend, “It’s not work for this guy. He loves it.”
One aspect of the 1983 season that Parcells had hated was the lack of unity among teammates, especially when the Giants struggled. Parcells believed that a new weight room would contribute to conditioning while fostering camaraderie; now players interested in weight lifting were forced to use a cramped, windowless area with cinder-block walls in the bowels of Giants Stadium. NFL locker rooms were often open to the media, guests, and other members of the organization. But weight rooms were generally limited to players and coaches, creating an intimate haven that Parcells viewed as part clubhouse and part frat house.
He presented a proposal for a modernized weight room to George Young, who received approval from ownership. The new facility, which greatly expanded and revamped the hole-in-the-wall, cost more than $200,000. It was supervised by Johnny Parker, who made sure it became an exclusive domain for players, Parcells says, by all but issuing “secret decoder rings” for admittance.
In spring 1984, Parker unveiled his first off-season program, focusing on weight lifting and running. Parcells was pleased that some thirty players showed up for the voluntary workouts. As he had envisioned, the new facility helped Giants players become less injury-prone. Just as important, it served as a social hub where players and coaches got to know each other better.
Management mended fences with Parcells by supporting his weight-room plan and his desire to revamp the roster. In his mind he sorted players into two groups: those he planned to develop, and those who lacked a championship mentality. Parcells also noticed that the roster was getting athletically old at a few key positions.
During the off-season, Parcells, with Young’s cooperation, jettisoned more than twenty Giants through trades or releases. The castoffs included several talented players who he felt were stifling the club. Among these were two significant departures, popular linebackers Brian Kelley and Brad Van Pelt. The thirty-two-year-olds had been with New York since being drafted in 1973. Parcells had good relationships with both veterans, but he felt that their playing habits were too ingrained for the changes he wanted to make. Van Pelt, who had lobbied for a trade, was dealt to the Minnesota Vikings for Tony Galbreath, a thirty-year-old fullback with superb pass-catching ability; Kelley was traded to the San Diego Chargers for a tenth-round pick. Their departures marked the dismantling of the “Crunch Bunch,” the linebacking corps considered to be one of the NFL’s best and perhaps its hardest-hitting. The unit had been something that Giants fans could take pride in during the team’s dismal seasons.
Harry Carson recalls Parcells’s mind-set at the time. “He recognized that he had to do things his own way, and it couldn’t be about friendship. It’s like the whole Mafia thing: It’s nothing personal; it’s business. In order for him to keep his job he was going to have to get the best people on the field to play the game the way he wanted.”
George Young had replenished the linebacking corps in the 1984 draft. Carl Banks was the third overall pick out of Michigan State, and Gary Reasons from Northwestern State was plucked in the fourth round. The Giants had obtained the pick from Denver by trading Scott Brunner, which also decreased the chances of another quarterback controversy. Big Blue’s other first-round choice, twenty-seventh overall, was offensive tackle William Roberts (Ohio State). Quarterback Jeff Hostetler (West Virginia) came in the third round, and a seventh-round pick brought wideout Lionel Manuel (Pacific) to give the Giants a terrific draft class. But one new addition, undrafted on graduating from the Naval Academy in 1979, epitomized Parcells’s type of player.
After serving a five-year tour of duty, Phil McConkey made a belated attempt to become an NFL receiver/returner. Beyond his extensive layoff, McConkey faced a challenge in his shrimpy size. He had shown
enough talent in high school to make New York’s all-state team as a runner and receiver, but his five-ten, 145-pound frame kept him from getting any scholarship offers from major colleges. So McConkey joined the Naval Academy, where he thrived, including on October 7, 1978, during the Midshipmen’s 38–7 road rout of Bill Parcells’s Air Force Falcons. In the first half McConkey produced a 19-yard end-around plus a 36-yard catch, helping Navy to a 23–0 lead. That season Navy won the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, which went to the season’s best service-academy team.
By 1983, McConkey was twenty pounds heavier, but still a wiry 165 pounds when Parcells invited him to Giants camp. Big Blue’s interest was spurred by several recommendations, including one from Steve Belichick, who was still a football scout at Navy. McConkey owed one more year of service to the navy as a helicopter pilot for nuclear weapons transshipment, but he obtained a leave of absence to attend camp.
During the opening practice McConkey played like the Energizer Bunny. His speed and tirelessness made most of his teammates look like they were moving in slow motion. Although the undrafted military pilot wouldn’t be discharged until 1984, Parcells offered him a contract that included a $3,500 bonus. McConkey balked, explaining that he wanted to explore playing for his hometown Buffalo Bills.
Parcells didn’t relent.
“How about I throw in another thousand?”
McConkey replied, “Done deal.”
Returning to the club in summer 1984, McConkey noticed a stark difference in Parcells. “He now wanted his guys,” recalls McConkey. “Guys who only wanted to know where and when: where the game was, and when it was going to be played. He wanted guys who, if the game was going to be played on the Brooklyn Bridge at midnight against the Jersey City Destroyers, would show up ready to play.”
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