Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  The ex-pilot entered camp as a long shot to become one of Parcells’s guys, listed at the bottom of the depth chart for wide receivers. McConkey survived the first few cuts, lasting through the preseason finale. However, a slew of players were going to be released after a game against the Steelers, so McConkey’s situation remained dicey.

  About four hours before the opening kickoff, Parcells walked into the locker room. He headed toward McConkey, pulling up a stool next to the nervous dervish. “Hey, kid, I want you to know you’ve done a great job. I want you to go out there tonight, relax, and have a great game.”

  Parcells’s remark signaled that McConkey had made the regular-season roster. McConkey’s punt-return and kick-return skills had propelled him past the other bubble players.

  That preseason moment would be just about the only time in 1984 that Parcells eased pressure on McConkey—or any other Giant. Whenever McConkey shagged punts during practice, Parcells stood at his shoulder, scrutinizing technique and shouting commentary. Virtually no catch met Parcells’s standards. “Now, you’ve got to understand something about Parcells,” McConkey says. “He never caught a punt in his life, but he is the absolute expert on catching punts. He critiques every catch, and it’s never good enough.”

  Parcells’s favorite punt drill required the returner to corral at least three punts almost simultaneously. Parcells first employed it in the early 1970s as linebackers coach under Bill Peterson at Florida State. As pigskins fell from the sky only seconds apart, the returner was forbidden to place any on the ground. Each returner placed the first catch somewhere against his body, moments before snagging the next ball, and then the third. Dropping the punt wasn’t an option. “It was against the law,” McConkey remembers, “punishable by beheading if you let that ball hit the ground.” The drill taught the returner to put himself in the proper position while maintaining full concentration on the ball. To keep balls from dislodging, the recipient needed to make sure each punt was headed toward the ideal part of his body, the middle of the chest. Sometimes Parcells simulated punted balls by standing near the returner and using an underhand motion to toss footballs and wisecracks.

  McConkey’s dexterity and hand-eye coordination were such that he was able to catch up to four balls in the drill. Teammates were wowed, but Parcells, who had seen a player in college snag five pigskins, responded nonchalantly. The head coach’s perfectionism motivated McConkey to further sharpen his skills. McConkey recalls one time when Parcells insisted on the team practicing in a gale with thirty-mile-per-hour winds. The experience helped train the ex–navy pilot for the notorious winds at the Meadowlands.

  As Giants defensive coordinator, Parcells had frequently sought off-the-gridiron information about his players, and as head coach he spent even more time mining their personal sides. His research methods included conversations with players’ friends, former coaches, and agents. Parcells seldom offered information regarding his own private life to players, or anyone else, but he accumulated considerable personal info from players themselves in random conversations. Those exchanges spiked during off-season minicamps because of extra downtime. His favorite setting for nonfootball exchanges was the weight room, but casual interactions also took place in meeting rooms and the locker room.

  During the season Parcells went out of his way to have as many lengthy one-on-one discussions as possible. The habit included practice-squad members, the least-recognized players on the team. The head coach’s superb memory allowed him to create a mental dossier on each player, and he used innocuous tidbits or sensitive info as fodder.

  In Harry Carson’s case, Parcells unearthed a childhood nickname; during one preseason practice in 1984, Parcells walked over to the veteran linebacker and whispered it into his ear. Carson shuddered, then stood stock-still. Parcells declined to reveal his source to the stunned linebacker. For the rest of the season Parcells only used the nickname in private moments.

  “To this day, I don’t know how he did it,” Carson says. “I didn’t want him yelling it out to the whole team. It got my attention, and for a while, he hung it over my head. But the funny thing was that it told me that the guy cared enough to really dig into who I was.”

  Decades later, Parcells and Carson still refuse to divulge the nickname.

  The second-year head coach didn’t hesitate to approach his counterparts for pointers on the pro game. Parcells felt that Seattle’s Chuck Knox designed rushing offenses better than anyone, so the Giants coach befriended Knox, who had won multiple Coach of the Year awards, and questioned him about strategies. Parcells also increasingly consulted Al Davis about a range of issues faced by head coaches. The Raiders chief, whose franchise was coming off its third Super Bowl victory, provided the viewpoint from management or ownership. Regardless of any problems, Davis stressed that Parcells should focus on winning, not excuses. “Just do your job.”

  Despite having a better handle on being a head coach, Parcells knew that his job was at risk if the club’s drug issues weren’t addressed. He began to tackle the team’s problem of marijuana and, to a lesser extent, cocaine abuse. Lawrence Taylor’s travails would become well-chronicled because of his stature, but the elite linebacker was just one of a number of substance abusers on the Giants when Parcells took over. The team-wide problem was an albatross for the second-year head coach, and he steeled himself to deal with it.

  In the early eighties, league rules policing drugs were inchoate, just like those in the nation’s workplaces: the NFL was a few years away from establishing a policy. It wouldn’t be until 1986 that Commissioner Pete Rozelle hired Dr. Forest Tennant, a UCLA professor who was running methadone clinics in Southern California, to oversee a centralized program that included warnings, counseling, suspensions, and a lifetime ban with the ability to appeal after one season.

  However, Parcells didn’t wait on the league office or Giants management to address the problem. He responded with self-education, persuasion, and vigilantism. When the Giants head coach attended the annual owners meeting in Palm Springs, California, during the off-season, he visited the Betty Ford Clinic in nearby Rancho Mirage. The fourteen-acre facility was named after the former First Lady, who overcame her addiction to painkillers and alcohol a few years after Gerald Ford departed office. Returning east, Parcells registered as an outpatient at Fair Oaks Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, to learn more about drug addiction and methods to combat it. The private treatment center also offered a nationwide hotline service (1-800-COCAINE) run by Jane Wright Jones, its associate clinical director.

  An addiction expert specializing in cocaine, Dr. Jane Jones was quoted frequently in newspapers and made presentations at conferences on the subject. Jones, who also had a private practice as a psychiatrist in Englewood, became an invaluable resource and ally to a coach seeking a crash course. Whenever Parcells encountered a player showing signs of marijuana or cocaine abuse, the coach sent him to see Jones. A black woman in her thirties with a disciplinarian streak, she connected well with many of Parcells’s players. After counseling sessions, Jones relayed her general insights to Big Blue’s head coach.

  By leaning on Jones’s expertise, Parcells discovered that cocaine abuse had exploded in recent years, causing a spike in health and social problems. Twenty-two million Americans, roughly one in ten, had tried cocaine. An estimated five million were considered habitual users. In 1984 the price of the drug was plunging, making it affordable to an even larger market. According to Jones, in 1983 one gram of cocaine cost between $100 and $125, but by the end of 1984, it sold for as little as $70. And that year, emergency rooms reported twice as many cocaine-related incidents as in prior years.

  Jones explained cocaine’s allure to a coach whose worst vices were cigarettes and beer. The drug offered the promise of enhanced strength, sexuality, sociability, and intelligence. After addiction took hold, however, users eventually lost the euphoria along with the ostensible benefits. So-called cokeheads suffered chronic fatigue, migraines, seizures, p
aranoia, and depression that occasionally led to suicide. The drug cost some users their job, income, spouse, and friends, and if they became criminals to support their habit, it could also cost them their freedom.

  To illustrate cocaine’s pernicious attraction, Jones often cited a study involving rhesus monkeys: given the option of pressing levers for cocaine or for life’s basic necessities, including food, water, and sleep, the animals chose the cocaine, dying within a month of drug-induced convulsions.

  One important approach to combating drug use, Parcells learned, fit nicely with his personality. A primary tenet of Fair Oaks, since renamed Summit Oaks Hospital, put it this way: “Confrontation is often required, and is an integral part of treatment, especially in the case of addiction where denial exists.” Dr. Jane Jones elaborated: “Bill, you can’t be a Good Samaritan. You’ve got to threaten their jobs, make it consequential. Don’t say, ‘I’m trying to be a good guy, and help you with your problems.’ They lie. They just want to get drugs, so you’ve got to bust their balls.”

  Parcells fully intended to confront players he suspected of drug use and, if necessary, force them to take tests not authorized by the league. His plan would exceed the collective bargaining agreement, which detailed the contractual rights of players. Knowing this, Parcells felt compelled to gain the support of defensive lineman George Martin, the Giants representative to the players union. A team co-captain, Martin held substantial pull among teammates, who often sought his advice, particularly regarding league issues.

  In a meeting between the two men, Parcells said, “Look, we’ve got a problem. The New York Giants. We have a problem. Now I’m going try and solve this problem. And you can either help me solve it, or we can fight about it.”

  Martin responded, “No, Coach, I’m going to help you solve it, ’cause I agree. I think we do have a problem.”

  “I want to get drugs off my team. You want drugs on the team?”

  “No, Coach, I don’t.”

  However, one prickly issue still concerned Martin: the racial dynamic. Parcells had targeted some players based partly on circumstantial evidence, including behavior. Almost all of them happened to be black. Martin, a black player, asked Parcells, “Can’t we catch some white guys doing drugs?” The loaded question brought the conversation’s tensest moment, as the head coach and defensive end stared at each other for a few seconds.

  Parcells had earned a reputation for connecting with black athletes, a noteworthy quality because of its rarity in white coaches. He traced his genuine ease among blacks to his many childhood interactions with employees of his paternal grandaunt’s rooming business, including Lucinda Whiting, who had helped raise his father. In a league with vestiges of racism, Parcells understood Martin’s concerns, but struggled to come up with a response.

  Finally Parcells said, “We’re only catching white guys drinking beer right now. We’re catching only black guys smoking marijuana. That’s what we’re catching right now.”

  During another long pause, Parcells anxiously awaited Martin’s verdict.

  The defensive end asked, “Well, how are we going to do this?”

  Parcells exhaled. “I’m going to start testing these guys, and we’re going to have some casualties.”

  “Okay, I’m with you.”

  Parcells realized the significance of winning over the team’s union representative. Their heart-to-heart conversation, plus Martin’s follow-up actions, forged a lifetime bond. “He could do no wrong after that,” Parcells says of Martin’s support. “If it weren’t for him, you would never have heard of me, because he supported me in ways that the average player wouldn’t have done. But his intelligence allowed him to realize that it was for the greater good.”

  Aware of just how unusual this alliance was, Martin visited Hazelden, a well-regarded drug rehab center in Minnesota, to learn about the boundaries of confidentiality and support. “There were some very delicate situations,” recalls Martin, who became president of the D.C.-based players association in 1987. “Do I say, ‘Well, I’m going to be a hard-liner; the players haven’t agreed to that, so I’ve got to call down to D.C. and get permission?’ No, I was concerned about the individuals getting better. You can sit down, and you can collectively bargain rules of engagement. But if you’ve got a guy who’s in need of treatment, who may be in denial, sometimes those rules have to go out of the window.”

  So Parcells began confronting alleged drug abusers, concluding his meetings with an ultimatum: provide urine samples for testing, or find another team to play for. “I made sure they understood we were going to do something about this,” Parcells says, “whether they wanted to or not.” Parcells’s methods lacked both NFL authority and uniformity. A bit player who failed a drug test might escape being dumped, while a starter might be dismissed. In general, Parcells gave players an opportunity to rehab with the club’s assistance, but tolerance for multiple chances was applied on a case-by-case basis.

  Parcells confronted one talented player showing signs of drug abuse by asking, “How much cocaine do you use?” Skeptical of his answer thanks to outside intelligence, Parcells bellowed, “Go downstairs, get your shit, and get outta here.”

  Another private confrontation occurred with a backup defensive back. Parcells screamed at him, “How much pot are you smoking?”

  The player responded, “I’m not smoking.”

  Parcells snapped. “Go! If you want to be screwing around, screw you. Get out. I’ll get somebody else.”

  “Well, uh, I’m smoking a little bit.”

  “Well, that shit is stopping now. We’re gonna test you every week, and if you’re not clean in a month, you’re out.”

  The defender stayed clean enough to appear in all sixteen games. Still, by season’s end, the Giants had released at least ten players suspected of drug abuse, mostly pot smoking. Former defensive lineman Leonard Marshall says, “You can probably make a guess about which guys were doing stuff by just looking at the roster the next year [1984], and the year after [1985], and figuring out which ones were gone: guys who could still play football, but no way could they play for Parcells anymore.”

  Entering the 1984 season, the Giants needed to upgrade their receiving corps. Parcells was interested in an undrafted free agent, but before making an offer, the Giants gave him the requisite physical examination, which revealed traces of marijuana. Parcells told the wideout, “Okay. I like you very much as an athlete. But you’ve got one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, you smoke pot.”

  Parcells went on to stress that a Giants contract depended on the club being given carte blanche to drug-test.

  “If you don’t want to agree to allow me to test you, I’m not telling anybody about the marijuana, just go find some other team. I don’t give a shit.”

  Like virtually everyone else who faced Parcells’s terms, the receiver acquiesced. And he didn’t test positive for marijuana, or anything else, that entire season.

  Lawrence Taylor first tried cocaine at a party during his rookie season. He began using it recreationally during his second NFL season, in 1982, and by 1984 he was hooked on perhaps the most addictive form of the drug: crack. Taylor often rationalized his abuse by stressing that it didn’t keep him from stellar performances on the field or otherwise impact his life. Following Big Blue’s disastrous season in 1983, Taylor made the All-Pro team for the third consecutive time, and despite switching to inside linebacker in place of an injured Harry Carson, Taylor recorded nine sacks. Regardless, Parcells, who felt that Taylor had underachieved, decided to bring the issue to a head.

  The coach and the star linebacker lived only three blocks apart in Upper Saddle River, so Parcells organized a meeting at Taylor’s home that included the athlete, his parents, his wife, his agent, and his business adviser. When the group gathered at Taylor’s dinner table, Parcells took charge.

  “Everybody here?” As he took attendance, Taylor’s mother began to weep. Then Parcell
s glared at Taylor. “Here’s the deal, Lawrence. You say this stuff isn’t affecting your life. Well, your business guy, he says he can’t get hold of you to make a decision. Your agent, he’s fed up with you. Your wife’s fixing to leave your ass. Your boss is getting ready to suspend you. And I haven’t even gotten to your mother and father.”

  Parcells glanced at Taylor’s parents. “Your mother’s over there crying. Now, I want you to tell me again that this shit isn’t affecting your life. I want you to tell me right now. Come on.”

  Parcells stared at the superstar, waiting for an answer.

  Taylor responded by bursting into tears.

  • • •

  Parcells realized that his vigilante approach would inevitably come to the attention of league headquarters, so the second-year coach made a preemptive phone call to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle. Parcells explained the situation during a brief conversation, and Rozelle offered his tacit approval; the league planned to catch up.

  Concern about the consequences of drug abuse heightened during the 1980s, coinciding with Parcells’s crackdown. The government responded with an antidrug campaign, and introduced employee testing. On September 15, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to create a drug-testing system. Within a few years private-sector companies standardized the monitoring of illicit drugs, mainly by urinalysis.

  A nanogram, one-billionth of a gram, is the microscopic measurement used to ferret out drug residues. The standard positive level of detection (LOD) for cocaine is 150 nanograms per milliliter. Bill Parcells’s threshold was substantially lower: any number of nanograms discovered in the team’s annual physical examination placed a player under his microscope. Although Parcells was pushing the legal envelope at the time, he had no regrets about being ahead of the curve. “It helped our team so much to clean up as best we could what was a pretty serious problem,” Parcells says. “Now, we didn’t save them all. But we saved a lot.”