The trade of Scott Brunner made Phil Simms the prohibitive favorite to start at quarterback. Jeff Rutledge was Simms’s competition, and after losing his leading role the previous season, the oft-injured quarterback took nothing for granted. He returned to the Giants with increased intensity and edginess. “Simms’s attitude was a little like mine for ’84,” Parcells says. “He didn’t give a shit what anyone thought.”
The sixth-year quarterback badgered Johnny Parker to allow him to join the offensive linemen’s weight-lifting program. Parker, who hadn’t yet designed one for quarterbacks, capitulated. Lifting less weight per set than his linemen, Simms otherwise adhered to their program. He turned into such a workout fanatic that he and Parker became close friends. Parcells loved his veteran quarterback’s determination, and by the third preseason game, the head coach had seen enough to name Simms his starter.
The regular-season opener marked Simms’s first start in almost three years. New York’s season began auspiciously as the Morehead State product amassed 409 passing yards in a 28–27 victory over Philadelphia. Simms produced the highest passer rating (157.6) of his career. Then the Giants defeated Dallas, 28–7, for their first 2-0 start since 1968. Once again Simms resembled a franchise quarterback, “as long as he stayed out of the emergency room,” Parcells says.
The offensive line, with its infusion of new personnel, needed time to mesh. Two key additions were Chris Godfrey and Karl Nelson. Godfrey had gone undrafted out of Michigan in 1979 before playing one season for the Jets, followed by a stint with the USFL’s Michigan Panthers. Nelson was a third-round selection in 1983 via Iowa State. With New York’s offensive line gaining synchronicity at a glacial pace, Parcells grew even more concerned about Simms’s staying upright, but the head coach admired his quarterback’s reluctance to complain, even when his protection turned porous.
Despite the early success, a slump dropped the Giants to 4-4, placing the season, and Parcells’s head-coaching career, at a crossroads. Among the setbacks was a 33–12 loss against the Los Angeles Rams at Anaheim Stadium. Sensitive to his uncertain future, Parcells decided to shake up the offensive lineup, benching tailback Butch Woolfolk for Joe Morris, while promoting Phil McConkey to third-down receiver. Parcells wasn’t sold on Morris as an NFL talent because of his five-seven frame and shortcomings as a blocker and receiver. Yet Woolfolk’s poor play following two splendid seasons gave the coach limited options at tailback.
Morris excelled as Big Blue won five of its next six games, including critical victories over the Cowboys, Redskins, and Jets. The tailback, who started out playing guard in high school, possessed a low center of gravity and uncanny vision that had helped him break the records of Syracuse greats like Jim Brown, Larry Csonka, and Floyd Little. He seemed capable of moving sideways faster than defenders ran forward. Although Morris remained a mediocre blocker and pass catcher, the Giants often used offensive sets that hid those weaknesses as he became one of the league’s top runners.
Meanwhile, Phil Simms stayed clear of the emergency room while setting club records for passing yards (4,044), completions (286), and attempts (533). Zeke Mowatt, an athletic tight end in his second season, became Simms’s favorite target. His primary wide receivers were Earnest Gray and rookies Lionel Manuel and Bobby Johnson.
The defense turned stingier in the second half of the season with linebacker Carl Banks emerging as a major talent; he and fellow rookie Gary Reasons bolstered a linebacker corps that no longer contained Brian Kelley and Brad Van Pelt. The holdovers remained an imposing group, however, including Harry Carson, Andy Headen, Byron Hunt, and Lawrence Taylor. On the defensive line, Leonard Marshall and Jim Burt became starters alongside George Martin. And the defensive backfield began to solidify, with safeties Kenny Hill and Terry Kinard supporting cornerbacks Mark Haynes and Perry Williams.
With Parcells’s 9-5 Giants seemingly playoff bound, their catastrophic previous year felt like a distant memory. Big Blue, though, lost its final two games against the St. Louis Cardinals and the New Orleans Saints. The 9-7 mark left the Giants second in the NFC East, but it was good enough to earn Bill Parcells’s team a wild-card berth.
The Giants traveled to Anaheim Stadium for a first-round game against John Robinson’s Los Angeles Rams on December 23, 1984. Having blown out Big Blue during the regular season, the Rams were heavy favorites. But in the first quarter the Giants took a surprising 10–0 lead soon after defensive back Bill Currier recovered a fumble at Los Angeles’s 23-yard line. The Rams ended up losing five fumbles, undermining Eric Dickerson’s 107 yards rushing, which included a 14-yard score in the third quarter. Dickerson’s touchdown cut Los Angeles’s deficit to 13–10, but kicker Ali Haji-Sheikh increased the lead with his third and final field goal as Big Blue upset Los Angeles, 16–13, advancing to the divisional round.
Mickey Corcoran was at Parcells’s side when the game ended at Anaheim Stadium. As the two walked off the field, heading toward the tunnel, Corcoran told Parcells, “Bill, God put you on this earth to be a coach.”
Parcells’s upstarts visited San Francisco next, in a matchup that evoked the 1981 postseason. Bill Walsh’s 49ers were coming off a first-round bye, having been the first-ever NFL club to win fifteen regular-season games. The dominant, well-rounded team stopped a rejuvenated Big Blue, 21–10, before going on to capture another Super Bowl by defeating Don Shula’s Dolphins.
Regardless, the road triumph over the Rams signified a pivotal moment in Parcells’s career; his tremendous professional growth that season peaked with the surprising victory. “I said to myself,” he recalls, “ ‘Okay, Parcells, you can do this. So let’s try to do it well.’ ” In 1984, Parcells’s players and staff not only withstood his unvarnished approach, they seemed to thrive on it as his image morphed into a type A caricature: acerbic, aggressive, cantankerous, demanding, irascible, unrelenting, and wisecracking. Parcells complains of the portrayal, “The media took it and ran, and they never let it go.”
The resurgent season helped reduce the strain between Young and Parcells, though tensions occasionally surfaced. Still, in a sharp reversal from the previous season, management rewarded their coach with a revamped four-year contract. Parcells had been among several first-year head coaches in 1983, but after a rocky start in 1984, his prospects rebounded with Big Blue’s progress. Meanwhile, most of his counterparts, including confidant Dan Henning, were fired.
10
For at least two seasons the outside world knew Bill Belichick as the Giants linebackers coach. But Parcells, swayed by Belichick’s coaching prowess, had given him a much bigger assignment: overseeing the defense. The quiet promotion in 1983 showed Parcells’s regard for the former special-teams coach. The job was one of the most demanding, especially given Parcells’s background. Yet the head coach granted his young defensive coordinator autonomy within basic parameters.
“Look, here’s what I want you to do. I don’t really care how you get it done, but I want it done.”
Parcells had withheld the formal title in order to gauge how the baby-faced, reticent coach handled the job, and to shield him from public scrutiny. Early on, Belichick, younger than some veterans, had encountered resistance from players. Several members of the defense, particularly the cocksure, talented linebackers he inherited, saw him as a technocrat and neophyte. They noted his lack of playing experience as a pro, and dismissed his football résumé at tiny Wesleyan with its Division III program.
The five-ten coach’s soft monotone, which stood in stark contrast to Parcells’s frequent thunderclap, didn’t help matters. “It would put us to sleep,” Harry Carson says. No one nodded off more at meetings than Lawrence Taylor. Occasionally he awoke to find Belichick staring at him. One time the riled linebacker snapped, “You either get me now or you get me on Sunday.” Players dubbed the defensive coordinator “Voice of Doom” or used Parcells’s shortened version: “Doom.”
Moments before kickoffs, Taylor sometimes tried to tweak “Doom” by pretending tha
t he had forgotten the instructions emphasized all week. But with his uncanny feel for the game, the linebacker excelled in his assignments. Despite Taylor’s inattentiveness during Belichick’s meetings and his cursory reviews of the playbook, the defensive coordinator relished coaching him on Sundays. Belichick knew that Taylor was not just an extraordinary physical specimen but perhaps the smartest defensive player on the field.
Defense remained the forte of the resurgent Giants as Belichick, who never quite understood his nickname, produced exquisite game plans. “We didn’t lose a beat,” recalls Romeo Crennel, his replacement as special-teams coach. Belichick’s skill as a tactician won the respect of his players, gradually erasing their doubts that he was a worthy successor to Parcells. The unit and its young coordinator adjusted to each other.
Steve Belichick, still scouting for Navy, was proud that his son was quietly overseeing Big Blue’s defense. He was particularly grateful that his ex-counterpart was protecting Bill Belichick from potential media criticism. During trips to the New York area, Steve attended Giants practices in East Rutherford, where Parcells didn’t hesitate to solicit his services.
“You want to watch, or you want to work?”
“I want to work.”
“Okay, well, here are two guys we’re looking at. I want to know what you think of them.”
Parcells’s vigilantism in 1984 had helped markedly reduce Big Blue’s drug problems, and going into the 1985 season, optimism permeated the organization. However, substance abuse on the part of the team’s best player remained an issue. Lawrence Taylor’s teammates knew that he drank too much; in fact, he bragged about it. The star’s cocaine addiction, however, went undetected by most.
Behind the scenes, Parcells kept trying to exploit his bond with Taylor, but by 1985, drugs had consumed the linebacker’s life, causing it to spiral out of control. He was using cocaine and its powerful derivative, crack, three times a week now, as opposed to a couple times a month, as he had the previous year. Bingeing on as much as an ounce a day, Taylor often left his wife, Linda, and their two kids at home to cruise for cocaine in dangerous neighborhoods, spending more than $1,000 daily on drugs, booze, and prostitutes. Occasionally he showed up for meetings of the defense wearing sunglasses, reeking of alcohol and mouthwash.
Although Taylor could still be dominant on the field, his performances had become erratic, compounded by opponents who were now geared to protect against him. At times the linebacker seemed to want to be somewhere other than the gridiron, and like many cocaine users, he grew increasingly paranoid. “I knew that I was no longer 100 percent,” Taylor admits. “But I also knew that my 75 percent was better than most guys’ 100 percent.” Taylor lifted teammates and fans by performing his best on key snaps or defensive stands that could shift a game’s momentum. “When it was third-and-four,” Belichick recalls, “he was a lion.”
Belichick’s position became official in 1985, when Parcells revealed it to the media. Despite his discomfiture with interview sessions, Belichick began to reap public accolades for his unit’s exploits. Parcells praised Belichick for his smart game plans, but the head coach never stayed satisfied with any aspect of the team, let alone the defense. Just as he did with his players, Parcells constantly pressed his staff. He made each member, even the lowest man on the totem pole, feel as if the outcome depended on his efforts. “The best thing about working under Bill was that he treated everybody fairly,” Romeo Crennel says. “The worst thing was that he treated everybody the same by getting on their ass. He pressured you to get it right.”
Parcells occasionally upbraided Belichick in the head coach’s office over defensive flaws, but the head coach also didn’t hesitate to express his concerns at the water cooler. Such exchanges often led to consequences for the rest of the defense. Belichick told his players, “If I have to take it, you have to take it. Shit runs downhill.” Of course, the coordinator’s pitch and slight frame never quite evoked the same kind of fear as the head coach’s did.
Parcells often questioned the decisions of his staff, and when he did he expected precise, cogent responses. Belichick confidently defended his ideas and explained his reasoning, but sometimes the coordinator felt like he was in a no-win situation. After Parcells criticized one plan, Belichick responded, “Well, okay, we don’t have to do that. So what do you want to do? What’s the alternative?”
“Well, I’m just telling you what you’re doing is screwed up.”
“How do you want to change it?”
“I don’t know, but it’s screwed up and you need to get it fixed.”
Once, against the Cowboys offense at Texas Stadium, Parcells was caught off guard by Belichick’s exotic blitz on a first down. Parcells, speaking into his headset, snapped at his defensive coordinator: “What the hell are you doing?”
Belichick replied into his headset, “I’m giving them a different look.”
“No, you’re not. You’re showing these 76,000 people how smart you are. You’re being a circus act.” Then Parcells muttered, “You need those X’s and O’s guys during the week, but on the sidelines, they’re not worth a damn.”
In another tense moment, a snippy remark by Belichick caused Parcells’s face to contort. Parcells yelled, “Don’t you start giving me any shit, Belichick, or your ass will be out in the parking lot.”
With his old-school sensibilities, Parcells disdained flamboyant schemes. Belichick might like an unconventional blitz scheme, such as a 2-4-5, that emphasized speed, whereas Parcells preferred standard packages that stressed physicality. He considered some of the intricacies in Belichick’s game plan superfluous. As Romeo Crennel recalls, “Parcells would say many times, ‘You geniuses on defense, you got all this shit in here that we don’t need.’ Parcells would just rather line up and let the players beat the other guys.”
Beyond not always seeing eye to eye, “Little Bill” and “Big Bill” often failed to look at each other during their heated exchanges, so it took players a while to realize that the head coach and his deputy were at loggerheads. “Bill [Parcells] is standing there with his arms folded, and he’s listening to everything that’s taking place,” Carson recalls. “Belichick is calling the defensive signals, and he calls something that Parcells doesn’t like. You look over at them and figure that Belichick is talking to somebody upstairs, and Parcells is talking to somebody upstairs. But the reality is they’re talking to one another through the headsets. They’re going at it.”
The angry exchanges didn’t linger during the week. To let off steam, Belichick and Parcells sometimes played racquetball at Giants Stadium. Belichick, a former player in Wesleyan’s well-regarded program, won most of their one-on-ones. Whenever Parcells lost, he angrily lit up a cigarette and continued to unwind that way.
After reaching an agreement with the players association, the NFL introduced its drug program in 1985, which allowed urinalysis only during preseason; teams could seek permission for additional testing by showing “reasonable cause.” Taylor’s first NFL urinalysis took place in the summer of 1985. Cocaine showed up in his system, triggering a warning from the league and counseling. The Giants asserted their right to impose more tests during the regular season, but Taylor circumvented his team’s tests by obtaining urine from drug-free friends or teammates. He collected the sample in an aspirin bottle that he hid in his athletic supporter. Then, in the bathroom stall used for urinalysis, Taylor emptied the clean urine into the test container.
Despite his troubles, Taylor was among a coterie of players Parcells consulted about team issues. The rest of Parcells’s “board of directors” were relatively drama-free veterans that included linebacker Harry Carson, fullback Maurice Carthon, defensive end George Martin, and quarterback Phil Simms. Parcells saw in Taylor many ideal qualities, including his seemingly indomitable will, high threshold for pain, clutch performances, and sense of fair play. The coach loved that his linebacker genuinely didn’t care about individual statistics: Taylor was outraged by losses
and reacted with glee after victories. “The whole notion of losing,” Parcells says, “was like somebody wanted to stab him.”
Lawrence Taylor being a once-in-a-generation player, the Giants never considered trading him. The organization seemingly tolerated Taylor’s foibles during the week for the sake of his riveting performances on Sundays. This apparent double standard irked a few players, and might have diluted Belichick’s authority. A minority of New York sportswriters seized on the dynamic, criticizing Parcells for ignoring Taylor’s substance abuse.
“That’s anything but the truth,” Parcells protests, anger in his voice. “And that hurts you because they portray you as, ‘All he cared about was the game.’ I did the best I could, it just wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t the general manager or the owner. I couldn’t do anything I wanted to do.
“Taylor and I had a special bond; we came together. I think he got away with a bunch of shit. But first of all, I’m not just throwing my best player away. I’m trying to help my best player. Some of the guys I got rid of, I tried to help them, too.”
Harry Carson believes that Parcells had little choice in his handling of Taylor: “You’re dealing with grown-ass people. You can only do so much. It’s not like he [Taylor] was a juvenile, and you could put twenty-four-hour surveillance on him. Bill did all that he could. Lawrence had to take responsibility for himself. Bill may have had special rules for different people; Lawrence wasn’t the only one.”
Parcells’s customized approach galvanized his players to have an even better season than 1984’s breakthrough. In 1985, Big Blue’s stingy defense supported a run-heavy offense starring Joe Morris, the league’s touchdown leader, and guided by Phil Simms, whose timely gunslinging would lead to his first of two Pro Bowls. Setting a team record for rushing yards, the Giants finished 10-6, their most victories since 1963, to capture a wild-card berth. For its first playoff home game in twenty-three years, Big Blue faced Bill Walsh’s defending champions, who had also won ten games.
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