In front of a crowd of 15,737 at Rich Stadium, Lawrence Taylor spent most of his time at middle linebacker instead of his usual spot on the outside right. He drew double-digit penalties from Buffalo’s blockers for holding, the only way they could slow him down. The reigning defensive player of the year switched over to tight end for a play in Parcells’s new-look offense, but Rutledge, forced to rush his pass by a porous offensive line, threw too high as Taylor broke free near the end zone. Still, Taylor’s amazing athleticism enabled him to get his right hand on the ball, which then bounced away. Taylor’s hell-bent performance wasn’t quite enough in a game marred by 26 penalties, five missed field goals, four lost fumbles, and more dropped passes than receptions. The “Counterfeit Bills” triumphed 6–3 in overtime.
Meanwhile, Washington, exclusively using replacement players, shocked Dallas, 13–7, despite facing veteran starters, including Cowboys quarterback Danny White, tailback Tony Dorsett, defensive end Ed “Too Tall” Jones, and defensive tackle Randy White. The outcome was considered the biggest upset victory in Redskins history.
This football Bizarro World lasted twenty-four days, or three Sundays, at which time the players union voted to end the strike without a resolution. Parcells’s Giants found themselves with an abysmal 0-5 record, which included three losses by their replacement squad. As infighting caused by the strike threatened to extend the spiral, Taylor and Jones shared a meal and then played down their public tit-for-tat. Once its regulars were back on the field, Big Blue went 6-4 over the season’s final ten games. However, New York’s 6-9 record overall left it last in the NFC East—and one of the only defending champions ever to miss the playoffs. Despite strong contributions from its linebacking corps, with Banks, Carson, and Taylor making the Pro Bowl, the defense stumbled. On offense, terrific seasons by Phil Simms and Mark Bavaro couldn’t overcome subpar production in the running department. Morris gained only 658 yards behind an injury-riddled offensive line. More than anything, though, Parcells’s repeat championship ambitions were derailed by his team’s sputtering, surreal start.
The Redskins, whose strike team had gone undefeated, won the NFC East with a record of 11-4. Gibbs’s team went on to reach Super Bowl XXII, and trounced Denver 42–10 at San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium, as Doug Williams became the first black quarterback to play in, and win, a Super Bowl.
Parcells still bemoans Big Blue’s front-office decision to limit preparation for the 1987 strike in an effort to prevent divisiveness. “When you start off 0 and 5,” he says, “you don’t really have a chance in a short season.” Former left guard Bill Ard believes that the situation was exacerbated by a demoralized head coach. “The strike year, ’87, was a shit year,” Ard says; “ ’87 and ’83 had to be his two worst years of coaching.”
Following Green Bay’s 5-9-1 record in the strike-disrupted season, head coach Forrest Gregg announced he would be leaving the team for his alma mater, Southern Methodist. The Packers dismissed Gregg’s staff, rendering wideouts coach Tom Coughlin jobless in January 1988, just when Parcells was looking to fill that position for the Giants. Falcons head coach Marion Campbell recommended Coughlin to Parcells. And Phil McConkey, who had spent a brief stint with the Packers early in the 1986 season, told Parcells, “He’s your type of guy.”
Parcells arranged for an interview with Coughlin a few weeks later at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, but the Steelers were also interested: Chuck Noll had phoned Coughlin to make similar plans. On arriving in town Coughlin met Noll at a restaurant for dinner, after which the free-agent coach visited Parcells in his hotel room to chat. In their first meeting, the two fortysomethings quickly got comfortable with each other. They were both detailed-oriented disciplinarians from the Northeast who shared Irish ancestry and grew up idolizing the Giants. As a kid in Waterloo, New York, Coughlin had watched Giants games obsessively on his family’s black-and-white television, kindling what would be a lifelong fascination. During his first four seasons as an NFL coach, including two in Green Bay, Coughlin had studied Parcells. Coughlin saw the Giants taskmaster as a kindred spirit, and identified with his drill-sergeant streak.
Fifteen minutes into their conversation Parcells made a formal offer. Despite the appeal of the storied Steelers, particularly under Noll, Coughlin accepted it right away. Aware of Pittsburgh’s interest, Parcells followed up later that night with a phone call, finalizing plans for his new wideouts coach to visit Giants headquarters.
The next day, Coughlin informed Noll, pointing out his ties to the state of New York, and fondness for the Giants. “I’ve been thinking about this all my life.”
During the 1960s Coughlin had played wingback for the Orangemen in a backfield that included future Hall of Fame runners Larry Csonka and Floyd Little. As a senior in 1967, when Jim Boeheim, the school’s future hoops coach, was his residence adviser, Coughlin set Syracuse’s single-season receiving record: 26 catches for 257 yards. (If he is selected by the Hall of Fame, that team’s entire backfield, with the exception of quarterback Rick Cassata, will have earned that singular honor.)
Coughlin began his coaching career in 1969 as a graduate assistant for his alma mater; and after one year he became head coach of the Rochester Institute of Technology. He returned to Syracuse as an assistant in 1976, staying five seasons before becoming Boston College’s quarterbacks coach and de facto offensive coordinator, under Jack Bicknell. During the Eagles’ glory years Coughlin’s prize pupil was Doug Flutie, who would set the NCAA Division I record for passing yards in a career and capture the Heisman. When Coughlin entered the NFL in 1984 as Philadelphia’s wideouts coach, he considered Parcells, busy reviving the Giants, a coach’s coach and therefore someone to emulate. So after watching Parcells for years, Coughlin was thrilled by the opportunity to learn up close.
In his first Giants practice Coughlin discovered that Parcells detested scripts, the sequences of pre-planned offensive plays. During 11-on-11 drills that simulated game action, the head coach demanded that his offensive coaches set their scripts aside. Coughlin’s sense of Parcells as a domineering leader was quickly confirmed. “He knew exactly what he wanted,” Coughlin says, “and it wasn’t going to be done any other way.” The new assistant was happy to fall in line.
Meanwhile, Bill Belichick, his reputation rising, was starting to express his intention to become a head coach. Parcells regularly called his lieutenant into his office for discussions intended to prepare Belichick by challenging him to make the kinds of key decisions faced by head coaches. He asked Belichick how he would handle, say, a quarterback’s injury with the media. If Parcells thought Belichick was wrong, he’d bark, “You need to reconsider that.”
Belichick soaked up the head-coaching tutorials.
The Giants were eager to return to normalcy, and to the playoff form they had displayed after the strike. Even hungrier now for another Lombardi Trophy, Parcells put his players and coaches through intense two-a-day practices during training camp. And the Giants, though weary of workouts that included full pads, responded with spirited play.
Big Blue’s hopes for a bright season, however, suffered a monumental setback on August 15, when Lawrence Taylor’s urinalysis revealed cocaine. Under drug guidelines toughened in 1986, testing positive for the second time, as Taylor had done, triggered an automatic thirty-day ban from the league. Taylor would miss Big Blue’s first four games while receiving treatment in an outpatient program supervised by Dr. Forest Tennant, the league’s drug adviser. After that the superstar’s future would depend on the results of regular testing. Under the revamped policy, offenders were not granted the privilege of privacy for those urine tests; an NFL representative would watch Taylor urinate to preclude any sleight of hand. A third violation would mean a lifetime ban, although there would be one opportunity to appeal after a year.
Taylor’s absence cast a cloud over Big Blue’s new season as the team started 2-2. Even after his return, the nightmare scenario lingered that one more failed test would end
the twenty-nine-year-old’s career. However, by playing each game as if it were his last, Taylor galvanized the Giants into winning five of six. The linebacker dominated opponents on the gridiron while passing the league’s random drug tests off of it. At 7-3, Big Blue appeared to have overcome its early struggles, but two consecutive hard-fought losses dimmed New York’s playoff hopes. Parcells warned his 7-5 team, increasingly hampered by injuries, that it needed to sweep the season’s final four games.
The situation seemed especially bleak on November 27, 1988, when the Giants entered the Louisiana Superdome to face Jim Mora’s Saints, leaders of the NFC West at 9-3. Injuries had left Big Blue without three Pro Bowlers: Phil Simms, Carl Banks, and Harry Carson. Taylor was another possible scratch with a torn right deltoid, the large triangular muscle that passes up and over the shoulder from the upper arm. The injury made it painful even to comb his hair, but adamant about playing, Taylor strapped on a harness to protect the muscle and keep his shoulder in place. The decision was unsurprising given his reputation for sacrificing his body on the field. The previous year he had played multiple games with a hairline fracture of his right tibia, and with a pulled hamstring that would have put most athletes on crutches. Given his rabid style, the injuries worsened over two games, forcing Taylor to miss his first NFL contest following a streak of 106. His tolerance for pain wasn’t necessarily based on the playoffs being at stake. After Taylor suffered a serious concussion during a 1983 game against Philadelphia, trainers hid the linebacker’s helmet to prevent his reentry.
At the Louisiana Superdome in 1988, Taylor’s torn deltoid seemed to have little effect as he leapfrogged blockers in pursuit of the ball carrier, or rammed his right shoulder into opponents. But after a while the harness loosened, forcing Taylor to sit out some plays to have the gadget retied on the sideline. Ronnie Barnes and a fellow trainer removed his jersey, revealing a long-sleeved, light-blue undershirt with the harness ajar over his upper torso. Taylor rocked in agony, teary-eyed and breathing heavily, as the medical staff tightened his shoulder rig, allowing him to reenter the game.
With the Saints at New York’s 24-yard line, Taylor charged the quarterback from the left side of the line, eluding a burly blocker before sacking Bobby Hebert and poking the ball loose with his left hand. Cornerback Perry Williams recovered it, killing New Orleans’s promising drive. Later, Taylor lined up at right defensive end in a three-point stance. Although he was triple-teamed, his bull rush collapsed the pocket, causing Hebert to scurry toward the right sideline and throw an incomplete pass. For much of the night Taylor seemed to haunt him, but the Giants would need more than heroic defense to knock off the high-flying Saints.
Jeff Hostetler was a descendant of Jacob Hochstetler, a Swiss-German immigrant who arrived in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 1738 and established an Amish settlement. Born in Hollsopple, Pennsylvania, on April 22, 1961, Jeff Hostetler became a top athlete at Conemaugh Township High, starring in baseball, basketball, football, and track. In 1979, Jeff Hostetler accepted a football scholarship from Penn State, where his older brothers, Doug and Ron, had played linebacker for Joe Paterno. As a Nittany Lions sophomore, Hostetler, nicknamed “Hoss,” seized the starting quarterback job from Todd Blackledge, a highly touted recruit. Although Penn State won two of its first three games, Paterno reinserted Blackledge as a starter. Disillusioned by the decision, Hostetler transferred to West Virginia, against Paterno’s wishes.
NCAA rules for switching schools forced Hostetler to sit out the 1981 season. Meanwhile, West Virginia quarterback Oliver Luck, who would become the father of future Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, led his team to an upset victory against Florida in the Peach Bowl. The following year Hostetler replaced Luck, who had graduated, and led the Mountaineers to a 9-2 record, capped by an appearance in the Gator Bowl. Meanwhile, back at Penn State, Blackledge guided the team to a national championship, and after the season, the Kansas City Chiefs drafted Blackledge seventh overall, well ahead of a Pittsburgh product named Dan Marino.
Hostetler continued to thrive in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he dated his future wife, head coach Don Nehlen’s daughter. Thanks to his passing accuracy and scrambling ability, Hostetler set a number of single-season school records, including total offense, touchdown passes, passing yards, and completions. During his stellar senior season Hoss was considered a Heisman candidate, and his popularity in Morgantown inspired a record called “Ole Hoss: The Ballad of West Virginia’s Jeff Hostetler,” sung to the tune of the TV Western Bonanza’s theme song.
The Giants selected the six-three, 215-pound gunslinger in the third round of the 1984 draft, but as third-string quarterback behind Jeff Rutledge, Hostetler played sparingly in his first five seasons. He contributed mainly as a holder for kickers, and by preparing Big Blue’s defense for mobile passers. Hostetler was so desperate to see real action that he convinced coaches to occasionally use him on special teams. In 1986 the versatile athlete blocked a punt against Philadelphia. Hostetler sometimes practiced as a wideout receiver, too, and broke his leg doing so late that season. After it mended, the Giants considered activating him as a backup wideout for Super Bowl XXI. Early in the 1988 season, Hostetler caught a pass against the Los Angeles Rams, even before he had officially attempted an NFL throw.
Phil Simms’s absence due to injury and Jeff Rutledge’s banged-up knee gave Hostetler his first NFL start versus New Orleans. Despite the struggles of Big Blue’s runners against the Saints, Hostetler performed well. In the second quarter, his 85-yard pass to wideout Stephen Baker gave New York a 7-6 lead. The touchdown was Big Blue’s longest pass play since Norm Snead’s 95-yarder to Rich Houston in 1972. But at halftime the Giants were down 9–7. As Hostetler walked the tunnel back toward the field, Parcells approached him with a tap on the shoulder. “I’m going to start Rutledge in the second half. It has nothing to do with you.”
On Rutledge’s first two plays he fumbled the ball on sacks, resulting in turnovers. He also misfired on his first three passes while Hostetler steamed on the sidelines. Fortunately for New York, Rutledge overcame his awful start. New Orleans was leading 12–9 with less than a minute left when Rutledge completed a 32-yard pass to Stephen Baker. The clutch connection set up a 35-yard field-goal attempt. Only 21 seconds remained when Paul McFadden’s kick wobbled through the uprights, giving the Giants a rousing 13–12 victory.
Playing in agony, Lawrence Taylor finished the game with three sacks, two forced fumbles, seven tackles, and one deflected pass. In Big Blue’s locker room, Parcells embraced Taylor, who then placed his sweaty forehead against his head coach’s brow.
Parcells said, “You were great tonight.”
Taylor smiled. “I don’t know how I got through it.”
Parcells still considers the performance Taylor’s greatest, and perhaps the best he has ever witnessed as an NFL coach. But one player in the visitors’ locker room remained disgruntled. Hostetler wanted to be traded; after spot duty for a half decade, he considered Parcells’s decision to yank him despite solid play “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Phil Simms reclaimed his starter’s job the next week and led the Giants to a 44–7 victory against the Arizona Cardinals. But just as they had ignored Simms’s trade demand in 1983 when he’d lost his job to Scott Brunner, the Giants decided against jettisoning Hostetler. With true free agency still five years away, the Giants were able to keep their talented backup quarterback, who would have been a likely starter on another team.
Big Blue’s 28–12 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs improved the club to 10-5. The outcome set up a season finale versus the intrastate rival Jets, with a playoff berth at stake for the Giants. The game also marked just the sixth regular-season game between the only NFL teams to share a stadium. Joe Walton’s Jets, whose season was lost at 7-7-1, were officially the home team, but Parcells’s team had won eleven straight games in December’s frigid elements.
During the first half of play in temperatures in the low 20s
, it was Gang Green that looked like the team vying for a postseason berth. The Jets sacked Simms eight times on their way to a 20–7 lead. The bipartisan crowd of 69,770 swayed with the direction of the game. Giants supporters got their chance to turn up the volume in the second half as Simms led a furious rally. His third touchdown pass with about five minutes left gave Big Blue its first lead, 21–20. But late in the game, Jets QB Ken O’Brien drove his team deep into Giants territory. And with 37 seconds left, a 5-yard touchdown pass to wideout Al Toon, the NFL’s leading receiver, gave Gang Green a 27–21 victory. Moments after the upset, Jets players pranced around the field. Defensive end Marty Lyons, who had sacked Simms twice, grabbed his six-year-old son out of the stands and hoisted him on his shoulders for a victory lap.
Despite a 10-6 record and Super Bowl aspirations, Big Blue was now at the mercy of a tiebreaker: having beaten the Giants in head-to-head competition, the 10-6 Eagles captured the NFC East. The Giants also lost out on a wild-card berth, since the 10-6 Los Angeles Rams owned both a better conference record and a victory over Big Blue. So Bill Parcells’s team missed the playoffs for the second straight year.
Culminating the frustrating season, linebacker Harry Carson and defensive end George Martin announced their retirement. At thirty-five, the defensive stalwarts were considered senior citizens in the NFL. Carson ended his career as a nine-time Pro Bowler and potential Hall of Famer, while Martin was an unsung cog in Big Blue’s machine. However, Parcells viewed Martin as being so integral to the Giants’ success that after Super Bowl XXI the coach had cajoled his defensive lineman into delaying retirement. Now, though, that time had come.
The departures of Carson and Martin meant it was time for a reconfiguration of the Big Blue Wrecking Crew. New York’s front seven, however, remained a powerful force thanks to talented young players like defensive lineman Erik Howard and linebackers Carl Banks and Pepper Johnson. Most of all, the Giants still had the best linebacker in NFL history. Despite missing the first four games that year, and playing injured for several more, Lawrence Taylor amassed 15.5 sacks, third best in the league. Even more important, the troubled Taylor had abstained from taking drugs.
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