Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  Boston’s sports script flipped in 1978, when the Red Sox suffered the worst collapse in their history, relinquishing a 14-game lead to the Yankees in the AL East; that year Chuck Fairbanks’s Patriots won the franchise’s first division title in fifteen years. However, distracted by news that Fairbanks had secretly agreed to join the University of Colorado, New England lost its first-ever playoff game at home, 31–14, versus the Houston Oilers. Fairbanks’s offensive coordinator, Ron Erhardt, took over the team in 1979, leading it to nine victories but missing the playoffs, one season before hiring Bill Parcells.

  Meanwhile, some spectators at Schaefer Stadium were taking the building’s name a bit too seriously, earning a reputation for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. On Monday, September 29, 1980, Parcells’s fourth NFL game, the Patriots faced the Denver Broncos. Although New England won, 23–14, police arrested about a hundred spectators for hooliganism and other such crimes, prompting Monday Night Football to indefinitely ban coverage at the arena.

  In 1985 the Patriots captured a wild-card playoff berth under Raymond Berry, the Hall of Fame wideout. New England became the first playoff team to win three straight road games, reaching Super Bowl XX versus Mike Ditka’s Bears. But the Patriots’ 46–10 loss at the Louisiana Superdome was the worst in Super Bowl history. Three days later, January 29, 1986, the Boston Globe published a bombshell revealing that the team was riddled with cocaine and marijuana abusers; the newspaper named six of them. Just as Parcells had done with the Giants in 1984, Berry decided to drug-test his players in a proactive step at odds with the collective bargaining agreement. Despite the scandal, the following season New England went 11-5 to capture the AFC East before losing to Denver in the first round. The Patriots wouldn’t reach the playoffs for another eight years.

  Although the NFL had grown into a billion-dollar industry by the late 1980s, New England’s financial woes were snowballing. A tipping point was the Sullivan family’s multimillion-dollar loss from investing in the Jacksons’ Victory Tour of 1984, a concert tour that suffered disastrous logistical snafus and cost overruns. Impending bankruptcy forced Billy Sullivan to put his team up for sale. Bidders included real-estate developer Donald Trump; Robert Tisch, the postmaster general; and Robert Kraft, an obscure paper-and-packaging magnate who had once contemplated buying the Red Sox or Celtics.

  In October 1988, the Patriots were acquired for $84 million by Victor Kiam, chief of Remington Products, who kept Billy Sullivan on as team president and his son, Pat, as GM. One month later Kiam lost out to Kraft in an attempt to also purchase a controlling stake in what was now called Sullivan Stadium; it had stopped being Schaefer Stadium after the naming rights expired. Kraft, a longtime season-ticket holder who yearned to own the Patriots, acquired a 50 percent stake in the building via a $25 million bankruptcy sale that included the team’s lease through 2001. The transaction made Kraft the Patriots’ landlord, giving him tremendous leverage in the team’s future, especially with regard to any potential sale.

  In 1989, the team renamed its home Foxboro Stadium—the “ugh” was left off for the sake of brevity—but failed to escape more ignominy. On September 17, 1989, Boston Herald reporter Lisa Olson was allegedly sexually harassed by three players in New England’s locker room as she attempted to interview cornerback Maurice Hurst. Victor Kiam responded to the controversy by describing the incident as “a flyspeck in the ocean” and calling Olson a “classic bitch.”

  Facing a public backlash, including the possibility of a boycott against Remington Products, Kiam apologized in newspaper ads. Nevertheless, Paul Tagliabue, the new NFL commissioner, fined Kiam $50,000 and the three culprits a total of $22,500. The incident stirred a national debate regarding female journalists in the locker room as New England went 5-11. The following season, 1990, the franchise reached its gridiron low, winning only one game under rookie head coach Rod Rust. That disaster led to his replacement, and although the Patriots managed to avoid any more scandals, Dick MacPherson’s 8-24 mark over the next two seasons made another coaching change seem inevitable.

  Meanwhile, like Billy Sullivan before him, Victor Kiam accumulated enormous debt that necessitated a sale of the franchise. Suitors included Robert Kraft, author Tom Clancy, and Jeffrey Lurie, a Hollywood producer with roots in the Boston area. But in May 1992, Kiam sold the Patriots to the person to whom he owed millions: James Busch Orthwein, an advertising executive based in St. Louis, and the great-grandson of Adolphus Busch, co-founder of Anheuser-Busch.

  The ownership change left New England’s shrinking fan base disillusioned. Since the late 1980s the NFL had encouraged the Patriots to get with the times by finding a new stadium, giving tacit approval for them to leave town if necessary. Orthwein disclosed his desire to eventually bring a football team to St. Louis, which would fill a void created in 1988 when the Cardinals had left for Phoenix. He broached the possibility of finding a new stadium in the Boston area, or selling the Patriots to land an expansion franchise in St. Louis, the headquarters of his family’s Anheuser-Busch company. The twenty-eight-team NFL intended to add two new clubs within a few years. But Patriots followers figured that the most likely scenario involved moving the Patriots to Orthwein’s hometown as soon as possible. He’d already chosen a logo and a name for a team there: the St. Louis Stallions.

  During the 1992 season, Orthwein acted like an absentee owner as his new team won only two games, while starting four different quarterbacks and playing to sparse home crowds in a decrepit stadium. Although the NFL accepted the possibility of the Patriots moving to St. Louis, it grew alarmed at the deteriorating state of the franchise. And the league office knew exactly who was best qualified to revive a team on life support. In an unusual step that involved Paul Tagliabue, the NFL ascertained Bill Parcells’s openness to joining the Patriots, and then strongly recommended him to Orthwein. Contingent on a deal, Parcells even knew where he would live: Norfolk, the Boston suburb he had enjoyed in 1980 as the Patriots’ linebackers coach.

  Near the end of his team’s latest dismal season, Orthwein contacted Parcells for informal conversations. Parcells’s pal and TV colleague Will McDonough helped facilitate the connection. After firing Dick MacPherson on January 11, 1993, Orthwein invited Parcells and two other candidates to his winter home in Fort Lauderdale for separate interviews. Parcells’s official competition was Mike Ditka, recently dismissed by Chicago, and Buddy Ryan, who had been without a coaching job since being canned by the Eagles following the 1990 season. The meetings, spread out over a weekend, included Orthwein’s top two executives on the Patriots: Patrick Forte, the de facto GM and executive vice president of football, and James Hausmann, who ran the team’s business side.

  Parcells brought a unique tone to his session, grilling the Patriots’ triumvirate as thoroughly as it questioned him. Parcells was pleased to hear Orthwein offer more control than the former Giants coach had wielded in New York: ultimate authority in talent evaluation. During the interview Orthwein expressed his desire that the franchise, 9-39 in its prior three seasons, regain relevance within a few years. Parcells responded that merely making the team competitive didn’t make the job attractive to him. “But if you’re interested in a championship team, I’m your man.”

  Orthwein loved the cocksure response from the two-time Super Bowl winner. The owner mentioned the likelihood of his selling the Patriots after increasing their value, to pursue an expansion team in St. Louis. Seeing Parcells as an asset in a potential sale and critical to his overarching plan, Orthwein offered him a five-year, $6 million contract with a quirky stipulation. Stepping down before 1998 would cost Parcells more than $1 million beyond relinquishing the remainder of the lucrative deal. The contingency, which could cost Parcells roughly a year’s salary, was intended to make it onerous for him to bolt from a new owner.

  Parcells requested his own novel provision: marketing rights for nonuniform clothing worn on the Patriots sidelines, home or away. Desperate to hire the legendary coach and bolster t
he franchise’s value, Orthwein agreed. “He didn’t know any better,” Parcells says. The new head coach would exploit the ancillary income stream by signing a marketing deal with Apex One, an apparel-and-footwear company based in Piscataway, New Jersey. It paid Parcells $200,000 annually for him and his staff to wear clothing, such as winter jackets bearing the team’s logo and colors.

  Orthwein assured Parcells that he would have final say in personnel, though such power officially remained with upper management. The St. Louis native informed Parcells that he intended to spend most of the season in his hometown. “Carry the ball. You’re the boss.”

  Parcells was suddenly directing a football team that had made the playoffs only six times in thirty-three years. Both its high points, appearances in the 1963 AFL Championship and the 1986 Super Bowl, had ended in blowout losses. The Patriots’ headquarters in the bowels of Foxboro Stadium, one of the NFL’s smallest arenas, were certainly the league’s most dilapidated. Hot water was at a premium as pipes burst, and the locker rooms were cramped and run-down. For Parcells, though, the worst aspect of the franchise involved its roster, full of disgruntled, jaded veterans with little trade value. New players were infected by the team’s negative culture, and in public, players often neglected to mention their Patriots affiliation.

  Parcells realized that his new team lay near the NFL’s equivalent of ground zero. Nonetheless, on January 22, 1993, he awoke in Connecticut pumped up about his first day on the job. A short while later, with Judy in the front passenger seat, Parcells set off on the two-hour drive to downtown Boston for his introduction as the twelfth head coach in Patriots history.

  Sensing her husband’s exuberance, Judy stared at him. “I haven’t seen you this excited in two years.”

  Excitement likewise engulfed New England. Parcells’s press conference at the Westin Copley Place hotel drew a battalion of journalists, including several from New York, plus such luminaries as Massachusetts governor William Weld. Before the Q&A, Weld advocated building a new arena to ensure that the franchise remain in the state indefinitely, noting that Parcells substantially increased the Patriots’ value. For the first time in recent memory the team was generating as much attention as the Red Sox. One Boston Globe columnist declared the day perhaps the best in Patriots history, as area residents swarmed the ticket window at Foxboro Stadium, propelling season-ticket sales. Knowledgeable fans realized that Parcells’s arrival, coinciding with significant changes in player-acquisition rules, marked the dawn of unrestricted free agency. The new era, plus the Patriots’ possession of the top overall pick in the 1993 NFL draft, gave the franchise a unique opportunity.

  Parcells sat at a podium with Orthwein and his two executive vice presidents, Patrick Forte and James Hausmann. Most of the early questions from reporters involved the Giants, but the new Patriots coach sidestepped questions about why George Young had declined to consider him for Ray Handley’s replacement. Instead, Parcells conspicuously praised Wellington and Tim Mara Jr., and Parcells declared that New England would be his final coaching stop. “No doubt. After this, I’m John Wayne.”

  Orthwein remarked on the likelihood of moving the team unless a new stadium was built in the Boston area. He also introduced a new logo: a stylized head of a minuteman that fans would dub “Flying Elvis,” which replaced a uniformed soldier from the American Revolution hiking the ball. Orthwein changed the team’s primary colors from red and white to blue and silver. When one reporter asked who had ultimate control of the team’s draft decisions, Parcells responded, “I’m going to run everything. I know more about it than anyone else sitting up here.” Orthwein agreed, confirming Parcells’s unusual clout. Forte would defer to the head coach on personnel decisions after Hausmann made sure that any moves fit within the club’s budget.

  Parcells wasted no time rearranging the organization’s odd football structure. He moved Bobby Grier, New England’s incumbent backfield coach, into the personnel department as director of pro scouting; Grier had scouted colleges for the Patriots from 1982 to 1984 before coaching the team’s running backs for eight seasons. Then Parcells hired five of his former Giants coaches who had become available after Handley’s dismissal: Romeo Crennel (defensive line), Fred Hoaglin (offensive line), Johnny Parker (strength and conditioning), Mike Sweatman (special teams), and Charlie Weis (tight ends).

  In a phone conversation exploring the possibility of joining Parcells, Parker asked him, “You really want to do this thing?”

  “As bad as I ever did.”

  Parcells lured his former boss Ray Perkins from Arkansas State as New England’s offensive coordinator. Al Groh became defensive coordinator, having held the same position the previous season in Cleveland under Bill Belichick. Even the new secondary coach, Bobby Trott, had ties to Parcells, having been one of his former Air Force assistants. Hoping to re-create the mojo that had captured two Lombardi Trophies, Parcells further targeted some of his ex–Giants players like kicker Matt Bahr and safety Reyna Thompson, a special-teams ace.

  Los Angeles Rams coach and friend Chuck Knox soon telephoned Parcells to make sure that one thing had changed. “I know how you are. You’re going to plunge into this thing full throttle and kill yourself. You can’t do it like you used to.” Although Parcells felt that his health issues had been a price worth paying for two Super Bowl titles, he conceded Knox’s point. The new Patriots head coach had already made some lifestyle changes since leaving the NFL: no more cigarettes or daily caffeine. Open-heart surgery, and Addonizio’s warning about overexertion, had prompted Bill Parcells to pay proper attention to his well-being for the first time in his life.

  Bill Parcells plunged into his new job in early February, registering at a motel on the outskirts of Foxborough. He couldn’t afford to waste any time, ignoring speculation about the franchise moving to St. Louis as early as 1994. His staff also stayed at the same roadside lodging just off Interstate 95, exploiting the fifteen-minute commute to Patriots headquarters. Parcells awoke daily by 6 a.m., and within fifteen minutes was behind the wheel of his black Cadillac, first stopping at Donut World for his decaffeinated coffee. The short drive on back roads got him to Foxboro Stadium no later than 6:30 a.m., with sunrise still at least a half hour away.

  The window view from the head coach’s office overlooked the patchy, wintry terrain of Foxboro Stadium. After working for at least fourteen hours, Parcells exited the building and drove into the darkness, reaching the motel, where he ate dinner at the coffee shop. The Jersey native likened that dawn-to-dusk routine, with virtually no glimpse of sunlight, to living in the Lincoln Tunnel. “It was not what you would call a cultural experience.”

  One typically busy day in late February, Parcells sifted through an overflowing mail bin on his desk, opening a letter from a world-class Frisbee player requesting a tryout. Despite having no football experience beyond Pop Warner, the Patriots wannabe described himself as “sneaky fast.” Smiling, Parcells tossed the letter into a trash can, leaving his office to head one flight up for a daily personnel briefing in the war room. He needed more than Frisbee players to lift the franchise from its doldrums.

  Charley Armey, New England’s director of college scouting, administered the planning hub whose walls contained three poster-sized lists rating draft prospects and NFL free agents, mostly waived players. Every morning Parcells and Armey reviewed the lists before the Patriots head coach decided whether anyone merited a contract offer or tryout. For targeted free agents Parcells gave Armey precise instructions on negotiating strategy. Through the first three weeks of free agency, however, Parcells had signed only one player: center Dean Caliguire, waived twice by Pittsburgh the previous season.

  On this morning, Armey told Parcells, “I’ve got a couple of guys here you might want to consider looking at, Bill.”

  “I hope so, Charley. You know, there’s an old saying that you judge a trapper by his furs. So far you’ve only got one fur.” Armey, a front-office holdover who officially reported to Patrick Fort
e, chuckled, but the highranking scout understood the gravity underlying his new boss’s remark.

  Parcells relished holding sway over his football team, but during free agency the head coach found himself constrained by the owner’s frugality. Parcells had wanted to re-sign New England’s best player, wideout Irving Fryar, whose contract was about to expire, but James Orthwein declined to exceed the team’s budget even to pay market value for top players. So instead of losing Fryar, the first overall selection of the 1984 draft, to free agency, Parcells traded two picks for him. Orthwein also nixed contract extensions to such key veterans as left tackle Bruce Armstrong, tight end Ben Coates, and cornerback Maurice Hurst. That stance threatened to trigger a vicious cycle of losing top talent to teams willing to spend on free agents.

  Orthwein’s tight budget forced Parcells to sign mostly “hold-the-fort” players, marginally better than those on the previous roster but not the future of a significantly better team. New England would enter the 1993 season with the NFL’s second-lowest payroll after the Cleveland Browns, perennial cheapskates. Parcells realized that Orthwein was less interested in a championship team than a competitive one led by a famous coach who improved ticket sales and, ultimately, franchise value. Craving another Super Bowl title, however, Parcells refused to reconsider his goal.

  New England faced a monumental and agonizing decision in the 1993 draft, because two outstanding quarterbacks were deemed worthy of being the top overall selection: Drew Bledsoe of Washington State and Rick Mirer of Notre Dame. Parcells publicly left open the possibility of trading down for multiple picks since New England struggled in several areas, including an offensive line that acted like a turnstile, but he intended to base his decision on whatever would improve the franchise soonest. Parcells considered the Patriots’ incumbent quarterback Hugh Millen a player who lacked a work ethic, in contrast to backup Scott Zolak. On the last day of spring minicamp, Millen visited Parcells’s office to discuss his status. As the player spoke his piece, the head coach thought to himself, “There’s no way this guy’s going to be my quarterback.”