Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  Following one afternoon practice, Parcells took Joe O’Donnell into the locker room. When tight end Kyle Brady walked by, Parcells tapped him on the shoulder and growled, “You dropped a pass at the 5 today. You’ll drop it in the game if you don’t catch it in practice.” Brady agreed, and walked away. As linebacker Pepper Johnson entered the room, Parcells broached a conversation about the player’s eleven-year-old son, Dionte, a lighthearted exchange between friends. When another veteran passed by, however, Parcells didn’t bother acknowledging him. Joe O’Donnell considered the range of interactions to be managerial brilliance.

  “I could see how much individuality was involved,” remembers O’Donnell. “I went to college and played for one coach who had a clipboard and never talked to any of us. It’s a lot more work to coach the individual. ‘Okay, what do I say to him? He had the worst game of his life.’ I think Bill’s only consistency is in keeping people off guard. He does that all the time. He did it with his wife. He’ll do it with me. He’ll do it with you.”

  Before 1997, the last time a wideout had been drafted first overall occurred in 1984, when New England selected Irving Fryar. As a rookie, Keyshawn Johnson had failed to live up to the hype, despite catching eight touchdown passes among his 63 receptions for 844 yards. During one of Parcells’s staff meetings to evaluate players, several coaches criticized Johnson’s speed and ability to create separation from defenders. Johnson’s staunchest supporter was the lowest man on the totem pole: Todd Haley, the entry-level assistant who worked with wideouts, pointed out many of Johnson’s attributes, including size and strength. Parcells preferred his coaches to emphasize “what a player can do, not what he can’t.” So the Jets boss liked the ex-scout’s observations, and believed that Johnson was undermining his talents by imitating smaller wideouts who possessed a different skill set.

  During one practice, Parcells pulled Johnson aside. Mentioning some of the NFL’s explosive wideouts, Parcells said, “You’re not Marvin Harrison or Terry Glenn. You’re Keyshawn Johnson. You’re big, strong, and mentally tough. You can snatch the ball. You’re not fast. You’re not a gazelle; you’re a giraffe. Got me? Don’t try to be a gazelle. Convince the quarterback to throw you the ball when you’re covered, because you’re going to be covered. You can’t get away from anybody, so be a great giraffe.”

  Although Johnson felt that Parcells was overstating his speed limitations, he embraced the analogy. Instead of continuing to emulate his faster counterparts, Johnson demanded that Neil O’Donnell throw him the damn ball regardless of tight coverage. The ultracompetitive wideout responded by using his length to make tough catches. When running across the middle, an area that invited punishing hits, Johnson never showed so-called alligator arms, but reached for the ball fearlessly in heavy traffic. And as a blocker on run plays, the powerfully built wideout delivered some wallops of his own. After shedding some weight, Johnson started to move with more burst, though still not exactly like a gazelle. Heading into the regular season, the wideout was falling in line with Parcells’s vision of the player he could be.

  Parcells also spent considerable energy defining the roles of his lesser-known players. He planned to sign fullback Richie Anderson, twenty-five, to a long-term extension, but only if the 1993 sixth-round pick set aside his aspirations of becoming a feature back. At six-two and 225 pounds, Anderson wasn’t the prototypical bruising blocker like Maurice Carthon for Big Blue or Sam Gash with Parcells’s Patriots. Nonetheless, Parcells valued Anderson’s versatility, which was highlighted by his pass-catching skills. Parcells envisioned Anderson as an offensive cog, specifically a change-of-pace runner, for at least the next five years, while also contributing on special teams.

  Almost every afternoon at around 5:30, Tannenbaum and Parcells met in the boss’s office to discuss important topics involving players’ contracts, personnel transactions, and salary-cap implications. Parcells dubbed that critical part of the day “family business time.” Tannenbaum’s duties included negotiating with agents once the Jets had established his financial parameters. So when Richie Anderson’s extension came up, Parcells instructed Tannenbaum to stress the fullback’s new role in upcoming talks with his representative. Tannenbaum took notes from Parcells, using bullet points for key phrases: “• Change-of-pace back. • Know his role. • Can play on this team for a long time.”

  During a telephone conversation the next day, agent Tony Agnone asked Tannenbaum about Gang Green’s plans for Anderson. Tannenbaum followed Parcells’s script, glancing at his notes. Several hours later, at family business time, Parcells asked Tannenbaum to describe the exchange as closely as possible. After Tannenbaum complied, Parcells said, “That’s a good job, Mr. T. That’s exactly what I wanted you to say.”

  Tannenbaum recalls, “I’m thinking in the back of my mind, ‘I’m being complimented for writing something down and reading it to someone else. A well-trained monkey could do that.’ ”

  Parcells’s controlling approach extended to the team’s new media policies: he limited access to players, barred reporters from regular-season practices, and required all interviews with staff members to be cleared by him.

  Dallas Parcells worked as an event planner for Sharp Electronics in Mahwah, New Jersey. Before training camp the company initiated a sports marketing campaign with the Jets, giving Dallas an opportunity to visit her father at the team’s headquarters. As she entered Parcells’s office, Scott Pioli was just leaving, so Parcells introduced the personnel director to his daughter. Within hours, Pioli, smitten by Dallas, started discreetly questioning a few of his colleagues about her. Parcells’s secretary, Linda Leoni, was friends with Pioli from their stint together with the Cleveland Browns, so she invited Dallas to a midtown get-together for a handful of Jets employees that included Pioli and Tannenbaum. Before the group met at Mickey Mantle’s Restaurant, Leoni praised Pioli to Dallas while mentioning that he was single.

  At the eatery Pioli made sure to sit next to Parcells’s daughter, whereupon the two engaged in a long conversation ending with an exchange of telephone numbers. Because of Pioli’s heavy traveling schedule, they spoke over the phone daily without making plans to see each other. “It was a long, slow process getting to know him,” Dallas says, “but I liked him a lot.” When they did eventually start dating, they did so without disclosing it to Bill Parcells. The deepening romance was not widely known at Weeb Ewbank Hall, but a couple of coaches who had heard the whispers needled Pioli for having the chutzpah, or the shrewdness, to date the boss’s daughter.

  Temperatures approaching one hundred degrees at the start of training camp on July 18 didn’t save Parcells’s players from a 300-yard shuttle to test their conditioning. Parcells wore a Jets T-shirt emblazoned with “WHO SAYS WE CAN’T?!!” Large crowds had begun to gather regularly at Hofstra University to watch practice, indicative of the optimism enveloping Jets Nation. Despite the previously disastrous season, a club-record 99 percent of season-ticket holders had renewed their seats. Occasionally, when Parcells upbraided a player or coach, spectators chanted, “Tuna! Tuna! Tuna!”

  During preseason the Jets performed with a new sense of purpose and sharpness, going undefeated for only the third time in franchise history. Although outcomes in NFL exhibition games tended to be deceptive, Parcells placed importance on them, especially for a team with a losing culture. Sure enough, Gang Green’s new winning habit spilled over into its season opener at the Kingdome. Against the Seattle Seahawks, considered to be a solid team, the Jets took a stunning 27–3 lead at halftime. The offensive explosion came on three touchdown passes from Neil O’Donnell and John Hall’s two field goals, including a 55-yarder on his first NFL attempt, marking the second-longest field goal by a rookie.

  Addressing his players at intermission, however, Parcells acted as if it were his team that was down by 24 points. Instead of focusing on the sharp first half, Parcells reminded his players of the 1996 Jets’ knack for imploding, which had made the team a laughingstock. In a locker
room with roughly 30 returning Jets, Parcells boomed, “They say you can’t hold a lead. They say you blew six games last year after leading at halftime. Let’s see what you’re made of.”

  His players responded to the challenge by maintaining their stellar play in the second half, shutting out an offense quarterbacked by Warren Moon for the most lopsided opening-day victory in team history: 41–3. Neil O’Donnell finished with five touchdown passes, including two to wideout Wayne Chrebet, as Gang Green matched its win total from the previous season. The outcome confirmed the optimism surrounding Parcells’s Jets, while bringing the franchise only its fifth victory in thirty-eight games.

  When the league announced its regular-season schedule in April, top billing went to the September 14 clash between Bill Parcells’s Jets and Robert Kraft’s Patriots at Foxboro Stadium. The “Tuna Bowl” became one of the most anticipated non-playoff games in NFL history, the interest heightened by Shakespearean elements of betrayal, hubris, pride, and retribution.

  Roughly five hundred journalists, one hundred fifty more than usual for a Patriots home game, descended on Foxboro Stadium to chronicle the Sunday-night affair. The nationally televised game marked the first time a head coach coming off a Super Bowl appearance faced his old team the next season. All around the Boston area, T-shirts that said “Can the Tuna” and “Grill the Tuna” expressed the betrayal felt by Patriots supporters As fans debated whether Parcells should be fried or seared, Boston’s premier sports-radio station, WEEI, carted around a sign with an image of Parcells as a whale, urging fans to “Harpoona the Tuna.”

  Part of the visceral reaction stemmed from Boston’s ignominious sports history involving New York teams: the Yankees’ purchase of Babe Ruth from the Red Sox in 1919, shortstop Bucky Dent’s monumental homer in the 1978 American League East playoffs, and Bill Buckner’s tectonic error in the 1986 World Series against the Mets. Acknowledging the charged atmosphere caused by Parcells’s return, the Patriots hired two hundred extra police officers. Parking-lot gates opened four hours before kickoff instead of the standard three. When Parcells took the field for warm-ups, the thousands of fans who’d arrived early drowned out scattered applause with boos. Their reaction encapsulated the polarity over the man who had resurrected a dying franchise yet bolted to a division rival over differences with the new ownership.

  Among several snarky signs permitted in the stands, one asked, “Bill, was your butt too big for that plane?” It alluded to Parcells’s decision against returning with the Patriots on their charter plane following the loss in Super Bowl XXXI.

  When the Patriots jogged from the tunnel onto the gridiron, no player showed as much bounce as Curtis Martin, who wore blue gloves while swinging his arms. Meanwhile, Parcells paced among his Jets players, who sat on the gridiron in an organized fashion. Although the 2-0 Patriots appeared formidable once again, Parcells’s Jets suddenly seemed respectable at 1-1 following a hard-fought 28–22 loss against Buffalo. On a mild evening with light winds, the Big Tuna wore a green jacket with “Jets” on the back, tan pants, white sneakers, and a steely expression. Defensive lineman Mike Jones was the first Patriots player to venture into enemy territory and greet the Jets leader. Next came Parcells’s former defensive assistant, Dante Scarnecchia, who had declined his offer to join the Jets, then tight end Keith Byars, one of Parcells’s favorite Patriots.

  About an hour before the 8 p.m. kickoff, Pete Carroll offered his predecessor a handshake. The two men, opposites in both coaching style and demeanor, chatted briefly with an ease that belied the charged atmosphere. One overlooked subplot in this game was that it represented Carroll’s first contest against the club that had fired him after the 1994 season. Explaining the reason for the decision, Leon Hess had said, “I’m eighty years old. I want results now.”

  Drew Bledsoe, who had publicly ripped Parcells for the way he left New England, and Curtis Martin were among the Patriots conspicuously skipping the niceties. Bledsoe entered the game with eight touchdowns and zero picks, intent on proving that New England would thrive sans Parcells.

  On the opening kickoff by Gang Green, the anticipatory roar of 60,072 exploded into exhilaration as rookie Chris Canty produced a 63-yard return. Moments later tight end Ben Coates made a nifty 32-yard reception, despite linebacker Mo Lewis’s wallpaper coverage. Only two minutes into the Tuna Bowl, New England led 7–0, feeding the fervor of its sold-out crowd.

  For the first time in his life, Boy Wonder turned demonstrative for an entire game. Whenever he was tackled near the Jets sideline, Martin got up and scowled at Parcells before returning to the huddle. After each brilliant run, and there were many, Curtis Martin paused to glare at his former coach. Neil O’Donnell’s 2-yard sprint punctuated a Jets drive, tying the score in the first quarter, but soon enough, Bledsoe marched New England down the field to reclaim the lead, 14–7, on Martin’s 2-yard dash. He stared.

  In his brief NFL career, the self-effacing runner had generally avoided shows of emotion. Teammates once joked that Martin was only animated when leading a group prayer. But Parcells’s departure had unleashed Boy Wonder’s feelings. Martin recalls, “I had this you-are-the-enemy look: ‘I am going to destroy your team just because you’re the one who’s coaching them, and you’re not coaching us anymore.’ ”

  Parcells’s new team responded with similar determination. In cutting New England’s lead to 14–10 entering halftime, the Jets made two of three attempts to go for it on fourth down. Then, surprisingly, Gang Green charged ahead, 17–14, on Drew Bledsoe’s first pass of the second half: Jets linebacker Mo Lewis intercepted it and sprinted 43 yards for a touchdown. Four years later, Lewis would change the course of Bledsoe’s career and Patriots history: the linebacker’s haymaker against Bledsoe in week two of the 2001 season caused internal bleeding that forced Tom Brady into the lineup, leading to New England’s first Super Bowl title.

  At the Tuna Bowl, with about two minutes left in the final quarter, Kraft’s team reclaimed the lead, 24–17, on Bledsoe’s pass to tight end Lovett Purnell. But the relief felt throughout Foxboro Stadium was brief. Gang Green capped a 72-yard drive when Keyshawn Johnson snatched a pass in the end zone, securing the ball tightly as he fell. Headed into overtime tied at 24, the Tuna Bowl lived up to its hype as the lead tied or changed seven times.

  In contrast to many players, Curtis Martin exuded energy late in the game. On a nine-play, 62-yard drive by New England, he accounted for 42 yards, setting up the denouement: Adam Vinatieri’s 34-yard field goal concluded the drama, 27–24, causing Parcells to grimace. Boy Wonder had used everything he had learned from the Tuna, including the importance of physical conditioning, and in one of the most riveting games at Foxboro Stadium, Martin finished with a career-best 199 yards on 40 carries.

  With a play-calling sheet rolled up in his left hand, Parcells walked across the gridiron as Patriots Nation celebrated his defeat and its unblemished record. By the time the Jets leader reached midfield, he was met by several of his ex-players and an armada of photographers and cameramen. Boy Wonder, helmet in hand, elbow pads muddy, slipped through a hole to Parcells’s right. The Jets coach slowed after spotting his former runner extending his right hand. Bulbs flashed and tape rolled while the two shook hands.

  Martin and Parcells walked a few yards together. Parcells, still glum, asked, “Boy Wonder, who do you think you’re growling at? Who are you making those faces at?”

  Martin responded sheepishly, “Coach, it was just my competitive spirit.”

  Parcells’s grimace turned into a smile, then Boy Wonder and the Big Tuna laughed. Martin moved closer to whisper in Parcells’s right ear, “Coach, all jokes aside, I don’t really remember telling any other man this in my life, but I really love you. And if it weren’t for you, I don’t know where I’d be.”

  Martin started heading in the opposite direction to catch up with his teammates. Parcells’s lip quivered as he pointed his forefinger at Martin. “I love you, too, Boy Wonder.”

 
; Gang Green’s competitiveness against New England wasn’t a fluke, as indicated by their drastic improvement to 4-3. A rematch took place on October 19 when Pete Carroll’s 5-1 Patriots visited Giants Stadium. Most of the 71,061 spectators wore green firefighter helmets as part of a game-day promotion, but they found little to cheer about in the first half as New York’s offense struggled under Neil O’Donnell.

  With his team down 5–3, at intermission Parcells approached backup quarterback Glenn Foley in the locker room. “Get ready. You’re going to start the second half. We need a spark.” The switch to the 1994 seventh-round pick startled Jets players, since Neil O’Donnell was among the league’s highest-paid quarterbacks. However, Parcells’s knowledge of Foley went beyond the NFL: during his Patriots tenure Parcells had attended some of Tom Coughlin’s practices at nearby Boston College and had admired Foley’s pluck.

  Drew Bledsoe opened the second-half scoring with an 8-yard strike to tight end Ben Coates for a 12–3 lead. But unleashing quick-trigger darts, Foley guided Gang Green to touchdowns on three consecutive possessions. The final one occurred with New England up, 19–17, early in the fourth period, when Foley capped a 76-yard drive with a 5-yard touchdown pass to fullback Lorenzo Neal. New York’s 24–19 lead spurred the green-helmeted spectators to chant, “Foley! Foley! Foley!” To their delight, Foley had outdueled Bledsoe, completing 14 straight passes along the way. In the final period Gang Green contained one of the NFL’s top offenses, ensuring the outcome after a stunning comeback. The Jets’ most significant home victory in a decade spurred hopes of postseason play.