Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  Jason Elam’s kickoff became momentarily trapped in 25-mile-per-hour winds of Mile High Stadium. As if the pigskin had hit an invisible wall, it dropped from the sky almost 20 yards short of returner Dave Meggett, who was waiting in front of the end zone. Then the ball ricocheted toward the Broncos. The bizarre trajectory essentially turned the play into a long onside kick. In the ensuing scramble Jets linebacker James Farrior lost the pigskin, which bounced to Broncos linebacker Keith Burns at New York’s 31, where he corralled it.

  Following the eerie development, momentum shifted to Denver, as Elam’s 44-yard field goal tied the score at 10. He soon added a 48-yarder, giving Denver its first lead. The Jets, seemingly still deflated by the Twilight Zone kickoff, went three and out. Then Terrell Davis, the league MVP after rushing for 2,008 yards, scored a 31-yard touchdown late in the third quarter, sending the crowd into a tizzy. In just one period, New York’s 10-point lead had evaporated into a double-digit deficit that would prove impossible to overcome.

  During the 23–10 setback, the Jets committed six turnovers, including four lost fumbles. The rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags twist on the championship stage came after a magical season of disciplined play and sharp execution. In one of the worst games of his career, Boy Wonder eked out only 14 yards on 13 carries. And Vinny Testaverde, voted by teammates as Jets MVP, tossed two interceptions late, although he performed well overall. Gang Green held Elway to 13 of 35 passing for only 173 yards in the final home contest of his career, but Terrell Davis, who Parcells had feared would be nearly unstoppable, rushed for 167 yards, including 78 in the pivotal third period.

  The team flight from Denver International Airport on the night of January 18 was long and gloomy. When the Jets landed at LaGuardia Airport at roughly 2 a.m., Parcells was the first to exit from his front-row seat. Walking down the ramp into a wintry rain mixed with snow, he was surprised by the sight of a familiar, lean figure standing at the end of the staircase. Leon Hess wore a yellow topcoat with its collar up. His uncovered neck revealed a green-and-blue tie over a white shirt. The owner’s hat shielded his ears but failed to prevent sleet from whipping across his face.

  When Parcells reached the bottom of the ramp, Hess greeted him with a strong handshake. The ailing owner thanked Parcells for engineering the franchise’s best season in decades. “We came up a little short, but you did a good job.”

  For several minutes Hess stood in the cold exchanging pleasantries as his team’s coaches and players deplaned. He didn’t leave until he had finished shaking hands with the entire Jets family, including the scouts and equipment guys.

  “I’ll never forget that. It made me feel even more appreciative of him,” Parcells recalls, “because I know how disappointed we both were.”

  21

  Despite the heartbreaking loss, Leon Hess and Bill Parcells were pleased with the franchise’s direction. Their roster included several young, talented players who had helped win seven games versus teams that reached the playoffs, matching an NFL record. Vinny Testaverde, thirty-five, had delivered a stellar season while going 12-1 as a starter, solving the club’s quarterback problems.

  On the coaching staff, Todd Haley epitomized Parcells’s batch of green yet promising assistants, and earned a promotion to wideouts coach. Novice scout Trent Baalke, the future architect of Jim Harbaugh’s 49ers, was entering his second year with the Jets. Mike Tannenbaum, the cum laude graduate of Tulane Law School, proved to be invaluable in navigating salary-cap complexities, and his work ethic matched Parcells’s renowned indefatigability. Tannenbaum didn’t take a day off from the Jets until his wedding in Philadelphia, and even then he heeded Parcells’s suggestion that the honeymoon occur on the Jersey Turnpike so that the cap whiz could make it back to work the next day.

  Hess prized such devotion, and paid his loyal employees accordingly. Team president Steve Gutman had joined the Jets in 1977 as corporate treasurer and administrative manager. With a master’s degree in corporate finance from New York University, Gutman spent much of his time monitoring Hess’s money. From 1988 to 1996, Steve Gutman’s first nine seasons as team president, Gang Green made only one playoff appearance while going 48-96-1. So Jets fans had vilified him as a bean counter in team president’s clothing. Hess, however, included Gutman in his will for a small percentage of the franchise.

  A few days after the AFC Championship, the Jets owner approached Parcells about his capologist.

  “This Tannenbaum guy …”

  Parcells responded, “Yes, Mr. Hess?”

  “I want to double his salary.”

  “We don’t have to do that.”

  “I’m telling you, Parcells, I want to double his salary.”

  “Mr. Hess, I’m the GM. I don’t want to do that.”

  “Well, what can we do? I don’t want to lose this guy.”

  Parcells, an enthusiastic investor, remembered that when he had once asked Tannenbaum to name some of his favorite stocks, the cap specialist had responded that he didn’t play the market because his law school student loan was such an albatross.

  So Parcells told Hess, “We’re not going to lose Mr. T. He owes almost $60,000 to his law school. Let’s pay off his law-school debt.”

  Hess replied, “Let’s do it. I still want to give him a raise.”

  “Let’s stick with the law school loans this year.”

  “Okay.”

  The next afternoon, Parcells stepped into Tannenbaum’s office to announce the organization’s plans for him. First, Parcells disclosed that Tannenbaum would receive a full share of the team’s playoff money, a custom most NFL teams followed for key members of their front office. Tannenbaum thanked his boss for the $47,500. Then Parcells delivered the kicker: because of Tannenbaum’s contributions to Gang Green’s historic season, Leon Hess had approved payment of his student-loan bill—in full.

  Tannenbaum grinned in delight. “Bill, I can’t thank you enough! This is going to change my life!”

  Parcells replied calmly, “Look, Mr. T, just promise me this. Each month I want you to take the money that you were paying for your loans and put it in a savings account.”

  “No problem!”

  After providing student-loan details to Gutman, Tannenbaum received a check for almost $105,000.

  “It was such an emancipating feeling getting out of debt overnight,” Tannenbaum says. “It was like hitting the lottery.”

  Leon Hess’s appearance despite his deteriorating health touched Parcells. And as the owner neared his eighty-fifth birthday, on March 14, the head coach felt an urgency to collect the missing pieces for a Super Bowl title. However, Gang Green still owed New England its first-round pick for the right to sign Parcells. To enhance the roster the Jets leaned on free agency, including acquisitions of Ravens tight end Eric Green and Patriots punter Tom Tupa—whose quarterbacking skills also appealed to Parcells. Green and Tupa commanded bonuses that totaled $3.4 million, and the Jets allocated a substantial outlay to retain some of their starters, most notably Vinny Testaverde, who signed a new four-year, $16 million contract with $11 million guaranteed.

  The heavy spending came only one year after the club had doled out record deals to Curtis Martin and Kevin Mawae, so Gang Green’s 1999 budget was almost drained when Rams linebacker Roman Phifer sparked Parcells’s interest by becoming available after his free-agent talks with St. Louis stalled. The thirty-one-year-old was one of the NFL’s most versatile linebackers, an ideal fit for a coach with a win-now mentality. Since Detroit was also courting Phifer, only a strong offer from the Jets would suffice. Parcells instructed Tannenbaum to devise a multimillion-dollar contract with the club’s remaining cap space, and to the head coach’s delight, Phifer agreed to a three-year, $8.9 million offer.

  Only minutes after the deal was finalized on March 6, Steve Gutman walked into Parcells’s office with a pained expression. The team president seemed jumpy, and stammered uncharacteristically.

  “Bill, this has to stop. Are we …? Are we …
?”

  Gutman exhaled, pausing to gather his words.

  “Are we trying to win at all costs?”

  Parcells replied, “Yes, Steve. Those were my marching orders, so that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

  “Do you mean at all costs?”

  “Yup. That’s pretty much what I mean, Steve.”

  Parcells promised the fidgety team president that there would be no more expensive acquisitions, but the awkward exchange prompted Parcells to confirm the owner’s mandate. Parcells typically phoned Hess twice a week around 8 a.m. to touch base; the oil baron’s phone policy required football matters to be discussed before the start of business. Breaching protocol for the first time, Parcells dialed Hess immediately.

  “Mr. Hess, we’ve been spending money on free agents. And I just spent another couple million dollars on—”

  Hess interrupted, “I don’t give a shit. If you run out of money, come over here to the oil company, and we’ll get some more for you this afternoon.”

  Parcells thanked the owner. Leon Hess had come through for him again. Before hanging up, Hess told Parcells, “Kid, you’re doing a great job. Keep it up.”

  The fifty-seven-year-old head coach beamed.

  About a month later, as April’s NFL draft neared, Hess broke a hip and required hospitalization. He went back home for a few days, but his worsening condition prompted a return to Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital, where he fell gravely ill. In the early morning of May 7, Leon Hess, who had been a part-owner of the Jets since 1963 before taking full control in 1984, died of complications from blood disease. Around 5 a.m., Steve Gutman telephoned Parcells to break the news. Before picking up the phone, Parcells intuited the bad news. As Gutman confirmed it, the Jets boss’s eyes welled up, and after hanging up, he bawled. Despite their relatively brief partnership, he considered Hess one of his favorite people in a storied football career.

  Parcells says, “He put so much into the Jets. And I was just sorry we couldn’t get in the [1999] Super Bowl. We were very close to doing so, and winning it for him. Of all the things that happened in my career, that might have been the most satisfying.”

  On Monday, May 10, Parcells and several Jets players were among the approximately one thousand mourners for Hess’s funeral at the Park Avenue Synagogue. The Jets fraternity also consisted of former players, including Joe Namath, and even one fired coach: Rich Kotite. Mayor Giuliani led a contingent of area politicians that included former senators and governors. Business titans paid their respects, from hotelier Leona Helmsley to investor/philanthropist Robert “Woody” Johnson IV, whose namesake great-grandfather co-founded Johnson & Johnson.

  Hess was survived by his wife, Norma; son, John; daughters, Connie and Marlene; plus seven grandchildren. Parcells cried while listening to John’s funeral remarks when he said his father would be watching Gang Green’s 1999 season “from a different place.” Although the forty-five-year-old was replacing Leon Hess as chairman of Amerada Hess, he expressed zero interest in NFL ownership, and his father’s will required a sale of the team. More than twenty suitors contacted the Hess estate to express interest, so Goldman Sachs was hired to find a potential buyer by December 15, fostering uncertainty about the future of Gang Green’s front office and coaches. However, Parcells was considered a franchise asset, which presumably would provide at least short-term stability.

  A few days after the funeral John Hess visited Bill Parcells at Weeb Ewbank Hall to assure him that no decisions involving a sale would affect the team’s upcoming season. The interim owner also confirmed Parcells’s authority as football boss until 2003. Parcells’s contract made him head coach of the New York Jets through the 2000 season, with a clause that triggered Belichick’s promotion. In that legally binding scenario, Parcells would remain chief of football operations for another two years while ceding day-to-day control to Belichick. Some pundits expected Parcells to quit after the 1999 season, accelerating the succession plan.

  Following the AFC Championship, Bill Belichick had declined interview requests from Kansas City and Chicago for their head-coaching openings. Hess had responded by giving the heir apparent a $1 million bonus. The gesture was a dramatic shift from the previous off-season, when Belichick had angered Hess by entertaining interest from other teams, prompting the oil baron to instruct Parcells to fire his lieutenant if such behavior ever happened again.

  Not long after Hess rewarded Belichick, Bill Parcells and Will McDonough signed a book deal with William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, to chronicle the 1999 season. They planned to write in diary form about an NFL coach’s day-to-day doings while facing the inherent pressures of a football season that Parcells hoped would conclude with the Lombardi Trophy. The publisher would title the book The Final Season: My Last Year as Head Coach in the NFL.

  The Jets embraced predictions from NFL experts who named Parcells’s team a favorite to win Super Bowl XXXIV. On the wall outside the club’s training room, a green picture frame said “NEW YORK JETS” on top; and “SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS??” at the bottom. In place of a photograph stood three sentences:

  “Are you in the picture?”

  “When will it be taken?”

  “It’s a team picture only.”

  But that picture darkened on September 12 during the season opener versus the Patriots at Giants Stadium. Gang Green trailed 10–7 in the second quarter while marching to New England’s 25-yard line. Vinny Testaverde handed off to Curtis Martin, who sprinted toward a hole to his left. Despite being blocked, linebacker Willie McGinest reached out to slap the ball from Boy Wonder, sending it bouncing behind the line of scrimmage. Only a few yards away, Testaverde darted toward the pigskin. In midstride he crumpled to the ground, writhing in pain from a ruptured Achilles tendon. Testaverde pounded the recently installed Astroturf with his fist several times before team trainers carted the 1998 team MVP off the field, leaving Jets Nation shell-shocked.

  The freak accident meant that the Pro Bowl quarterback would miss the rest of the season—a crushing blow, if not a death knell, to Gang Green’s championship aspirations. At age thirty-five, Testaverde was perhaps the team’s best-conditioned athlete, but a team doctor would explain to Parcells that in launching off his left heel, Testaverde had placed tremendous pressure on his Achilles tendon, causing it to snap.

  Parcells had traded backup quarterback Glenn Foley to Seattle in March because of his disgruntlement on being replaced by Testaverde. So when Green Bay waived quarterback Rick Mirer during training camp, Parcells had acquired him for depth. Seattle drafted Mirer second overall to Drew Bledsoe in 1993, but the Notre Dame grad struggled in the NFL after a promising rookie season.

  In New York’s season opener, former Patriots punter Tom Tupa was listed as the backup quarterback. The punter/passer entered the game for the first snap following Testaverde’s injury, and zinged a 25-yard touchdown to Keyshawn Johnson, putting the Jets up 14–10. It marked Tupa’s first touchdown since 1992, when he had played for Indianapolis prior to focusing on punting. The ex–Ohio State Buckeye delivered another scoring pass before linebacker Bryan Cox returned an interception to give New York a 28–27 lead. Then Rick Mirer, Gang Green’s true backup quarterback, replaced Tupa late in the fourth quarter and committed two costly interceptions. Patriot Adam Vinatieri’s field goal in the final minute handed the Jets a deflating loss in more ways than one.

  During his postgame Q&A, Keyshawn Johnson banged the podium with both fists, causing a can of Slice to jump off the table. He unleashed expletives, conveying the sentiments of Jets fans everywhere. “Shit! Vinny is irreplaceable. Not in a million years did I think I’d lose my starting quarterback for the year. There’s nothing you can do. We can’t do shit. We couldn’t throw. We threw interceptions.” Cutting his session short, Johnson threw a towel in disgust before bolting from the interview to the hallway. On the way to the locker room he pounded the walls, continuing to curse; his career-high 194 receiving yards was the last thing on his min
d.

  Gang Green’s quarterback situation, the team’s Achilles’ heel before Testaverde’s arrival, overshadowed other key injuries suffered during the 30–28 loss. While returning a kick, Leon Johnson tore left-knee ligaments to end his season; nose tackle Jason Ferguson, the team’s best defensive lineman, sprained an ankle and a knee, sidelining him for a month; and tight end Eric Green strained his neck, missing an even longer stretch.

  The Jets had been the NFL’s least-injured club during the season that placed them at the doorstep of Super Bowl XXXIII, but that good fortune had turned into buzzard’s luck beginning in preseason, when starting cornerback Otis Smith broke his collarbone. Then, in Gang Green’s exhibition finale, Wayne Chrebet fractured his left foot without anyone touching him after cutting during a route on Giants Stadium’s new turf. Coming off a career season of 1,083 receiving yards, only 48 less than his much louder teammate, Chrebet would miss the season’s first five games.

  After Gang Green’s ominous season opener, Parcells told his players, “All the excuses are in place if you want to use them. But if we play the way we’re capable of playing, we can be the most dangerous opponent in the league.”

  With Rick Mirer starting the next four games, the Jets failed to become that dangerous opponent, particularly on offense. Mirer reenacted the interception-prone performances that had prompted his departure from three NFL teams. Against the Jaguars on Monday Night Football, the Jets lost 16–6 at Giants Stadium, dropping their record to 1-4. Parcells was furious with the team’s regression, especially its weak offense. With the Indianapolis Colts up next at home, he felt compelled to replace Mirer, despite having no appealing options.