Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  Consternation over Gang Green’s dire straits caused Parcells to barely sleep. At the team’s next meeting, he walked through the entrance in the back of the room just to announce the new starting quarterback. The bleary-eyed coach told his players, “You see that kid sitting in the front row? He’s starting for the rest of the season. I don’t give a shit if any of you don’t like it. Either you get behind him or we’ll lose every game.”

  The quarterbacks typically sat at the front of the room, so Ray Lucas looked down his row to locate Mirer’s replacement: Tom Tupa? Or perhaps a new acquisition? When he realized that Parcells was talking about him, Lucas’s heart raced with nervousness and excitement. He was finally getting the opportunity he’d ached for while being a role player. Lucas’s pro résumé contained only seven passes, most notably an interception with playoff ramifications during the 1997 finale at Detroit, but Parcells was looking beyond Lucas’s inexperience and pedigree: the undrafted twenty-seven-year-old out of Rutgers had been outperforming Mirer in practice.

  Returning to the locker room following the meeting, Lucas found a box of Huggies on his seat. Attached to the disposable diapers, an unsigned note asked, “Are you going to need these?” He guessed the source immediately—the item bore all the earmarks of Bill Parcells. As Lucas erupted in laughter, his jitters vanished. The new starting quarterback placed the diapers inside his locker compartment, planning to keep them there for the rest of the season.

  “His point was, ‘Don’t shit in your pants; don’t be scared,’ ” Lucas recalls of Parcells. “That was motivation to me; that was a challenge. I knew he believed in me, but that little diaper thing hit a nerve. Does he think I’m scared, or can’t handle it? I’m going to show him from day one that I can do this.”

  When Lucas saw Parcells later at practice, the former third-stringer grinned as he mentioned the diapers. But Parcells, in no joking mood, growled, “Are you going to need those?”

  Lucas sobered. “No sir.”

  In his debut as a starter, Ray Lucas guided the Jets to scoring drives on three of their first four possessions. His maiden NFL touchdown, on a pass to fullback Richie Anderson, put New York up 13–0 in the second quarter. But the promising start disintegrated after the Colts tied the score in the final period. Gang Green reached Indianapolis’s 3-yard line late when Lucas’s pass into the end zone was intercepted, leading to kicker Mike Vanderjagt’s game winner. Adding injury to insult, Lucas seriously sprained an ankle on the final play of New York’s 16–13 loss.

  The mishap forced Rick Mirer back into the starting lineup for two games. Despite a 17-point lead at Oakland in the third quarter, the Jets lost 24–23 to the Raiders on Rich Gannon’s touchdown pass during the final minute. After the season’s most disheartening setback, the fourth straight loss with a final-period collapse, Parcells’s team dropped to 1-6. However, the outcome seemed like an afterthought to Parcells by the next afternoon, Monday, October 25.

  TV reports indicated that golf star Payne Stewart, forty-two, had been a passenger on a Learjet that veered off course minutes after departing Orlando and crashed in a remote part of South Dakota, leaving no survivors. Parcells felt bad about Stewart, whom he had known through their mutual agent, Robert Fraley. But when CNN disclosed that five others had been on board, Parcells grew fearful that one of those unnamed people was Fraley. He immediately telephoned his agent’s Orlando office, which relayed back information that shocked him: Fraley, forty-six, and a business associate were also passengers.

  The two-pilot flight had been destined for Dallas so that the group could attend a PGA tournament, but the Learjet lost cabin pressure before cruising on autopilot over the South and Midwest. Everyone on board died from hypoxia, lack of oxygen. Military planes scrambled to monitor the wayward aircraft, which ran out of fuel roughly four hours after takeoff, nosediving into a field near Aberdeen, South Dakota.

  A former backup quarterback for Bear Bryant, Fraley had represented major sports figures, from Steelers head coach Bill Cowher to baseball ace Orel Hershiser. But Parcells considered the prominent agent, whom he had known since 1982, to also be one of his best friends. Despite practices scheduled for his team’s bye week, Parcells took a rare day off from football to attend Fraley’s funeral in Orlando. Mourners included several of the agent’s clients, like Joe Gibbs, Dan Reeves, Seahawks defensive tackle Cortez Kennedy, and baseball slugger Frank Thomas.

  After returning to Jets headquarters, Parcells found it difficult to focus on football. His close friend’s dying tragically so soon after Leon Hess left him more despondent than at any time since losing both parents near the end of his first season as an NFL head coach. He forced himself to watch video of the practice he had missed, and the next day he told backup fullback Jerald Sowell, “You could have put two goddamn eggs in your helmet for yesterday’s practice, and they still would have been there when practice was over.”

  The Jets halted their three-game skid by defeating Arizona, 12–7, in Giants Stadium, as Boy Wonder rushed for 131 yards and Keyshawn Johnson snagged a 43-yard touchdown in the final period. Despite being ravaged by injuries, Parcells’s club kept playing hard while his special-teams unit remained a force. The big difference from the previous season, caused by Testaverde’s absence, was Gang Green’s offense. Still, even with their poor record, the Jets were among the NFL leaders in turnover differential, generally the indicator of a good team. Of course, you are what your record says you are.

  Ray Lucas’s ankle healed in time for a Monday night affair at Foxboro Stadium, where the 2-6 Jets and 6-2 Patriots entered as teams headed for opposite fates in the postseason. But against the club that had waived him during training camp, Lucas tossed two touchdowns in the second quarter. The undrafted quarterback outplayed Drew Bledsoe as the Jets upset New England, 24–17. Gang Green’s injury hex, though, continued when one of right tackle Jason Fabini’s knees buckled after a play.

  Even without his best offensive tackle the following game, Lucas delivered another solid performance in a 17–7 home victory versus Buffalo. The outcome gave Parcells’s team its third straight triumph for a 4-6 record. Nonetheless, Gang Green’s playoff hopes essentially evaporated after a 13–6 loss at Indianapolis’s RCA Dome. To no avail, New York held the Colts, an offensive juggernaut in Peyton Manning’s second NFL season, to their lowest output of the year.

  Several hours later, on the night of November 28, the Jets landed at Newark Airport. Center Kevin Mawae maintained his habit after road games of spying on Parcells’s movements while heading to the Wyndham in Garden City, a condominium complex about two miles from Jets headquarters where Kevin Mawae, Bill Parcells, and Curtis Martin lived.

  Access to Parcells’s condo necessitated using a ground-floor elevator near Mawae’s apartment, 111. To avoid bumping into his head coach, particularly following a loss, Mawae often hustled to retrieve his car from the airport garage, then sped on the highway to reach home first. But after Gang Green deplaned from Indianapolis, Mawae got stuck behind Parcells while attempting to exit the airport. So the offensive lineman trailed his head coach’s green Cadillac, driving slowly enough to escape detection.

  Moments after Parcells reached their condominium parking lot, Mawae pulled in at the opposite end. Mawae hid in his car while waiting for Parcells to step into the lobby and presumably walk down the hall to get in the elevator.

  After a few minutes, Mawae entered the building and asked the doorman, “Hey, Joe, did Bill make it through yet?”

  Receiving a confirmation, the six-four, 300-pounder exhaled before walking to his apartment.

  Mawae says now, “Sometimes I’d wait until I heard the elevator ding. That’s a true story; you can’t make that stuff up.”

  On December 5, the Jets faced Jim Fassel’s Giants in a matchup between Meadowlands tenants. By halftime any fantastical thoughts about Gang Green’s reaching the playoffs had evaporated as Belichick’s defense gave its worst effort of the season. Behind quarterback Kerry Collins
and wideout Amani Toomer, Big Blue led 27–7 at intermission after scoring their team’s most points in a half since 1993. Ray Lucas prevented further embarrassment by delivering a career game, tossing four touchdowns, including three in the final period. After his last one cut the deficit to 41–28 late, Lucas walked to the sideline as self-assured as ever about quarterbacking in the NFL. Parcells, though, found nothing redeeming about heading to a record of 4-8, especially when his team allowed more than 40 points. Even Boy Wonder had been held to a career-low 4 yards on 6 carries.

  Bothered by Lucas’s body language, Parcells got in his face. “You think you know everything now, don’t you?”

  The quarterback knew Parcells well enough to respond, “Coach, I don’t know shit.”

  Parcells nodded, and sneered, “That’s goddamn right. You don’t know shit until I tell you.”

  At the time of Leon Hess’s death, the Jets franchise was valued at roughly $250 million, but with his replacement likely to obtain a new stadium after the team’s lease expired in 2008, the Jets were expected to sell for as much as twice that amount. Charles F. Dolan, the cable television magnate who owned Madison Square Garden, the Knicks, and the Rangers, was seen as the prime candidate, having made serious attempts to purchase the Cleveland Browns in 1998 and the Washington Redskins in 1999. His pursuit of Hess’s team became so frenzied that Stephen Ross, a New York real-estate developer who was among the final three suitors, dropped out after bidding exceeded $500 million. When the process reached the final stage in early December, investor Woody Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, was the only person aggressively competing against Dolan.

  Meanwhile, in all four of its final games Gang Green faced teams headed to the playoffs. Rebounding from their season’s most embarrassing performance, the Jets defeated Miami, 28–20, at the Meadowlands amid a windchill of zero degrees. Ray Lucas tossed two scoring passes to Keyshawn Johnson in the final period, and Belichick’s defense returned to form by denying Dan Marino any touchdown passes.

  While breaking out of his slump with 49 rushing yards in the final period, Curtis Martin continued to display his high threshold for pain. Late in the game he wriggled free for a few yards along the Jets’ sideline when Miami’s attempt to corral him caused Martin to spin into an about-face. Instinctively he kept his legs churning, and as Boy Wonder ran blind a linebacker torpedoed him, slamming his head into the Astroturf. Parcells, who was standing only a few feet away on the sideline, saw Martin’s eyes close as blood streamed out his nose.

  “I thought he was dead,” Parcells recalls.

  To the head coach’s immense relief, Martin opened his eyes a moment later, and rose gingerly to his feet. In an era before concussion awareness, Martin immediately returned to the huddle, oblivious to the blood gushing onto his green-and-white uniform. The 78,246 fans cheering his resilience couldn’t quite see the gory details, but a few teammates in the huddle recoiled, with one saying, “Are you all right, Curt? Go to the sideline, man. You’re bleeding bad.”

  Looking down at his uniform, Martin saw how much blood he’d lost, and hurried off the field, where trainers squeezed cotton gauze inside each nostril. “Like a tampon for your nose,” Martin says.

  The Jets ran their next play while Boy Wonder received treatment, but a few moments later Martin glanced at Parcells before jogging to the huddle without waiting for his coach’s approval. On the next play, Boy Wonder took a handoff, leading to another tidy gain.

  “He was a rare human being. He still is,” Parcells says. “Rare, rare, rare.”

  After coaching many tough, talented athletes for more than twenty years, Parcells was used to their willingness to play with pain, but Martin’s response to the bloodletting wallop showed a determination that Parcells had witnessed from less than a handful of his players, among them Mark Bavaro and Lawrence Taylor.

  Parcells says of the bloody sequence involving Martin, “That shook me up. I have that memory of him forever. I see him lying there. It takes an unusual human being to take a shot like that and keep going, and if you’ve been part of that experience, it bonds you. That kid knows if he ever needed anything, all he would have to do is call me.” Paraphrasing a term he first heard from NBA legend Pat Riley, Parcells says, “It’s a blood kinship, and it doesn’t ever fade.”

  Next, Parcells’s hardy group traveled to Texas Stadium for a December 19 contest versus Dallas. About two hours before the 3:15 p.m. kickoff, Parcells spotted Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and a trainer lightly working out players recovering from injuries, notably Larry Allen, the NFL’s top offensive lineman. Jones’s presence seemed to overshadow that of Dallas’s head coach, Chan Gailey. Troubled by the scene, Parcells wrote his observation down for his book The Final Season.

  “Now I’ve never seen that anywhere in my life,” he penned. “Jerry Jones is very involved. I know at one time he played college ball and coached a kids team or something like that, but the NFL is supposed to be a little bit different. They tell me Jerry has a phone in his box that goes directly to the bench, and he’ll call during the game with some message; or [call] if he wants to talk to certain players about their performance. If an owner wants to come around during the week and encourage players, root for them, and let them know he is with them, that’s fine with me. But once the owner wants to coach, I’d be out of there the next day. I couldn’t [work] in that situation myself.”

  Jerry Jones’s hands-on approach went for naught as John Hall’s 37-yard field goal with about a minute remaining lifted the Jets, 22–21. Ray Lucas finished with two touchdown passes, while Curtis Martin gained 113 rushing yards.

  A rematch with the Dolphins took place on Monday Night Football, December 27 at Pro Player Stadium. This time the soon-to-be-retired Marino threw three touchdowns, but he was picked off three times in his final game against the Jets. Incongruously, Ray Lucas proved to be the more efficient passer, tossing three scoring passes without an interception during New York’s 38–31 triumph. In the third straight contest the undrafted quarterback produced a better passer rating than a future Hall of Famer. The streak of upset victories provided the Jets an opportunity for a non-losing record, despite their disastrous start.

  While Gang Green was closing out the season with a flourish, the Patriots were unraveling with three consecutive losses for a 7-8 mark, notwithstanding their hot start. New England’s collapse meant that Kraft’s team would miss the playoffs for the first time since 1995. Rumors surfaced regarding the owner’s interest in Bill Belichick. Disenchanted by his franchise’s regression since Parcells’s departure, Kraft remarked to his inner circle that he should have retained Belichick in 1997.

  Will McDonough investigated the scuttlebutt, and then telephoned his buddy Bill Parcells with more concrete information. The Patriots planned to dismiss Pete Carroll after the season and offer their head-coaching job to Belichick. Kraft had supposedly signaled to Belichick, through intermediaries, that he would have complete control of football operations at a salary of up to $2 million. Parcells, who had been contemplating whether to continue coaching in 2000, was disturbed by the development, especially since Belichick was under contract to replace him for the Jets.

  On Friday, New Year’s Eve, Gang Green practiced for its finale at home versus Seattle, leaders of the AFC West. As the Jets completed the session in their indoor bubble, Parcells made up his mind to retire from coaching. Despite feeling a sense of relief, Parcells chose not to tell anyone. After Saturday’s walk-through, however, he called Belichick into his office. Parcells told Belichick that he was “99 percent sure” that Sunday would be his final day as an NFL coach.

  “By contract, you’re the next head coach.”

  Belichick replied, “I’ve been waiting for this.”

  Parcells said that he would inform Steve Gutman of his decision after the upcoming game. The next day New York maintained its torrid stretch with a 19–9 victory as Boy Wonder rushed for a season-high 158 yards and John Hall drilled four fiel
d goals. During the exclamation-point victory, 78,154 spectators aired their feelings about Parcells’s coaching future, chanting, “One more year! One more year! One more year!”

  Gang Green ended up with the same record as the Patriots, who dismissed Pete Carroll after their finale. Parcells considers the 8-8 season to be perhaps the best coaching performance of his career, given the Jets’ 1-6 start and serious injuries to fifteen players, overwhelmingly starters.

  Roughly an hour after the January 2 finale, Parcells told Gutman of his decision to retire, asking the team president to inform John Hess. The next morning at roughly nine o’clock, a Jets official at Weeb Ewbank Hall spotted an overnight fax from New England seeking permission to interview Belichick for the position of head coach and GM. After reading the transmission, Parcells crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebasket. He declined the request, informing the Patriots and the league that his resignation at 5 p.m. on Sunday had contractually made Belichick his replacement as Jets head coach.

  22

  In a staff meeting later that morning, Bill Parcells informed his coaches of the big transition. He left the room early to allow Bill Belichick to start acting as the new Jets head coach, and Parcells’s former lieutenant stepped in with information about the upcoming Senior Bowl, and scheduled the next staff meeting.

  Parcells soon gathered his players into Weeb Ewbank Hall’s auditorium, used for team meetings and press conferences. Holding a microphone at the front of the room, he told the group that he no longer desired to be an NFL coach. Despite still possessing the requisite energy, Parcells lacked the commitment that he himself had always demanded from his players. He didn’t want to fool himself, or anyone else, by returning to an all-consuming job. To more eloquently convey those feelings, Parcells concluded his resignation speech by reading Dale Wimbrow’s poem “The Guy in the Glass.”