Unlike Ware, or even Ratliff, Spears never developed into a star during his eight seasons in Dallas. However, after overcoming injuries at the outset of his NFL career, the defensive end proved durable while contributing by creating rushing lanes for outside linebackers; at one stretch he started eighty-eight consecutive games.
Marion Barber emerged as a dangerous third-down runner who excelled in the red zone. He gained a reputation for being the NFL’s toughest tailback to bring down because of a running style that punished defenders. By Chris Canty’s second season, he had seized the starting job at right defensive end. Kevin Burnett turned into a valuable reserve at linebacker. But before any of them even took their first NFL snap, Ireland was generating media praise for Dallas’s 2005 draft.
Parcells needled him. “Everybody says you had a good draft. Are you accepting kudos now?”
Jeff Ireland, smiling, replied, “I’m not accepting kudos.”
“I want to know who the top fifty players are in next year’s draft.”
“We’ll figure that out here in a couple weeks.”
“Hey, most personnel directors know that right now.”
Sighing at Parcells’s relentlessness, Dallas’s chief scout left the head coach’s office to start on his new assignment.
Parcells’s 3-4 scheme marked the first time since the franchise’s founding in 1960 that its base defense had varied from the 4-3 put in place by Tom Landry. With that drastic switch untested, and a revamped offense quarterbacked by Drew Bledsoe, Dallas opened the season as heavy underdogs at San Diego versus the AFC West champions. In a roller-coaster affair that featured Drew Bledsoe and Drew Brees trading touchdowns, the Cowboys triumphed 28–24, taking their first season opener in six years.
Although the upset victory was only one game, it increased optimism while seeming to address questions about the new defensive approach and Parcells’s latest retread quarterback. Despite Brees’s two touchdowns, Dallas intercepted the Pro Bowler twice while limiting him to 209 yards, whereas Bledsoe finished with three touchdowns, including two to Keyshawn Johnson, and no interceptions. He became only the tenth quarterback in NFL history to amass at least 40,000 passing yards in a career.
During their second stint together, Parcells detected a striking change in Bledsoe’s personality: instead of being laid-back, the quarterback seemed crankier at practices and games, often getting upset over the slightest offensive mistakes. Parcells told Bledsoe, “You’re starting to act like me.” Bledsoe replied with a smile, “I’m going to retire if that ever happens.”
The promising developments on the field did little to shield the head coach of America’s Team from an ugly side of celebrity. A male stranger somehow obtained Bill Parcells’s cell phone number and left him an obscene message related to football. Parcells erased the voice mail, which had come from a restricted number. A few days later, the unidentified caller left a similar rant when the Cowboys coach failed to pick up the call. After checking his messages, Parcells once again deleted it without much thought.
The next call resulted in a much more disturbing message: a threat to knife Parcells to death. During his NFL career Parcells had occasionally received death threats, most of which he had decided not to investigate. “It is what it is,” he says. “There are a lot of sickos out there.” But this time the head coach saved the voice mail, intent on reporting it to law enforcement.
When Parcells had coached the Jets, handling the sickos had fallen into Steve Yarnell’s bailiwick. But with the former G-man still employed by Gang Green, Parcells turned to NFL security, essentially a law-enforcement arm of the league. By the early 2000s the NFL had institutionalized Parcells’s brainchild by assigning each team one person, typically a former member of the FBI, CIA, or DEA, to oversee security. The Cowboys’ point man was Ben Nix, an erstwhile FBI special agent, so Parcells played him the voice mail at Valley Ranch.
Restricted numbers could be traced only through the police department or telephone company. With their help, NFL security tracked the call first to eastern Pennsylvania, then to a small city, Bethlehem, and finally to the owner of the phone, presumably the perpetrator: a man in his mid-twenties employed by his father’s company. Parcells recalls, “We sent some FBI guys over to talk to him about his behavior.” The man, stunned by having been located, expressed contrition. Nix then contacted the perpetrator’s father, who reacted with embarrassment and shock. Nix told Parcells, “I don’t think you’re going to have any more trouble with that fellow.”
As the Cowboys climbed atop the NFC East at 4-2, the new-look defense showed sharp improvement from the previous season, especially in the secondary. On the road October 23 versus the NFC-leading Seahawks, Mike Zimmer’s unit stifled the league’s top offense powered by Shaun Alexander, an MVP candidate. During the rainy afternoon, the Cowboys led 7–3 early in the fourth quarter when their kicker, Jose Cortez, shanked a 29-yard field goal. In training camp the team had released Billy Cundiff, its kicker from 2001 to 2004, due to a quadriceps injury, but inconsistency plagued his emergency replacement. With about two minutes left against Seattle, Cortez’s 21-yard field goal increased Dallas’s lead to 10–3. Mike Holmgren’s team tied the score with 40 seconds to go on Matt Hasselbeck’s 1-yard touchdown pass.
Despite Dallas getting a final possession, overtime seemed like a given with 14 ticks left. On a last-gasp attempt, however, Drew Bledsoe tossed an interception that safety Jordan Babineaux returned 25 yards to Dallas’s 32. Seahawks kicker Josh Brown rushed onto the field and nailed a 50-yard field goal as time expired, handing Parcells perhaps the most painful setback of his tenure. Parcells released Cortez and signed rookie kicker Shaun Suisham.
A more monumental, real-world loss came two days later, when Giants patriarch Wellington Mara, eighty-nine, died at his home in Rye, New York, after battling blood cancer. Bill Parcells and Jerry Jones attended Mara’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Friday, October 28. More than two thousand mourners watched Mara’s black casket as it was wheeled down the aisle accompanied by a bagpiper playing “Amazing Grace.” Jerry Jones was among the twenty-one NFL team owners in attendance, none of whom were alive when Mara, the last link to the league’s founding days, served as ball boy for his father’s franchise.
Saddened by Mara’s passing, Bill Parcells hoped for the opposite outcome for his younger brother Don, who had been fighting brain cancer since 2001. The American Cancer Society had named Don 2004 Man of the Year. Only days after Mara’s death, though, Don’s condition took a turn for the worse. Bill received nightly telephone updates from his youngest brother, Doug, in Oradell. On his calendar, Parcells circled a November 14 game at Philadelphia as the ideal opportunity to visit Don, a retired banker, in Short Hills, New Jersey. But on November 9, a Wednesday night, Doug called with the sad news that their sixty-one-year-old brother, the relative to whom Bill felt closest, had finally succumbed.
Bill decided to skip Don’s wake on Sunday, November 13, while the Cowboys flew to Philadelphia for Monday Night Football, planning instead to spend several hours on Monday morning at his brother’s funeral and burial.
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Monday, November 14, brought a caressing breeze, cloudless skies, and balmy sun to Philadelphia and northern New Jersey. The mild weather made for an incongruously beautiful day, given that Bill Parcells needed to bury a brother. Don’s funeral service was scheduled for 11 a.m. in Short Hills, but Bill left his Philadelphia hotel early to spend private time with Don. Around 7 a.m. Bill Parcells and Kelly Mandart stepped into the backseat of a hired limousine, while Rich Dalrymple, the Cowboys PR chief, rode shotgun.
For the first part of the ninety-mile drive, no one made even small talk, but midway to the funeral parlor, Parcells finally broke the silence.
“There’s the exit for Monmouth Park, Rich. That’s where the horses run.” He described Monmouth Park Racetrack before everyone returned to being quiet for several minutes. Then, as the limo hurtled past exit signs in North Jersey, Parc
ells rattled off the names of football figures who came from that part of the state: Cowboys secondary coach Todd Bowles, Elizabeth; former quarterback Joe Theismann, New Brunswick; ex-wideout Drew Pearson, South River, succeeding Joe Theismann as starting quarterback at South River High. During the season Parcells and Dalrymple, a Pittsburgh native, had enjoyed a competition trading pronouncements that linked NFL athletes to their hometowns in Pennsylvania or New Jersey. The Englewood-born head coach never squandered an opportunity whenever the name of a Jersey native surfaced.
“Bill is Mr. New Jersey,” Dalrymple says, “and he loves his state as much as anybody loves their state that I’ve ever met.”
Parcells’s recitation helped lighten the somber ride, but when the limo reached its destination, he seemed nerve-wracked and depressed. Still sad about Mara’s passing, Bill was hurting even more over Don’s death. Noticing her boyfriend’s pain, Mandart told him, “It’s okay, I’m here.”
Parcells, who was twenty months older than Don, sighed. “I can’t believe he’s gone, Kel. I can’t believe this got him. I thought I’d be gone before him.”
Mandart asked, “Bill, do you want to go in by yourself?”
“No. Come with me.”
“Okay.”
Dalrymple remained outside.
At 8:30 a.m., the funeral home wasn’t officially open, but the couple was ushered in. An employee wheeled a brown wooden casket into one of two rooms decorated with photographs of Don. Spotting the open casket, Bill turned teary. Don, who had lost substantial weight from cancer, was dressed in a blue blazer and matching tie. Bill Parcells felt that his brother’s face, though a tad gray from makeup, looked good.
As Bill stared at Don, memories of their times together, especially as boys, swept over him. In a cracking voice he told Mandart, “We slept in the same bed growing up.” Parcells began sobbing, prompting Mandart to hug him. Mandart headed next door to view more photos set on easels and tables, while Bill remained alone with his brother, and shut his eyes to say a silent prayer. Then he looked at Don and said firmly, “I love you, and I’m grateful for our time together.”
Dalrymple soon entered the funeral parlor and chatted with Mandart to give Parcells more time alone. She vented that Parcells had discouraged her from attending in order to avoid drama with his ex-wife. “I put up with all of his nonsense every week. I deal with his mood swings, and he thinks I’m not going to be here for this? He’s crazy. How can I deal with the way this game beats him up, then not be there for this?”
Dalrymple was unsurprised by Mandart’s pugnacity. She was one of the only people whom he had witnessed occasionally standing up to Parcells. “She can buck up to him sometimes,” Dalrymple says. “Bill is a classic worrywart. Half the time, some of the things he’s worried about, they just resolve themselves.”
The night before, Parcells had left the decision to attend the funeral up to Mandart, assuming that she would want to avoid being in the same space with his ex-wife. “I don’t care if you come. You do what you want.” But when Mandart woke up early and started getting dressed, Parcells asked in a testy voice, “What are you doing?”
“I’m getting ready.”
“So, you’re really going to come, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Mandart, who had been friendly with Don and his wife, Elaine, pointed out that Don’s widow had requested her presence.
Parcells responded, “It’s just going to cause a lot of shit for me, Kelly.”
“You’re worried about the wrong person’s feelings!”
Recalling the exchange, Mandart says, “He reads into things too much, and it paralyzes him to a certain degree. Thinking about how he was going to handle the situation with his ex-wife was really giving him anxiety. But I had to go. It wasn’t like they just got divorced the month before.”
Mandart and Dalrymple rejoined Parcells in the room with Don’s casket. His eyes red, Parcells told Dalrymple, “This is hard, Rich. This is really hard.” Then Bill Parcells collected himself by turning the conversation to sports, and Don’s athleticism. “Rich, you should have seen him. He was fast. He was really fast.”
The threesome walked into the next room, where Bill talked about the various photographs of Don: the athlete as an Army fullback wearing the number 31 on his jersey; the banking executive visiting his brother at Patriots headquarters; the family man with his first wife and three children; the family man with his second wife and their three kids; the world traveler on an annual trip to Italy with close friends. By 10 a.m., Don’s wife and all his children from both marriages had arrived for the final visitations. Parcells hugged his sister-in-law, nieces, and nephews, happy to see them despite the sad occasion. Two of Don’s sons were beefy football players for the University of Maine: Christopher, a six-four, 270-pound offensive lineman, and Craig, a six-six, 270-pound tight end. Parcells asked his nephews how their Black Bears were faring.
A few blocks away, the Catholic church holding the funeral mass bustled with an overflow crowd that included many of Don’s ex-teammates at Army. Roughly fifteen minutes before the service, Judy and her daughter Dallas walked into the vestibule, where they ran into Bill’s other brother, Doug; Doug’s wife, Joanne; and their daughter, Laura. Don’s relatives planned to follow the casket down the aisle before taking their seats near the front. Doug told Judy and Dallas to sit with his family, who planned to share a row with Bill.
As the church door swung open to let someone in, Judy spotted a limo across the street. “Oh, that must be Bill.” The guess was correct, but when the car door opened Judy Parcells was stunned to see Kelly Mandart step out. Sadness about Don’s death turned into rage at the presence of her romantic rival. Judy announced to Doug, “Oh my God! Kelly’s here. I’ll go find a seat somewhere else.”
Doug, equally surprised, responded, “No, stay here.”
Judy felt self-conscious about being seen in the same place as Mandart, but with the church filled to capacity, she was forced to stay put. When Parcells and Mandart entered the church, confronted by the prickly situation, Parcells greeted his daughter and nodded at his ex-wife. Dallas hugged Mandart, prompting Judy to shake in anger.
Mandart looked at Parcells’s ex-wife. “Hi, Judy.” Head down, Judy didn’t reply, but nodded a frosty acknowledgment. While Parcells and Dallas chatted, Judy seethed in silence. When that conversation ended, Judy whispered to her daughter, sardonically asking if she was going to sit with Mandart. Dallas, flabbergasted, replied softly, “Are we really having this conversation?”
Soon Don’s casket was wheeled into the vestibule for the service. Parcells leaned over to his daughter and in a shaky voice said, “This is the worst part.” Dallas wasn’t surprised to see her father breaking down. Throughout the years she had seen him cry, especially when he reminisced about his parents. “I felt very sad for my father,” Dallas recalls, “because I really think that Don was the person he was closest to. There’s only a handful of people that he’s ever been really close with.”
Don’s wife and children trailed the casket down the aisle as Parcells and Mandart followed, ahead of Dallas and Judy. Parcells and Mandart sat in a pew two rows behind Don’s family. From left to right, it contained Judy, Dallas, Parcells, and Mandart. One of Bill’s best friends, Bobby Green, sat in a nearby row, along with Jets executive Mike Tannenbaum and agent Jimmy Sexton, while Rich Dalrymple watched from the balcony. Although the PR chief had never met Don, he cried, moved by the all the love and sadness in the packed church. The service’s most stirring moment was Don’s eulogy, delivered by his oldest child, Sean, flanked by his five siblings. Following the forty-five-minute service, mourners gathered at a cemetery behind the church, and after a brief ceremony Donald Craig Parcells, an army veteran, was lowered into the ground while an American flag fluttered atop his casket.
In the service’s aftermath, Dalrymple was struck by the tableau that brought together mourners for a Jersey native with an Italian mother and an Irish father. “You h
ad guys coming out of the church looking like they were extras from The Sopranos,” Dalrymple recalls, chuckling. “They wore dark blue suits with big pinstripes. It was an interesting mix—a New Jersey funeral right out of central casting. Mickey was there with his sports coat on, but underneath his sports coat, he had on a golf shirt that he maybe got for free somewhere, and double-knit slacks that a coach would wear.”
Despite so much grief, much of the chatter afterward concerned the crucial game on Monday Night Football roughly six hours away. Outside the church, Mickey Corcoran asked Bill Parcells, “Are you guys going to be able to pull it off tonight?” Parcells’s team was going into the game at 5-3, which included a 33–10 romp over Philadelphia at Texas Stadium for Dallas’s most impressive victory of the season. However, the 4-4 Eagles hadn’t lost to the Cowboys at home since 1998, the year before the arrival of head coach Andy Reid and quarterback Donovan McNabb.
As Mandart and Parcells headed to the limo waiting down the block, Judy spotted the couple and beckoned Parcells over with her head. While Parcells turned back, Mandart, annoyed, kept walking. In his only words to Judy that day, Parcells apologized. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, but she had a relationship with Don, too.”
The two exchanged warm good-byes. As Parcells got into his limo at almost 3 p.m., his brother Doug walked over and stuck his head into the car. He looked at Bill and said firmly, “You better go do what you do.”
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