Bill Parcells’s return trip was even quieter than the drive to Short Hills. Even the bumper-to-bumper traffic starting at the midway point failed to spur any chatter. Dalrymple thought, “I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally. I’m ready to go home and go to bed.”
The limo arrived at the team hotel in Philadelphia around 5 p.m., giving Parcells an hour before the bus ride to Lincoln Financial Field. Suddenly realizing that he hadn’t eaten anything all day, Parcells went to the room for pregame meals. Dalrymple walked in and saw Parcells alone at a table, munching a bagel and drinking iced tea. “He just switched into football mode,” Dalrymple recalls, “although it wasn’t his normal game face.”
Meanwhile, four hours before the 9 p.m. kickoff, the parking lots outside Lincoln Financial Field buzzed with activity. One street vendor sold T-shirts emblazoned with derogatory slogans about Eagles wideout Terrell Owens. Before their previous game, the Eagles had suspended Owens indefinitely because of several inflammatory incidents, including his public criticism of quarterback Donovan McNabb and management. A loudspeaker blared an expletive-laced song ripping Owens, while fans carried signs with insults such as “There’s No T.O. in Eagles.”
On Monday afternoon at the stadium, a local radio station, WIP-AM, had staged a funeral signifying Owens’s departure. Fans placed their number 81 jerseys and even cash into a casket, mocking T.O.’s contractual demands. One of the station’s hosts, Howard Eskin, burned one of the jerseys before spreading its “ashes” in an end zone. Given Don Parcells’s funeral that morning, the display unwittingly showed poor taste, but Dallas’s head coach hadn’t even told his players about his brother’s death.
As the Cowboys buses entered Lincoln Financial Field, Eagles fans kept their unruly, gauntlet-like tradition involving the vehicles of visiting teams: Philadelphia supporters pelted the team buses with objects, banged on them, and shouted R-rated insults. Sitting in a front seat, Parcells remained subdued. “I was just thinking to myself, ‘I really don’t want to deal with you assholes today,’ ” he recalls. “I was just in one of those moods: ‘Don’t mess with me right now.’ Of course, they had no way of knowing where I had spent my day.”
The heckling and pelting lasted only a couple minutes, but it briefly took Parcells’s mind off his grief. “I was going back to the real world,” he says.
The temperature at Lincoln Financial Field was a comfortable, cloudy 54 degrees. Wearing a thin blue sweater emblazoned with “Dallas Cowboys,” Bill Parcells observed the pregame activity with a tired yet determined gaze. His blond-dyed hair lacked its usual well-coiffed look. Six minutes into the game Philadelphia opened up the scoring on a 15-yard gallop by Brian Westbrook. Moments later, Al Michaels, Monday Night’s play-by-play man, told the national TV audience about Parcells’s personal loss. “If you see an unusually pained Bill Parcells tonight, he had to bury his brother today.”
ABC aired a black-and-white photograph of Don Parcells in an Army football uniform, smiling without a helmet among three teammates. Then the network cut to an action photo of the former fullback/defensive back clutching a ball in his right hand. Michaels informed viewers that Don “played right on this ground because this is where the old Municipal Stadium/JFK Stadium was. That was torn down to make room for this [arena].”
After Philadelphia went up 20–7 on a field goal with about nine minutes left to play, the contest looked like it would not provide Dallas’s careworn head coach even the slightest balm. Then, with roughly three minutes left, Drew Bledsoe tossed a rainbow pass off his back foot toward the right side of the end zone. Wideout Terry Glenn sprinted past cornerback Lito Sheppard to snag the pigskin, cutting Philadelphia’s lead to 20–14 and giving the Cowboys a flicker of hope. But Bill Parcells’s team still needed a miracle after the Eagles took possession with an opportunity to run out the clock.
With the ball on Philadelphia’s 38, John Madden, Monday Night’s color commentator, made a prediction based on his long experience covering Andy Reid’s Eagles: Within the next two plays, Donovan McNabb would run for a first down to essentially seal the deal. On the next snap, McNabb looked to pass toward the right side of the field, where safety Roy Williams faked a blitz before retreating into zone coverage. McNabb locked on to wideout Reggie Brown sprinting along the sideline covered by cornerback Terence Newman.
Unleashing the ball, McNabb never saw the lurking safety: Roy Williams, often maligned for pass-coverage deficiencies, dashed in front of Brown, leaped up to snag the pigskin at Philadelphia’s 46, and sprinted down the left sideline. McNabb loomed as an obstacle, but linebacker Bradie James shoved the quarterback aside, opening a clear path to the end zone.
Roy Williams was only a few yards away from pay dirt when Parcells zeroed in on the back of his jersey: 31, the same number Don wore when he played for Army. Absorbing the coincidence, Parcells flashed one of his few smiles of the day. “It was just unbelievable,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Holy God, he’s here!’ ”
Williams scampered into the end zone with 2:43 left as fellow safety Keith Davis, trailing the play, unleashed a primal scream. Donovan McNabb limped off the field in anguish from a sprained knee, and suddenly the Cowboys led the Eagles 21–20, having scored two touchdowns in 21 seconds. Jerry Jones and his family turned giddy in their guest suite, trading high fives and grins. Parcells says of his Cowboys safety, “That’s why I’ll never forget Roy Williams.”
With less than a minute left, backup quarterback Mike McMahon replaced McNabb and positioned Philadelphia for a desperation 60-yard field goal attempt. Parcells folded his play-call sheet for the night and removed his headset to watch. The kick by David Akers boomed straight and high. However, it lost steam and dropped close to the goal line, well short of the uprights, prompting Parcells to smile and shake his head. Quickly turning somber, he jogged toward midfield to shake hands with Andy Reid.
The stunner improved Dallas to 6-3 for a first-place tie with New York on top of the NFC East. Jerry Jones’s franchise both swept the Eagles and defeated them on the road, for the first time in seven years. As Rich Dalrymple walked to the visitors’ locker room to retrieve Parcells for the postgame press conference, the PR chief marveled at Parcells’s fortitude. “What he went through that day and that night,” Dalrymple says, “was one of the most physically and emotionally challenging things I’ve ever seen anybody do.”
Entering the coaches’ dressing room, Dalrymple flashed back to Don’s funeral. As the Cowboys’ PR chief remembered a photograph of Don’s Army jersey and its number, Dalrymple smiled and said to Parcells, “Somebody was looking out for us today. Number 31.”
Parcells replied, “Yeah, Rich. Can you believe it? Let’s go do this press conference.”
The gathering of reporters was especially deferential to Parcells during a brief Q&A. In his only remarks touching on Don’s death, he told the gathering, “There was a lot of emotion for me today. I don’t mean to dwell on that, but I got a message today that said, ‘Don’t have a troubled heart.’ And I don’t. I’ve got those guys in there.” He gestured toward the visitors’ locker room, where word about Don’s jersey number had reached Roy Williams. The safety told reporters, “Maybe that was his brother in me, telling Coach Parcells that everything was okay.”
The parallels stretched even further. As Al Michaels had pointed out, John F. Kennedy Stadium, née Municipal Stadium, had existed from 1926 to 1992, hosting Army-Navy games for most of those years. President John F. Kennedy went to the contests whenever possible. On December 1, 1962, only thirty-four days after negotiating the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he attended the sixty-third annual affair. Kennedy presided over the pregame coin toss, flipping a silver dollar before the ex–navy lieutenant watched from the stands on the Midshipmen’s side, one of 98,616 spectators.
Army’s favored Black Knights failed to score until late in the second quarter, when fullback Don Parcells burst into the end zone on a short run, cutting Navy’s lead to 15–6. Kennedy applauded dipl
omatically.
At intermission, an honor guard of cadets and midshipmen created an aisle on the gridiron for the president to cross to Army’s side for the second half. Roger Staubach, Navy’s quarterback, finished with 10 of 12 passes, including two touchdowns. In a performance that propelled him to national recognition, he also scored on a run, leading Navy to a 34–14 upset victory.
Kennedy died November 22, one week before being able to fulfill plans to attend the 1963 contest. The following year, Philadelphia renamed Municipal Stadium after him. Graduating from West Point in 1965, Donald Parcells—number 31—considered his touchdown dash, with President John F. Kennedy in the stands, to be his fondest memory as an athlete.
The Philadelphia trip marked the first of three games in an eleven-day stretch, culminating on Thanksgiving versus the AFC West–leading Broncos. “You don’t have time to feel sorry for yourself,” Parcells says. “You’ve got work to do, and you just do it.” Arriving at his condominium at 4:30 a.m., Parcells slept for just an hour before waking, worried about his team being overconfident for its next game against the 4-5 Lions at Texas Stadium. At 6 a.m. Parcells drove to Valley Ranch with an idea for keeping his players focused.
When Tony Sparano arrived, Parcells enlisted his help with an unusual chore. The Cowboys players returned to Valley Ranch the next day to find oversized blue mousetraps all over the building—in the lobby, hallways, and locker room. Introducing that week’s refrain, Parcells urged his players, “Don’t eat the cheese.” In other words, ignore the media attention for winning four of five, and avoid getting full of yourself.
With Billy Cundiff recovered from his training-camp injury, Parcells waived Shaun Suisham. In only two games, the rookie had made both field-goal attempts, but Parcells preferred a veteran for a playoff push. Shortly thereafter, Dallas responded to Parcells’s motivational props with a 20–7 victory over the penalty-ridden Lions. Marion Barber ran for two short touchdowns to help Dallas overcome Drew Bledsoe going without a scoring pass for the first, and only, time all season. And in his 2005 debut, Cundiff booted a 56-yard field goal that set a franchise record. The outcome lifted the Cowboys to 7-3, one more victory than they’d earned the previous year. Parcells’s team entered its Thanksgiving home game with a chance for the NFC’s best record.
Mike Shanahan’s Broncos, Super Bowl contenders at 8-2 thanks largely to splendid play by quarterback Jake Plummer, marked Dallas’s toughest test of the season. The Cowboys looked sharp throughout the tense showdown between first-place teams. Although Dallas trailed most of the way, Denver never led by more than a touchdown. With his team down 21–14 early in the fourth quarter, Drew Bledsoe tossed a 4-yard pass to Jason Witten that tied the game. But midway through the period, Billy Cundiff missed a 34-yard field goal, blowing an opportunity to give Dallas its first lead.
Neither team scored during the rest of regulation, leaving the game tied at 21. On just the second play of overtime, tailback Ron Dayne sprinted 55 yards to Dallas’s 6, setting up a gimme field goal. Jason Elam’s 24-yarder gave Denver a 24–21 victory, snapping the Cowboys’ three-game streak. Their four setbacks, all decided late, were settled by a combined 13 points. The contest with Denver would encapsulate the Cowboys’ season: promise undermined by untimely gaffes, particularly missed kicks, that led to too many close losses.
After having skipped the 2003 NFL season and declining Bill Parcells’s offer to join him in Dallas, Tom Coughlin had taken over the Giants in 2004. Like the Cowboys, after a six-win season Big Blue had bounced back in 2005. Now, at 7-4, the teams shared the NFC East lead. New York’s losses included a 16–13 overtime setback at Dallas in week six on Jose Cortez’s 45-yard field goal. In the December 4 rematch Big Blue prevailed 17–10 during a sloppy affair at Giants Stadium. However, Dallas rebounded at home with a sharp performance versus Kansas City, winning an offensive thriller, 31–28, as Bledsoe tossed three touchdowns.
Next, Dallas had suffered a letdown at Washington, 35–7, in one of the worst blowout losses of Parcells’s NFL career. His Cowboys, though, kept their playoff chances alive with a comeback victory, 24–20, at Carolina, highlighted by Julius Jones’s 194 rushing yards on 34 carries. Despite the outcome, Parcells waived Billy Cundiff the next day for his split-personality production. Maintaining Dallas’s revolving door at kicker, Parcells re-signed Shaun Suisham for the team’s regular-season finale versus the 5-10 Rams. To secure a wild-card spot, Parcells’s team needed to win in Texas Stadium, and the struggling Eagles had to defeat the white-hot Redskins. Just minutes before their 8:30 p.m. kickoff, the Cowboys learned that Washington had beaten Philadelphia, sealing Dallas’s fate. In the absence of postseason possibilities, Parcells’s team looked listless, falling to St. Louis, 20–10.
Dropping four of its final six games, Dallas finished 9-7 for third place in the NFC East. The up-then-down season disappointed Cowboys Nation, but at least Dallas’s quarterback quandary seemed to be resolved. Drew Bledsoe amassed 3,639 passing yards while leading the NFL in game-winning drives (five) and fourth-quarter comebacks (four). His 60.1 percent accuracy was among the best of his career, helped by Sean Payton’s canny play-calling. Being entrusted to direct Parcells’s offense, and delivering on the big responsibility, only increased Payton’s stock around the league.
Dallas’s 3-4 defense proved successful, too, especially during the first half of the season. Mike Zimmer’s unit improved dramatically from 2005, finishing the season ranked twelfth in points allowed.
The Cowboys experienced the same year-to-year uncertainty regarding Parcells’s status that had been endured by his previous clubs. He stuck to an annual evaluation of his mind-set and the team. “Starting in my first [Cowboys] season,” Haley recalls, “he kind of gave me the same line: ‘Hey, I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ I kept telling him, ‘Bill, I didn’t come down to Dallas for just one year.’ ”
A few days after the lackluster effort versus St. Louis, Parcells halted speculation that he might quit by announcing his return in 2006, the final year of his $18 million contract. However, to avoid the problem of a lame-duck coach, Jerry Jones extended the deal through 2007, and increased Parcells’s salary to $5 million, a raise of $1.5 million. Parcells joked to his girlfriend, “It’ll allow us to keep eating baloney sandwiches, Kel.” The sweetened contract included an option for 2007 at $6 million, which required that both sides agree on a return.
The partnership between Parcells and Jones remained strong, but the two football titans ached to use the contractual language for dispensing credit after a Super Bowl victory.
29
Bill Parcells’s prediction about Sean Payton’s future in the profession materialized after just one season. The Cowboys play caller had agonized before declining his first head-coaching opportunity with Al Davis’s Raiders, but by early 2006 other NFL teams had come calling. Payton’s contributions to the Cowboys included helping one unproven quarterback and two past their prime.
Green Bay made him a top candidate for its opening before hiring Mike McCarthy. The New Orleans Saints targeted Payton following their tumultuous 3-13 season under Jim Haslett. The Saints’ interest occurred less than a year after Hurricane Katrina, which had forced the franchise to evacuate New Orleans and kept it from playing in the Louisiana Superdome. During the 2005 season, the Saints split their “home” games between San Antonio’s Alamodome and Baton Rouge’s Tiger Stadium.
With only one playoff victory in its forty-year history, the franchise was adrift, and top-notch leadership skills were considered essential to put it on course. GM Mickey Loomis courted Sean Payton, placing a premium on his discipline-oriented training under one of the top coaches in NFL history, whose disciples had often flourished as head coaches.
Three seasons with Parcells had given the offensive-minded assistant unique preparation for becoming a head coach. While transforming from a football geek into a confrontational coach, Payton had substantially expanded his knowledge of such critical areas as personnel e
valuation. Parcells had also taught him the best way to structure a staff, and how to organize an off-season program. Payton even recognized the benefits of his mentor’s quirkier methods, like keeping the temperature in the trainer’s room uncomfortably cold.
In the late afternoon of January 17, 2006, Sean Payton reached an agreement to join New Orleans. He soon telephoned Ernie Accorsi, reminding the GM about his graduate-school analogy for working under Parcells. “Boy, were you right!” When Payton visited Parcells’s office to bid his mentor farewell, the two coaches ended up having a lengthy, wide-ranging discussion about the NFL. As it drew to a close, Parcells tempered Payton’s giddiness about his new opportunity by noting that head-coaching openings often occurred because of challenges inherent to the organization. “You’ve got to figure out what has kept the Saints from winning. Figure it out quickly, or three years from now they’ll be having a press conference announcing that they’re hiring somebody else.”
Parcells added that Payton would be part of a group of ten new head coaches, representing almost two-thirds of the NFL total. “Of those ten, only one or two of you will have some success. The others will fail. Those are just the statistics you’ll find if you do your research.”
The Cowboys allowed Sean Payton to take linebackers coach Gary Gibbs with him to run New Orleans’s defense, but Parcells considered an attempt to poach Tony Sparano to become an offensive coordinator as going a step too far. He emphatically denied permission. Parcells had promoted Sparano from tight-ends coach in early 2005, and considered the running-game coordinator too valuable to lose so soon. Sparano, though, was interested in joining his friend Sean Payton at a position that increased his chances to become a head coach. “I asked myself, ‘How many chances will I get to be offensive coordinator?’ ” Sparano recalls.
After a Saints official telephoned the Cowboys, Parcells walked into the coaches’ locker room, where Sparano was showering. Poking his head into the shower stall, Parcells snapped, “New Orleans called today. I’m not giving you permission to go. If you want, come and talk to me about it later.” With other assistants watching the exchange, Sparano replied, “Okay. I do want to talk about it.” After getting dressed, he went to the head coach’s office, where Parcells explained his stance, while predicting other big career opportunities for Sparano. “Tony, I have to do what’s right for the Dallas Cowboys this time. I can’t worry about what’s right for every assistant. But trust me, this is all going to work out for you.”
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