Sparano left Parcells’s office feeling dismayed but still determined to help the Cowboys make a playoff run. Sean Payton, realizing the headache he’d created for his mentor, telephoned Parcells to apologize and avoid damaging their relationship. Parcells barked, “Are you trying to take my whole goddamn staff?” But the conversation ended with Payton and his old head coach affirming their bond.
Bill Parcells promoted Tony Sparano to assistant head coach, a move that positioned Sparano to take on new play-calling responsibilities. Todd Haley switched from wideouts coach to passing-game coordinator, inheriting most of Sean Payton’s duties. And Parcells exploited the availability of a former assistant, hiring Chris Palmer as quarterbacks coach. Palmer had been the Houston Texans offensive coordinator for the previous four seasons. David Lee’s title reverted to offensive quality control despite little change in responsibility.
In March 2006 the Saints and Cowboys faced another potential competition, this time for Drew Brees, twenty-seven, the top quarterback in free agency. He had suffered a serious right-shoulder injury in the San Diego Chargers’ season finale, but finished the year with a career-high 3,576 yards. Two seasons earlier Brees had made the Pro Bowl with the league’s third-best passer rating at 104.8. It was unusual for a top young quarterback to be available without an interested team having to relinquish draft picks or players to get him, but the Chargers were heavily invested in quarterback Philip Rivers. Assuming that Brees recovered from his torn labrum, his best years lay ahead, providing a rare opportunity for whoever landed him.
The Cowboys considered signing Brees as a long-term solution at quarterback, but were deterred by Bledsoe’s resurgent season and Brees’s exorbitant contract requirements. Preferring to use the team’s salary-cap flexibility to fill other personnel holes, Bill Parcells and Jerry Jones decided to stick with Bledsoe. The Saints, however, lacked a reliable starting quarterback: in late 2005, Aaron Brooks, the club’s talented yet erratic passer, had been replaced by Todd Bouman, thirty-three, an undrafted journeyman via St. Cloud State.
Brees was also generating strong interest from Miami. Before making a decision on him, Payton offered the Cowboys a third-round pick for Tony Romo, but Parcells and Jones refused to part with Bledsoe’s backup unless New Orleans relinquished at least a second-round selection. The Saints considered the price too steep for the talented yet unproven backup.
The Dolphins essentially abandoned their pursuit of Brees, citing medical concerns, and focused on acquiring Daunte Culpepper, who had demanded a trade from Minnesota. New Orleans’s interest in Brees, however, remained strong. The team’s last, and only, Pro Bowl passer had been Archie Manning, during the late 1970s. Payton figured that the shortcoming at quarterback was a big reason for the franchise’s struggles ever since. Heeding Parcells’s advice, in his first major decision as a head coach Sean Payton put his weight behind signing Drew Brees to a six-year, $60 million contract.
Having decided not to pursue Brees, the Cowboys contemplated another bold off-season move: signing Terrell Owens. Philadelphia had waived the elite wideout because of his outlandish and divisive behavior, but Jerry Jones believed that acquiring T.O. would propel the Cowboys to a Super Bowl title. The unabashed risk-taker explained to reporters that his three Lombardi Trophies had come with contributions from another flamboyant star wideout, Michael Irvin. Jones also noted Parcells’s success with such supposedly incorrigible players as wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson and linebacker Bryan Cox.
Despite some reservations due to Owens’s history of recalcitrance, Bill Parcells was open to acquiring him, given Jerry Jones’s wishes. Parcells started to do his homework by calling Eagles wideouts coach David Culley, whom he had successfully recruited in 1973, when Culley became Vanderbilt’s first black quarterback. The inquiry focused on Owens’s work ethic, and Culley described it as being unmatched among Eagles players. Parcells also contacted several of T.O.’s former teammates from his first NFL club, the 49ers. Now the Cowboys leader was most interested in learning about Owens’s competitiveness, for which T.O.’s former teammates gave him high marks.
Terrell Owens was represented by Drew Rosenhaus, infamous among fellow agents for targeting players with inner-city backgrounds, stroking their egos, and representing them in an aggressive and unorthodox style. But Parcells respected Rosenhaus as a self-made millionaire who possessed a maniacal work ethic that had helped him gain the most clients in the NFL. Based in Miami with his brother and partner, Jason, Drew Rosenhaus usually picked up his business phone on one ring. He’d co-written a book, released in 1998, titled A Shark Never Sleeps: Wheeling and Dealing with the NFL’s Most Ruthless Agent. Because Parcells had experience dealing with the Rosenhauses, he introduced the agent and his brother to Jerry Jones and his son, Stephen.
During the Indianapolis combine in late February, the four men held a meeting on Jerry Jones’s luxury bus, which the owner used for travel to the annual event. After a second get-together to discuss T.O., Parcells stepped aside while the Joneses continued preliminary negotiations. He was at home in Jupiter, Florida, on March 20 when he received a phone call from the Cowboys with surprising news: Jerry Jones had signed Owens to a three-year, $25 million deal that included $10 million for his first season. Parcells had expected to participate in at least one more meeting, preferably including Owens, before the Cowboys pulled the trigger. Parcells recalls of the process, “It kind of took on a life of its own, and the next thing I knew, he was signed. I was never able to talk to the player face-to-face, although I’m sure Jerry did at some point. I can’t say that I wasn’t pissed off.”
Part of Parcells’s anger stemmed from salary-cap consequences that required the release of Keyshawn Johnson, one of his favorites. “I didn’t feel too good about it,” Parcells admits, “but I was determined to make things work. I wanted to show respect to Jerry, and make sure our relationship remained solid. I wasn’t going to make waves, so I said, ‘Hey, this is an organizational decision, and I’m going to support it.’ ”
Jerry and Bill made another significant move through free agency, although it lacked the sizzle of the T.O. deal. Putting an end to their pattern of employing inexperienced or inexpensive kickers, the Cowboys signed Mike Vanderjagt to a three-year deal worth $5.4 million, including a $2.5 million bonus. The most accurate placekicker in NFL history, with a success rate of 87.5 percent, Vanderjagt had become available after Indianapolis signed Patriots free agent Adam Vinatieri. The Cowboys believed that their revolving door of kickers in 2005 was responsible for three of the club’s seven losses. Parcells envisioned Vanderjagt, who had set the NFL record for consecutive field goals at forty-two, turning Dallas’s problem area into a strength. The move showed the franchise’s sense of urgency about making a Super Bowl run in Bill Parcells’s fourth, and possibly final, season.
Every midsummer during his football respite, Bill Parcells rented a home in Saratoga Springs, New York. He enjoyed the upstate area, with its opportunity to enjoy Thoroughbred racing at the city’s storied course. Parcells often described the small yet culturally rich locale as “the happiest place on Earth.” Its residents found him affable and approachable, in contrast to public perception. On January 26, 2004, Parcells paid $160,000 for land five houses down the street from his rental, and began constructing a house for his retirement. In June 2006, he and Kelly Mandart moved into the custom-built 7,500-square-foot home.
Several neighbors decided that Parcells’s celebrity shouldn’t exempt him from a welcoming tradition called “The Flocking.” One night a group of them approached his front yard, where they placed dozens of flamingos wearing football helmets and horse-riding gear. One male neighbor unfurled a banner almost the length of Parcells’s twenty-foot porch that read: “Welcome to the Neighborhood.” When Parcells stepped outside, he smiled at the gesture, thanking the well-intentioned intruders several times.
He made plans to drive to Nantucket, Massachusetts, in early July to visit his daughter Dallas and son-in-la
w Scott Pioli. Like Bill Belichick, the couple owned a home on the island retreat just off the southern shore of Cape Cod. Since leaving Parcells’s Jets in early 2000, Pioli had straddled a fine line as husband to Bill Parcells’s daughter and personnel chief to his New England nemesis, Robert Kraft, and estranged disciple, Bill Belichick.
“We both knew where the boundaries lay,” Parcells says. “I couldn’t ask him questions about what he was going to do in the draft, and he didn’t ask me that type of question, either. I inquired about players on his team if they were available, and he did the same, but certain things didn’t come up because they would have meant crossing the line. I didn’t ever find us on a slippery slope at all. We just didn’t go there.”
Parcells adds, “He’s a good husband to my daughter and a good father to my granddaughter. That’s what I give a shit about.”
NFL lifers like Romeo Crennel, who had deep connections to both Big Bill and Little Bill, hoped that the coaching greats would make peace. These mutual friends occasionally reminded Belichick and Parcells about their achievements as partners. “Most people didn’t want to see us at odds,” Parcells recalls. “They’d say, ‘Hey, you guys did a lot of good things together.’ They wanted to see things okay.”
No one wanted to see things okay more than Scott Pioli, so the Patriots executive informed Belichick about Parcells’s trip to Nantucket, planting the seeds for an opportunity. More than a year after Parcells’s conciliatory step involving Steve Belichick, Bill Belichick reciprocated by inviting the Cowboys leader to play golf at the Nantucket Golf Club during his stay. Delighted by the offer, Parcells jumped at it. He guessed that Pioli had played a role in Belichick’s friendly gesture, but decided to go with the flow instead of grilling his son-in-law.
The afternoon on the links was by far the most time that Belichick and Parcells had spent together since their messy divorce following the 1999 season. The two enjoyed catching up so much that they decided to keep it going with dinner hours later. Football naturally dominated the conversation, and they reminisced about the rigorous practices that Parcells had conducted with the Giants, Patriots, and Jets. Both old-school coaches lamented the NFL’s shift toward shorter, less intense practices. After Parcells opined that an obsession with preventing training-camp injuries was inhibiting proper preparation, the head coaches vowed to return to tougher sessions in the upcoming season.
Belichick told Parcells, “I used to get mad at how you made us practice. Now I’m going to do the same thing.” Parcells roared.
When dinner ended, Belichick promised to stay in better touch. Parcells says now, “There was a time when we just had a difference of opinion on some things. But that’s okay. You know, I wasn’t happy that we were kind of at different ends of the spectrum for a while. I wouldn’t say we’re buddy buddies, but we get along.”
On returning from Nantucket, Parcells looked forward to spending a few days at the track when it opened in late July. As the time to resume his coaching duties neared, Parcells told Kelly, “I wish we could just stay here longer.” Once back at Valley Ranch, however, Parcells fully reverted to the side of him that was so familiar to his players and staff: agitated, hard-charging, irascible, and unappeasable.
His mood got no better when Jerry Jones informed him of plans to move training camp back to San Antonio starting in 2007; Bill tried dissuading Jerry, to no avail. Conceding Parcells’s points about the merits of Oxnard, Jones explained that moving America’s Team would benefit its sponsors, and ultimately its coffers. “You know, Ford sells more trucks in Texas than in any other state. They like to have our training camp in Texas so they can put up their displays. And Dr Pepper is very popular in Hispanic communities like San Antonio. Dr Pepper—”
Parcells interrupted. “Jerry. Now, let me get this straight. We’ve got a billion-dollar corporation. The Dallas Cowboys. One billion. And we’re worried about selling soda?”
Jones laughed. “You don’t know how right you are. You are really right. We shouldn’t be worried about selling soda. But selling soda allows us to sell potato chips, and to do other deals.” Although Bill increasingly disliked catering to sponsors, the football purist understood that Jerry’s business savvy provided financial flexibility. And unlike many NFL owners, Jones redirected most revenues to his team, including the head coach’s big salary.
Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells affirmed their rapprochement by phoning each other almost weekly. With Dallas and New England in different conferences and no games scheduled between them for 2006, the ex-comrades felt virtually uninhibited about discussing football. But now that Little Bill owned more Super Bowl rings than Big Bill, a new dynamic was emerging. Parcells showed some deference, while using his former lieutenant as a sounding board more than ever. Ahead of Dallas’s preseason cuts, he sought Belichick’s take on the ideal number of players at each position on a fifty-three-man roster. After several years of radio silence, Belichick also relished the opportunity to once again pick Parcells’s brain.
The public learned of the reconciliation in late August at Oxnard, after a reporter asked Parcells about the team’s practice routine. Parcells casually mentioned having had a recent conversation on the topic with Belichick, and added that the two coaches concurred on the need for tougher sessions to better prepare their players. Reporters seized on the revelation, generating headlines on August 28 about the thaw between football heavyweights following a six-year chill. Parcells savored the newspaper clips the next morning.
Meanwhile, in Jackson, Mississippi, another acolyte was unabashedly imitating Parcells’s methods during his inaugural training camp as an NFL coach. New Orleans’s two-a-day practices were organized in much the same way as Cowboys sessions. Sean Payton removed the fleur-de-lis from the helmets of rookies, requiring them to earn the Saints logo. He used the careful notes he had taken from Parcells’s staff meetings in Dallas, but also telephoned Parcells whenever necessary to confirm details. Although New Orleans was scheduled to face Dallas on December 10 at Texas Stadium, Parcells continued tutoring his former lieutenant regularly over the phone.
Parcells’s leadership skills were difficult to re-create, but the Saints head coach had picked up enough of Parcells’s mannerisms for his wife, Beth, to nickname him “Bill Parcells Jr.” During training camp, the former nerd’s glare could now induce fear in his players and coaches, and Payton seldom went long without uttering one of Parcells’s maxims. He turned into a control freak, persnickety about every aspect of the organization. Like Parcells, Payton generally barred coaches from speaking to the media, and often upbraided reporters he deemed to be off base.
The Cowboys’ orthopedist, Andrew Dossett, knew about Bill Parcells’s habit of researching the personal lives of players in order to tailor his motivational methods. During a visit to the head coach’s office, the doctor, a former USC gridder, handed Parcells an article about narcissism from a medical journal.
“You need to read this. This is what we’ve got with Terrell Owens.”
Parcells wasted no time reading the five-page article on the personality disorder. He came away surprised and intrigued by the information, which prompted him to discuss it with team doctors. “The best way to describe it,” Parcells says, “is that there’s a hole in the bucket. And no matter what you put in there—money, fame, attention—it leaks. It’s never enough.”
During training camp, Terrell Owens had missed fourteen consecutive practices because of a sore hamstring, but even while riding a stationary bike on the sidelines, he managed to glom the media spotlight. At one open workout Owens emulated Lance Armstrong, wearing the rider’s signature blue uniform, crash helmet, and shades; T.O. grinned as photographers and cameramen clicked and whirred while his teammates underwent a grueling workout.
Owens wore a rubber bracelet on his right wrist, etched with his name and website, terrellowens.com. His locker stall contained two towels with an embroidered “T.O.” in oversized letters. Jerry Jones often engaged Owens in anima
ted discussions, partly to ensure that the star receiver kept the antics to a minimum. Although Jerry sometimes conveyed displeasure to T.O. about his behavior, Parcells felt that the disproportionate attention only reinforced the theatrics.
“You have to understand,” Parcells says, “that they have similar characteristics. And I say that respectfully. I’ve never told Jones that, but it’s obvious to me.”
The head coach stopped using Owens’s name during press conferences, and referred to him as “the player.” Parcells’s tactic gnawed at the perennial Pro Bowler, who considered it dehumanizing. John Lucas, the Cowboys’ player counselor, recalls, “That was a subtle thing, but it had so much effect. Bill’s insight into people reminded me of what I had wanted to be as a coach.”
Owens never cursed in front of Parcells, and avoided raising his voice to the head coach. In a league with athletes who occasionally appeared on the police blotter, “the player” lacked an arrest record. So Parcells considered T.O. to be a decent person with a troubled soul. The main challenge in handling Owens was that it required expending additional energy on routine matters like punctuality. Parcells had never coached an athlete who was perennially late to meetings. Owens often overslept, which prompted Parcells to fine him a total of $9,500 by the end of preseason. “It was just one constant stream of drama,” Parcells recalls. “You never knew what was going to happen next.”
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