So the linebacker despised by Jets Nation accepted Tannenbaum’s proposal for a two-year contract, joining the NFL’s top defense.
The grainy, scattershot video taken in late April 2010 shows Jerry Jones sitting between two young men, strangers at a restaurant bar. The Cowboys owner is in a light-colored dress shirt, unbuttoned at the top as patrons mingle in the background. Jones, in his familiar Arkansas twang, says to his barmates, “Romo was a miracle.”
One of the young men responds, “It [Romo’s emergence] was a miracle, wasn’t it?”
Jones replies, “He almost never got in, and he was almost gone.” Quickly switching to another topic, Jones blurts, “[Tim] Tebow would never have—”
The second teenager interrupts. “What if you were the Jaguars? Would you just recruit—just draft him and sell fucking jerseys?”
Jones says, “That’s the only reason I brought in Bill Parcells.”
The owner’s small audience laughs hard.
Jones adds, “Bill’s not worth a shit. I love him.”
Second teenager: “I know you do.”
Jones: “But he’s not worth a shit, but I wanted—they were on my ass so bad. ‘J’s gotta have a yes-man.’ So to get this fuckin’ stadium, I needed to bring his ass in.”
On April 13, 2010, Deadspin.com, the irreverent sports site that occasionally releases unflattering information about sports figures, posted the exchange. Soon the 47-second video, shot from a hidden cell phone, went viral, prompting coverage from news organizations as disparate as ESPN and The Huffington Post. Embarrassed by the brouhaha, Jones dialed Parcells the same day to apologize. At Dolphins headquarters, Parcells took the call on a cell phone with a Dallas area code: 214. When Parcells had quit the Cowboys in early 2007, Jones permitted him to keep the company phone indefinitely. Even before taking Jones’s call, Parcells felt that the on-camera comments were harmless.
“I knew he didn’t mean it,” Parcells said in his office after receiving Jones’s call. “He told me he had too much to drink. I said, ‘Don’t even think twice about it. I know how you feel about me.’ A friend’s someone that knows all about you, and likes you anyway. That’s the way I feel about Jerry being a little less than perfect, and I’m pretty sure that’s the way he feels about me.”
Jones’s foolishness given the era of social media was pointed out, but Parcells countered by referencing his father’s maxim to never discount stupidity as being a factor, because it’s always in there somewhere. “Jesus Christ, you keep forgetting it. People make bad judgments every day. And you can’t expect them to think like you think.”
But Jones won’t make that mistake again, right?
“You want to bet? He told me, ‘Lucky the camera wasn’t there twenty minutes earlier. I’d have had to turn off every TV set in Dallas.’ ”
Two days after his apology, Jones praised Parcells at a fund-raiser attended by some reporters. The Cowboy owner declared Parcells a “great” football mind with supreme people skills. Jones, who didn’t mention their private conversation, described his disparaging comments as sarcasm.
Pat White’s struggles reinforced Bill Parcells’s rule against drafting a diminutive player. So in the 2010 draft, Jeff Ireland and Bill Parcells returned to their bigger-is-better philosophy, while particularly aiming to add bulk to Mike Nolan’s defensive line. For his first time as majority owner, Stephen Ross joined his football brass in the war room, where a sign said, “No Mascot Players.” The owner watched his franchise deal its twelfth overall selection to the Chargers, dropping to the twenty-eighth spot in return for an extra second-round selection.
Ireland used the lower first-round choice on defensive tackle Jared Odrick of Penn State. Parlaying the second-round pick from San Diego, the Dolphins took defensive end turned linebacker Koa Misi of Utah. To add depth to the offensive line, they selected Mississippi offensive tackle John Jerry in the third round. Except for Jerry, Miami’s eight-person draft class was made up of defenders: Iowa linebacker A. J. Edds in the fourth; Maryland cornerback Nolan Carroll plus Georgia safety Reshad Jones in the fifth; finally, Miami used a pair of seventh-round choices on defensive lineman Chris McCoy of Middle Tennessee State and linebacker Austin Spitler of Ohio State.
The Dolphins would end up with another solid if unspectacular draft class that found key contributors in the lower rounds: Reshad Jones would thrive as one of the NFL’s best young strong safeties, while cornerback Nolan Carroll would develop into a starter. Character concerns had prompted the Dolphins to avoid the best wideout prospect, Oklahoma State’s Dez Bryant, despite his size at a chiseled six-two, 220 pounds. The decision came after Jeff Ireland grilled Bryant, whose mother had served time for dealing drugs, at Dolphins headquarters in mid-April. Parcells missed the predraft interview because of a scheduling conflict placing him out of town. So Ireland spoke alone to Bryant in the GM’s office, where the wideout sat across his desk.
Bryant lasted until the lower first round, when the Cowboys selected him twenty-fourth overall, but the Dolphins received some negative fallout from their handling of the celebrated junior. On April 27, three days after the draft, Yahoo’s Mike Silver reported that Ireland had asked Dez Bryant if his mother was a prostitute. The story created a national firestorm, generating heavy criticism of Ireland, even spurring accusations of bigotry. DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the players association, blasted Ireland’s line of questioning.
Despite understanding Ireland’s desire to uncover pertinent intelligence, Parcells also felt that his GM had crossed the line. The executive VP, who found out about the question only after the report, immediately instructed Ireland to telephone Bryant and express contrition. Within hours the rookie wideout and GM spoke, and Bryant accepted Ireland’s apology.
While acknowledging his own sharp tongue and confrontational approach, Parcells says, “My dad taught me a long time ago that you don’t ask some questions that have only one answer. ‘You don’t need to go there.’ That’s what I told Jeff. The media didn’t ask the question, but it takes on a life of its own. All the liberals get involved, and these organizations start demanding certain responses.”
Ireland subsequently released a statement acknowledging his own “poor judgment.” Stephen Ross expressed satisfaction with Ireland’s apology, and promised to examine the organization’s interviewing protocol. Parcells telephoned Bryant’s agent, Eugene Parker, to convey remorse and make sure that their relationship remained strong.
Although Parcells considered the controversy a valuable lesson for Ireland, he took umbrage at folks who declared the GM a racist. Bryant’s mother, Angela, conceived Bryant as a fourteen-year-old. Within the next three years she gave birth to another boy and a girl. Convicted in 1997 for selling crack cocaine to provide for her children, she served an eighteen-month prison term. So Dez had experienced a dysfunctional childhood in Lufkin, Texas, living in several homes while attending school. Although he lacked an arrest record, the Dolphins were among several teams concerned about his family influences.
“This isn’t a nice-guy league,” Parcells explains. “I wish Jeff hadn’t asked that question, but I can give you twenty cases of players whose parents negatively affect them with unreasonable financial demands. I’ve had Polynesian players caught in a dilemma because of their family village; you can get ostracized if you don’t give enough, so these kids can get caught in the middle. One kid made $1.3 million as a twenty-year-old, and had to borrow $30,000 to get through the year. Between taxes, the family, and what the village took, he didn’t have anything left.”
Ireland’s controversial remark prompted Parcells to recall the time he apologized for uttering an ethnic slur as Cowboys coach in June 2004. During a Q&A at Dallas’s minicamp, Parcells was describing how defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer and quarterbacks coach Sean Payton tried to outdo each other during practice. “Sean, he’s going to have a few—no disrespect to the Orientals—but what we call Jap plays. Okay? Surprise things.” The comme
nt, referring to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II, brought widespread condemnation.
Parcells says, “Now, you think I meant something against the Japanese? When I was in elementary school, we had what one teacher called a ‘Jap quiz.’ He used the term whenever he gave a surprise quiz.” Parcells received dozens of letters from Japanese people, and a few from Koreans, about his remark. He considers the episode part of his late-in-life education on acceptable language involving nationality and ethnicity.
Bill Parcells sat in his office on Monday morning, May 6, a few minutes before a scheduled appointment with Kenny Chesney. The country singer wanted an interview for his self-produced football documentary Boys of Fall. His close friend Sean Payton had asked Parcells to meet with the songwriter and ex–high school gridder. A doo-wop connoisseur amenable to country, Parcells obliged. While Parcells waited, his cell phone buzzed with a text: a friend at ESPN suggested that the Dolphins executive browse the Internet for urgent news involving Lawrence Taylor.
Parcells entered his password for his desktop computer, “Dolphins,” before navigating the web. His face sagged on spotting a headline: “Lawrence Taylor Charged with Rape.” Parcells blurted in disgust, “Get the hell out of here. Jesus Christ,” shaking his head every few seconds at the troubling tidbits of the Internet report. “Lawrence Taylor arrested on rape charges. Get the fuck out of here. But that’s what it says.”
Finishing the article, Parcells said aloud, “Arrested on rape charges. That’ll be bad if he did it.” Parcells turned from the computer monitor to phone the Dolphins receptionist stationed in the lobby one floor below. “Ruby, did those country singers get here yet? He’s on his way? Okay. Thank you, dear. Bye.”
The Taylor bombshell had soured Parcells’s mood, and he turned angry that Chesney was running ten minutes late. “This guy’s supposed to be here at 10:30. We’re supposed to do the interview at 10:30. Now, it’s 10:40. Next they’ll tell me they’re ready at 11.”
An observer in the room said, “You know how some of these celebrities are. They’re usually—”
Parcells snapped, “He can be a celebrity somewhere else if he doesn’t get here on time.”
A couple of minutes later, Harvey Greene, the Dolphins PR director, peeked into Parcells’s office, with Kenny Chesney behind him. Parcells stepped into the hallway to greet the country singer cum documentarian.
Greene said, “Kenny, this is Coach Parcells.”
Parcells, shaking Chesney’s hand, said, “Hey, Kenny. How are you doing, kid?”
Chesney, “Pleasure to meet you. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
Parcells set his cell phone on vibrate and headed to a conference room where Chesney’s camera crew awaited. Following the Q&A, Parcells’s cell kept buzzing. Seeing Jim Burt’s number, he picked up the call. Parcells told his former nose tackle, “Can I call you in a little while? About an hour or so. Will you be around? Did you read the paper?”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m calling.”
“Can you tell me what the hell happened? Do you know?”
“She’s underage.”
“Get the hell outta here.”
“Sixteen.”
Parcells, voice dropping to a whisper, said, “Oh, man, he’s going to the can. Is there anything we can do? Have you talked to any of the guys?”
Burt rattled off the names of some ex-teammates.
Parcells said, “Call George [Martin] too.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll call you in a little while, Jimmy. Bye.”
Parcells explained the surge of calls from Taylor’s ex-teammates. “They’re all mobilizing. See what happens? That’s the deal. We’ve got to help this guy. The bond is powerful. You think I’m kidding. This kid’s fifty years old.”
Parcells added, “Godammit. This guy’s in big trouble. The girl’s sixteen. That’s what Jimmy says. Maybe he didn’t know.”
To Parcells’s relief, L.T. would avoid prison, receiving instead six years of probation after pleading guilty to misdemeanors of sexual misconduct and patronizing a prostitute. He admitted to paying for sex, but stressed his ignorance that the girl was underage. The sentence required Taylor to register as a sex offender.
For several years L.T. had avoided the negative headlines that occasionally marked his post-NFL life. Regardless of his troubles, though, Parcells maintained his unequivocal support. “I love the guy. That’s the way it is. He’s my guy,” Parcells says. “Now, he has some characteristics that disappoint me, but he also has some that I admire. I feel that anything anybody wants to talk about with this guy is his drug problems. He had ’em. I acknowledge it. But to pass judgment on him, I’m not going to do that.”
Since Parcells takes pride in the fact that many of his former athletes employed his life lessons in their post-NFL careers, he feels some guilt regarding L.T. “I failed to some degree with him,” Parcells says, “but I tried very hard. And I think that’s why we’re still close now. He’s been such an integral part of my success, I don’t want to see him not be successful himself.
“He doesn’t call me Bill. It’s always ‘Coach.’ He’s respectful,” Parcells says. “When it comes down to it, he knows he can count on me. And if I ever need something, I know I can count on him. And that’s one of his traits that I most admire.”
Heading into the regular season, the Dolphins continued to make aggressive moves to rectify their mistakes of 2009. They released Pat White on September 4, 2010. Confirming Miami’s reassessment of White, no team picked him up off waivers. The Dolphins also released their 2009 third-round pick, wideout Patrick Turner, prompting the Jets to claim him.
The biggest departure, however, occurred only a few days later, announced in a three-sentence bombshell from the Dolphins on September 7: Bill Parcells was handing control of football operations to GM Jeff Ireland and moving into an ambiguous consulting role. The abrupt change came only five days before Miami’s season opener at Buffalo. The club’s statement noted that the move had been part of Parcells’s long-term plan: “This was the intent of the structure put in place.” But given his recent openness to a new contract, Parcells’s departure seemed to indicate a sudden decision against staying under a neophyte owner. The opt-out clause triggered payment for the final sixteen months of his deal, or roughly $6 million.
Parcells declined public comment, but he explained at the time, “I brought those guys [Ireland and Sparano] to Miami and tried to help them learn what I know about the business. The whole plan was to turn things over to them when I felt like they were ready. And I think they are. They’ve got to make their own way now.
“It’s the end of the personnel cycle for the year—the last cuts for the season. I had thought about making the move before training camp, but I said to myself, ‘Well, I better help Jeff and Tony go through the preseason and evaluate the roster while they make the final cuts.’ People don’t realize that the cycle for player acquisitions ends in the summer.”
Parcells spent a few more weeks maintaining his role, attending practice, studying film, and engaging players. By mid-October, Parcells cleared his office of his belongings, put an end to his daily presence at the facility, and unofficially concluded his tenure. Stephen Ross’s Dolphins were 3-2 after an impressive overtime victory versus the title-bound Packers at Lambeau Field. And Parcells left the building for good with a 20–16 record as executive VP and guidance counselor.
In his third season guiding the Dolphins, Tony Sparano shifted away from the wildcat scheme. He depended on Chad Henne to guide a smashmouth offense with an upgraded wideouts corps that included emerging talents in Davone Bess and Brian Hartline. Miami’s defense helped the team to a solid start, but the offense continued plodding behind its young, mistake-prone quarterback, prompting the home crowd to occasionally chant “Henne sucks!” The Michigan product finished the season with 19 interceptions versus 15 touchdowns, reinforcing doubts about his potential as a franchise quarterback, and the Dolp
hins repeated a seven-win mark with another flameout, this time losing their last three games, including the regular-season finale, 38–7, in New England.
At least the defense under Mike Nolan was much improved, led by two twentysomething Pro Bowlers: defensive end Randy Starks, twenty-seven, and linebacker Cameron Wake, twenty-eight. But Miami missed the playoffs for the eighth time in nine years, making 2008 seem like a distant memory, or perhaps an aberration. Despite the party atmosphere before kickoffs at Sun Life Stadium, the Dolphins produced their worst home record in franchise history: 1-7, more than offsetting the team’s impressive road mark of 6-2. Tony Sparano’s status, if not Jeff Ireland’s, turned tenuous, especially in the absence of the powerful boss who had hired them.
After deferring to Bill Parcells during his first two years as majority owner, Stephen Ross became proactive, and Carl Peterson’s role as Ross’s adviser grew more public. Irate about the season, especially its conclusion, the owner spoke to several players, seeking their opinions on Sparano. Some, like Ricky Williams, criticized the head coach for micromanaging, but most players supported his methods. Despite Parcells’s advice to retain Sparano, who had two years left on his contract, rumors circulated about Miami’s interest in Bill Cowher and Jon Gruden.
On Monday afternoon, January 3, one day after the Dolphins’ season finale, Stephen Ross met with Tony Sparano in the head coach’s office, where Sparano offered a detailed plan for off-season changes. Then Ross and Jeff Ireland had a similar discussion in the GM’s office. The owner gave no indication of whether he planned to dismiss either of Parcells’s two disciples.
Hours later, Ross attended the Orange Bowl at Sun Life Stadium, where fourth-ranked Stanford faced thirteenth-ranked Virginia Tech. In just four seasons, Stanford head coach Jim Harbaugh had transformed his school from doormats into national-title contenders, and molded sophomore Andrew Luck into the nation’s best college quarterback. Such achievements made Harbaugh the hottest coaching candidate in college or pro football, with wide-ranging suitors, from his alma mater, Michigan, to various NFL teams.
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