by Adam Lazarus
“The line blocked well, and Hostetler made one of the best throws I think he’s ever made because I didn’t give him a lot of room to lead me,” Baker said. “So he had to throw it on the line, and he put it there like a dart, and I ended up getting both feet down. I was so happy, I took the ball and spiked it like I did a reverse slam dunk on a basketball hoop.”
Baker’s clutch catch—in a narrow space between cornerback Nate Odomes and the sideline of the end zone—brought the Giants back into the game. Bahr nailed the extra point, and the Giants trailed just 12-10 with only twenty-five seconds showing on the clock.
“That was a very special moment,” Baker remembered. “It got us back into the game; that was the most important thing.”
The Bills, content to go into halftime ahead by two points, did not run another play. From his own thirteen-yard line, Jim Kelly took a knee, and the first-half clock expired. As both teams jogged into the locker room, one fact was clear: Buffalo had the lead, but the Giants had momentum.
“They’re not used to going into halftime in a tough game,” Giants Safety Mark Collins said. “They’re used to being 21 or 35 points up on people and coasting.”
Ottis Jerome (O. J.) Anderson stares at the camera during Super Bowl XXV. The New York Giants running back would finish the game with twenty-one carries, 102 yards rushing, one touchdown, and be named the Most Valuable Player. Michael P. Malarkey / Getty Images Sport
Buffalo’s Bruce Smith tackles Giants quarterback Jeff Hostetler (#15) in the end zone midway through the second period. The safety increased the Bills’ lead to 12-3, but Hostetler’s ability to protect the ball and prevent a Buffalo touchdown proved to be a critical moment in Super Bowl XXV. Al Messerschmidt / Getty Images Sport
In the final minute of the first half, New York’s Stephen Baker catches a fourteen-yard touchdown pass beside Bills cornerback Nate Odomes (#37). The reception capped a ten-play, eighty-seven-yard drive that cut Buffalo’s lead to 12-10. Bill Waugh / Associated Press
With the Persian Gulf War just ten days old and a significant fear of stateside terrorism, Tampa Stadium featured unprecedented measures for Super Bowl XXV. A Blackhawk helicopter—the same craft used by the military in the Gulf region—patrolled the area day and night of the Bills-Giants game. George Rose / Getty Images Sport
After Buffalo’s first drive of the third quarter ended with a punt, Bills quarterback Jim Kelly shouts instructions and encouragement to his offensive linemen. Mark Duncan / Associated Press
Thurman Thomas (#34) outruns Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor (#56) to score on the first play of the fourth quarter. The thirty-one-yard touchdown regained the lead for Buffalo, 19-17. Al Messerschmidt / Getty Images Sport
Buffalo head coach Marv Levy, James Lofton (#80), Jamie Mueller (#41), Gary Baldinger (#99), Jim Kelly (#12), and Al Edwards (#85) watch the last-second field goal attempt from the sidelines. Craig Fujii / Associated Press
American soldiers at a base in eastern Saudi Arabia watch Super Bowl XXV via the Armed Forces Television Network, just before 3 a.m. on Monday morning (Arabia standard time), January 28, 1991. Bob Daugherty / Associated Press
Behind 20-19, with eight seconds remaining in Super Bowl XXV, Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood swipes at the potentially game-winning, forty-seven-yard field goal attempt. Phil Sandlin / Associated Press
Lifted up by Lawrence Taylor (#56) and Carl Banks (#58), Bill Parcells salutes the crowd seconds after the Giants victory. Super Bowl XXV would be his final game as the New York Giants head coach. Mike Powell / Getty Images Sport
Giants quarterback Jeff Hostetler holds his sons, Justin (left) and Jason (right), in the Tampa Stadium locker room following New York’s 20-19 victory. Mike Powell / Getty Images Sport
Eighteen hours after the Bills lost Super Bowl XXV in Tampa, Florida, thirty thousand Buffalo fans greeted the team with cheers and applause at a rally in Niagara Square. Despite the Giants victory, neither New York City nor the state of New Jersey held a rally for the winning team. Buffalo News
8
Whipping Boys
During halftime, the Super Bowl crowd—those not waiting in lines at the concession stands or restrooms—watched the now globally renowned Super Bowl halftime show. Boy band and teen sensation The New Kids on the Block performed their popular songs “Step By Step” and “This One’s For the Children.” Michael Jackson made a cameo.
But for months, an intricate salute to Super Bowl history was also planned for the annual performance: a “Small World Salute to Twenty-five Years of the Super Bowl.”
Houston Oilers quarterback and 1989 NFL Man of the Year Warren Moon, along with two thousand children—boys dressed in helmets, shoulder pads, and full football uniforms; girls wearing cheerleader outfits and holding pom-poms—participated in a choreographed routine. Because Disney was producing the show, Donald Duck, Tigger, and “coach” Roger Rabbit also appeared wearing football garb; Minnie Mouse was dressed as a cheerleader.
But given the serious nature of the Gulf War, the end of the show was tweaked to be more patriotic. With American flags throughout the stadium, and “America the Beautiful” playing in the background, fifty young children of American military personnel stationed in the Gulf took the field.
A brief address from President Bush and the First Lady followed.
“Today we should recognize the men and women in our armed forces far away from home. They protect freedom in the Persian Gulf and around the world. And just as we salute these brave Americans, let’s remember their families on the field with you today in Tampa,” Bush said. “To the children of these men and women, let me say that as this and every day draws to a close, it’s your mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, who are the true champions, the true heroes in our country.”
For the viewers at home, an extended ABC News update followed. Anchored by Peter Jennings, segments included a report on the happenings in the Gulf, a clip from Commander of U.S. Central Command General Norman Schwarzkopf’s most recent press briefing, and Judd Rose’s piece on the troops watching Super Bowl XXV live from Camp Jack in Saudi Arabia.
The $26,667-per-second Bud Bowl III and Reebok sneakers commercials yielded a few minutes for more important matters.
While the television audience absorbed serious information, the New York Giants coaches assembled in a corner of the locker room. There they discussed the adjustments needed to overcome the 12-10 deficit against Buffalo.
Bill Parcells had been here before. At halftime of Super Bowl XXI, New York’s players and staff sat in the Rose Bowl Stadium locker room, trailing Denver 10-9. On that day in late January 1987, Parcells gave his players no fiery, inspiring speeches, unveiled no secret plays. He simply instructed them to not panic and stick to their game plan. And as soon as the third quarter began, a crowd of over one hundred thousand people saw the Giants completely dominate John Elway’s Broncos. The offense and quarterback Phil Simms took the second half’s opening kickoff and marched sixty-three yards during a nine-play touchdown drive to take the lead. Simms completed all ten of his second half passes, produced five scores in all, and won Most Valuable Player honors in the 39-20 victory.
The triumph gave New York their first world championship since 1956. That Giants dynasty of the 1950s, headlined by Hall of Famers Frank Gifford and Sam Huff, made five successive appearances in the NFL title game and were defeated in each one. Of course, it was the first—the overtime loss to the Baltimore Colts in 1958—that became legendary.
That Colts’ 23-17 victory at Yankee Stadium forever changed the destiny of the National Football League. NBC broadcast the drama of that late-December game, with forty-five million Americans watching. The game is often labeled the birth of the modern NFL, the moment when football overtook baseball as “America’s Game.”
For one seventeen-year-old sitting in the stands at Yankee Stadium, that game was just as transformative.
The son of an FBI agent, Duane Charles Parcells grew up in New Jerse
y’s Hasbrouck Heights, roughly four miles from where Giants Stadium would later be erected. He was a Giants fan, but football was not his passion.
“Baseball was my best sport. I thought I was gonna be a baseball player. I had an opportunity to play [professional] baseball coming out of high school, my dad wouldn’t let me do it,” Parcells said in 2010.
Although he continued to pursue a career as a major league catcher, witnessing the 1958 NFL title brought football to the forefront of his life.
“At that game, I decided [coaching the Giants was] what I wanted.”
Parcells—who as a child preferred to be called “Bill” rather than his given name—was a standout quarterback, running back, tight end, and linebacker for River Dell Regional High in Oradell. He also excelled as a center and forward for head coach Mickey Corcoran’s basketball team.
As a sophomore, Parcells scored three touchdowns—one rushing, two on defense—and tossed another during the Golden Hawks’ 26-13 win over Fair Lawn. (Once he reached college, he was placed with the linemen “10 minutes after I stepped on the field and they saw me throw.”)
In 1959, he graduated from River Dell and played football and baseball for Colgate University. But, yearning for a more competitive brand of athletics, he left the Chenango Valley for Kansas, enrolling at University of Wichita in the fall of 1961.
For a program that played games against top-notch teams like Tulsa, Louisville, and Arizona State, Parcells became a starter by his junior campaign. The next year, he was one of the top linemen in the Missouri Valley Conference and was named (Honorable Mention) to the all-conference team in 1963.
“We won the conference that year, and we had seven kids off that team that were either drafted or went as a free agent to the pros. We had some real talent on that team,” said Bob Long, who attended Wichita (now called “Wichita State”) on a basketball scholarship but joined the football team as a senior. “Our quarterback Hank Schichtle was drafted by the New York Giants; he played on the taxi squad behind Y. A. Tittle. We had a kid named Miller Farr, who was a great halfback. But in those days, guys played both ways; they played both ways in the pros too. So Parcells played both ways; he was a great linebacker and offensive tackle. I remember he made a lot of tackles [20] against Tulsa [in 1963].”
Off the field, Parcells kept busy. He was a dedicated student and earned a few dollars on the side, as a comanager at a budding nearby pizza franchise.
“It’s called ‘Pizza Hut.’ It was founded by some Wichita ex-football players,” said Parcells. “Several of the guys who were on the current team worked for them. And I did work for them. And when I graduated from college, they offered me a job in their organization. Had I not gone into coaching—which I was adamant about wanting to do—I probably would have wound up being a franchisee.”
Parcells’ Wichita teammate and comanager at the Pizza Hut, Bob Long, was selected by Green Bay in the fourth round of the 1964 draft. He played seven seasons in the NFL, won two Super Bowl rings as a wide receiver for Vince Lombardi, and supplied Max McGee with a helmet at the beginning of Super Bowl I. A car accident during the 1968 season devastated his career—he remarkably overcame numerous broken bones to play two more years. He soon retired, then returned to the Pizza Hut family.
“He wound up taking Pizza Hut to the state of Wisconsin and built fifty-six of them up there,” Parcells said.
Three rounds after the Packers selected his Wichita teammate, the Detroit Lions selected Parcells in the 1964 NFL draft. By August, the six-foot, three-inch, 242-pound tackle began training camp at the team’s Bloomfield Hills practice facility.
“I didn’t think I was going to make the Packer team and I figured for sure—Bill was a pretty good player—he was going to make the Detroit Lion team. We both went to training camp in ‘64 and somehow I made the Packer team,” Bob Long said. “I kept asking people, coaches, and scouts, ‘How’s Bill Parcells doing at Detroit?’ They said, ‘He’s doing great over there, he’s going to make the team, for sure.’ And then about two weeks before training camp ended, someone came in and said, ‘You won’t believe it, but Bill Parcells walked out of the Detroit Lions camp.’ I said, ‘Really? Why’d he do that?’ They said, ‘He wants to go into coaching.’”
Within two days, he had a coaching job at Hastings College. Wife Judy and daughter Suzy moved with him to the Nebraska school. That fall, Parcells began a nomadic coaching odyssey that would last for more than a decade and a half.
From Hastings, he moved back to Wichita for a season, then spent four years at West Point, where he struck up a friendship with the academy’s assistant basketball coach, Bob Knight.
“We are the same age,” Parcells once said. “The other football coaches were older. We spent a lot of time together. I used to scout for him and go on trips with him.”
Stints at Florida State, Vanderbilt, and Texas Tech readied Parcells for his first head-coaching job. In December 1977, the Air Force Academy hired him to resurrect a program that won just ten games during the previous four seasons.
“If you understand the game, and respect the game, and don’t fear the game, then your players become the variables,” he said following athletic director Col. John Clune’s introduction to the press. “You have to strive to get 100 percent out of your players. You have to prepare them to play to their fullest potential and not settle for anything else.”
But Parcells disliked fawning over high-school seniors, a must to be a good recruiter. In 1979, he forever left college football to join the pro ranks. The “rah-rah” approach that filled the college game wasn’t Parcells’ style.
“He’s a typical guy from New Jersey,” Everson Walls later said. “Tough acting. Loud talking. Wants to be the boss all the time. Into this power thing.”
Well-paid, professional men received Parcells better than did still-maturing college kids. At the beginning of each year, he told his players: “If you’re sensitive you’re not going to last too long here.” Parcells demanded toughness, intelligence, and hard work from his players. And although he could be a brutal dictator, players respected him. Others loved him.
The 1980 NFL season was his first coaching professionals. In charge of the linebackers for New England Patriots head coach Ron Erhardt, Parcells’ players affectionately nicknamed him “Tuna.”
“His personality is that he’s going to rag on you when it’s time, he’s going to yell at you” said Lawrence McGrew, who started for Parcells’ 1980 linebacker unit in New England, and reunited with Parcells ten years later for his final season. “He can make jokes about you. He can be derogatory. But it’s to make a point, and I have no problem with it. This game takes a toll on everybody. He works hard. You can see that. He cares about his team. He cares about his players. I’ve had some coaches where I couldn’t always say that was true.”
After a season with the Patriots, Parcells returned home to join the New York Giants, where both he and head coach Ray Perkins hoped his second stint with the club would be longer and more fruitful than his first. In March 1979, Parcells resigned as head coach of Air Force to take the linebackers coach job with New York. Prior to training camp, he quit: reportedly, his wife and children did not want to uproot from their home in Colorado Springs. Parcells went back to Colorado to take a job outside of football, but returned to the NFL the following season, joining the Patriots staff under Ron Erhardt.
Good fortune would be with him during his next go-round with the team he grew up worshipping.
The 1981 NFL draft brought Lawrence Taylor to the Giants. Under Parcells’ tutelage, he became the first-ever rookie to win NFL Defensive Player of the Year, an honor awarded him the next season as well.
Taylor’s athleticism and instincts redefined his position. Before the advent of the nimble, six-foot, two-inch, 245-pound Virginia native, outside linebackers rarely attacked the line of scrimmage in passing situations.
“He really wasn’t a linebacker in college; he was more like a defensive end, and so
we made him a linebacker,” said Bill Parcells. “But it was simple. He responded to competition very well. You just had to show him where the competition was. . . . He was one of the first of his kind: a combination linebacker–pass rusher. He really altered the game in a lot of ways.”
Taylor possessed many athletic gifts, but it was Parcells’ coaching style that transformed the raw linebacker into a first-team all-pro every season from 1981 to 1989.
“A lot of people over the last forty-two years, a lot of people have asked me, “Hey, Long, you played for Vince Lombardi, you knew Bill Parcells, how do you compare them?” Bob Long said.
Well, Lombardi probably was one of the greatest motivators of all time as coaches go; he could really motivate. He’d yell and scream. You could do that as a coach in the ‘60s because there wasn’t free agency, you had to take it or leave, or he would get rid of you. But Bill Parcells, in my opinion, one of his greatest attributes as a coach—he has many, he’s a great judge of talent, etc.—he is the greatest coaching psychologist I ever met. He is like a doctor of psychology out there.
I went back in the ‘80s to see [the Giants] play the Detroit Lions. He was walking around during pregame warm-ups; everybody’s warming up and so forth on the field. He was walking around; I was following him. He came up to Lawrence Taylor—he tried to get in these guys’ heads. Phil Simms—he would always be on him about something. Lawrence Taylor was warming up, and he walks around him and says, “L. T., you’re not near as good as Dick Butkus or Ray Nitschke.” And Lawrence Taylor is real emotional, and you could see him swelling up, getting upset. Finally, he spouted off and L. T. said, “I am too better than Dick Butkus and Ray Nitschke. I’m better than they are. . . . Watch, I’m gonna show you today.” That’s exactly what Parcells wanted to do; he got him all riled up. And that game was one of the greatest games I ever saw an outside linebacker play. He was all over the field, sacking the quarterback, making tackles. That is exactly what Parcells wanted to do, he got in his head, which he did with a lot of players.
