Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  When asked to respond, Parcells actually agrees with Judy that Hastings marked the best period of their marriage, but he offers a somewhat different reason: “We went from an uncertain path to at least knowing how we were going to be able to raise a family. Hastings was a first step toward a career path.”

  Parcells used the car for work, so Judy became a pedestrian much of the day, pushing Suzy in the stroller. Mother, daughter, and future child headed to one of several local parks or to the modest downtown. Judy became close friends with Dean Pryor’s wife, Betty, who also had a toddler, and the two mothers often hung out together while their husbands coached.

  Home games were played in A. H. Jones Stadium, capacity circa two thousand. The Broncos faced other small private schools in America’s heartland with names like Chadron State, Colorado School of Mines, and Doane. Their crowning game was the Mineral Water Bowl, played at Roosevelt Field, a high school stadium in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. “But I thought I was coaching in the Rose Bowl every week,” Parcells says. “Believe me.” One victory would come against Colorado College, whose starting tailback was someone named Steve Sabol. As part of the postgame ritual, the future NFL Films president and Parcells documentarian shook hands with Hastings’s defensive coach.

  After a season-opening win, the Broncos played at home against a formidable opponent: Nebraska Wesleyan, their rival based in Lincoln, 106 miles away. In the previous season the Prairie Wolves had almost gone undefeated while capturing the conference title. Their best weapon in the red zone was a bootleg, in which the quarterback moves with the ball toward the sidelines, often after faking a handoff. Sprinting parallel to the line of scrimmage, the quarterback either runs upfield or throws a pass. The purpose of the play is to confuse the defense by moving the signal caller from his usual position behind the center, often causing defensive backs to abandon their assignments in anticipation of a scramble.

  After scouting Nebraska Wesleyan’s offense, Parcells focused on thwarting its favorite play. During the week leading to the game, Parcells spent a substantial part of every practice and player meeting discussing the bootleg. Primary responsibility would rest with perhaps the best Bronco: Jack Giddings, who played fullback on offense and safety on defense. Giddings was the original Bill Parcells Guy: smart, tough, hard-working. “A coach’s dream,” Parcells says. With Giddings anchoring the defense, Parcells was convinced that the Wolves wouldn’t score in their typical fashion.

  The test came early, as the Wolves drove the ball down the field and into the red zone. Near the goal line Nebraska Wesleyan turned to its favorite weapon. After the snap the Wolf quarterback faked a handoff, scampered toward the sideline, and then suddenly stopped and planted his feet to throw toward the receiver Giddings was covering. It was just what the defense had drilled for, but to Parcells’s surprise—and dismay—his talented safety was out of position after biting on the routine bluff. The tight end, Giddings’s man, was wide-open for the pass. Touchdown.

  As Giddings jogged to the Bronco sideline, Parcells seethed. “I wanted to kill Giddings,” he recalls. Not waiting for his player to reach the bench, Parcells charged toward him. Inches from the player’s face mask, the coach screamed, “How many goddamn times do we have to practice something?!”

  Giddings looked down at the ground.

  “What does it take for you to learn?”

  Giddings remained silent.

  “Goddamn it,” Parcells screamed. “I went over this with you.”

  When the two men got back to the bench, Parcells continued his expletive-filled rant until Dean Pryor walked over to his assistant. “Leave the guy alone, Bill.”

  “But Coach, we worked on the damn play a hundred times in—”

  Pryor, voice raised, cut Parcells off. “Well, you obviously didn’t go over it enough, because he didn’t get it.” The teachable moment was the first time that Pryor had ever scolded his assistant, and it happened in front of a bench full of players.

  “That cut like a knife to the heart,” Parcells remembers. “But it was one of the best lessons I ever learned.” Regardless of the mistake made by a player, his coach shared responsibility for any lack of execution. The onus falls on the coach to foster an environment conducive to learning—and retaining—instruction. Over the decades, Parcells would convey this same lesson countless times to his coaches when they blamed a player for not following instructions.

  Fast-forward almost forty years after “The Lesson.” NFL legend Bill Parcells is coaching the Dallas Cowboys, when Jack Giddings telephones to touch base. Parcells doesn’t even say hello.

  Knowing that it’s Giddings after a receptionist transfers the call, Parcells asks, “How come you didn’t cover the tight end?”

  Giddings retorts, “You didn’t go over it enough.”

  “We went over it six or eight times.”

  “I needed eighteen times.”

  The former Hastings Broncos coach laughs, but in fact Parcells’s painstaking approach may have overwhelmed Giddings. The rookie coach didn’t yet realize that expounding on every complex variation of a play, and how to defend each one, was often unnecessary and even detrimental. “Time and trouble,” Parcells says, “have taught me that there is a fine line between what a player can handle under pressure and what he can’t.”

  Despite the loss to Nebraska Wesleyan, Hastings won its next four games. Parcells’s defense proved stingy, especially against the run: the Broncos were allowing offenses only an average of roughly one hundred yards. With two games left in the season, Hastings remained ranked among NAIA teams.

  In a contest with postseason ramifications, the Broncos played a home game against their other rival, Kearney State. The Lopers were 5-1, averaging 43 points in three previous games. Parcells’s unit faced a formidable offense anchored by its top player, lineman Randy Rasmussen. One of three NFL players in Kearney State history, Rasmussen would be a Jets starting guard in Super Bowl III.

  In a hard-fought affair, the Lopers defeated Hastings, 30–20, squelching any chances of the Broncos appearing in the Mineral Water Bowl. By far the most despondent member of the Broncos, the voluble defensive coach turned mute and ashen-faced. Pryor’s spouse noticed that her husband’s defensive assistant looked physically ill after the game. “My wife didn’t think Bill would stay in coaching,” Pryor recalls, “after the way he reacted to that game. It hurt him so bad to lose.”

  Parcells’s mood improved after Hastings won its season finale to finish 7-2, a winning prelude to his coaching career. After the final game, Parcells and Judy packed their modest belongings into a six-by-eight U-Haul trailer and set off on the return trip to Wichita.

  3

  The Hastings job wouldn’t come open again until nine months later, in the fall of 1965. Given the paltry salary and the impending arrival of a second daughter, Dallas, returning to Hastings seemed unlikely. Parcells fantasized about landing a coaching gig that paid a living wage, but given his limited connections, this seemed far-fetched. Once again his thoughts turned to law school. As the son of an attorney, Parcells was confident about his chances at obtaining a Juris Doctor, but he figured that he should bolster his academic credentials with graduate classes at Wichita. Uncertainty about his ability to afford law school revived another option: returning to Pizza Hut. Though disappointed by his departure, the restaurant’s executives had left room for Parcells to return.

  “I had to do something to earn a living,” Parcells recalls. As he mulled over his options, the head-coaching dominos that would shape his next several years brought news of an opportunity. After a 4-6 season at Wichita, Marcelino Huerta, the Shockers coach who took over before Parcells’s junior year, was dismissed. Huerta was replaced by one of his assistants, George Karras, who caught wind that Parcells was back in town and contemplating grad school after a brief coaching stint. Some Shocker boosters urged Karras to hire the school’s former defensive force.

  Karras made Parcells an offer he couldn’t refuse: a full-t
ime coaching job, overseeing the defensive line and assisting with the linebackers. When word eventually trickled east to Oradell that Duane “Bill” Parcells, its high-strung former star, was embarking on a coaching career, Richard O’Toole, who had played football three years behind Parcells at River Dell High, was one of the residents bemused by the development. “Bill was a rare bird,” recalls O’Toole, who played football for Brown University. “When I heard he was getting into coaching, I remember thinking he was heading into oblivion. I mean, what were the odds [of stardom]?”

  The Dallas Texans were charter members of the AFL in 1960, the same year that the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys came into existence. Both teams played their games in the Cotton Bowl while attempting to become the main pro football attraction in town. Although the Texans captured the AFL championship in 1962, they struggled to draw fans, even more so than their crosstown rivals. So owner Lamar Hunt relocated to Kansas City in 1963, changing the franchise’s name to the Chiefs.

  In the summers of 1965 and 1966, Parcells and one of his colleagues, Lew Erber, made the relatively short trip to Liberty, Missouri, where the Kansas City Chiefs held training camp at William Jewell College. The two Shocker assistants showed up to watch a pro team run its practices. Coached by Hank Stram, the Chiefs were among the best teams in pro football. And Parcells discovered teaching methods by observing his sessions, focusing on how the future Hall of Fame coach and his staff taught technique. “When you watch another man coach,” Parcells says, “you come away with something.”

  Tom Cahill left River Dell High School in 1959, the same year Bill Parcells graduated, after being hired by Army’s athletic director, Earl “Colonel Red” Blaik, to coach freshman football and baseball. The development was quite a compliment to Parcells’s ex–football coach.

  Red Blaik had been one of the most influential coaches in college football while guiding the Black Knights from 1941 to 1958. His team captured consecutive national championships in 1944, 1945, and 1946, but his impact went beyond a 121-33-10 record that included six undefeated seasons. Blaik mentored scores of assistants who went on to become successful coaches, including two future legends, Sid Gillman and Vince Lombardi. He was among the first college coaches to implement a two-platoon system, with one unit playing strictly offense and the other defense. Blaik also pioneered using game film to chart an opponent’s tendencies, examining every snap.

  In May 1966, Blaik elevated Cahill to head football coach after Paul Dietzel, discouraged by the institutional constraints of coaching at Army, left abruptly for South Carolina, taking five assistant coaches with him. Given a one-year contract, Cahill scrambled to fill several vacancies. The obscure head coach and his new staff, however, guided the Black Knights to a surprising mark of 8-2, capped by a victory over archrival Navy. Both losses came against nationally ranked teams, Notre Dame and Tennessee. More important, Cahill had led Army to its best season since Blaik’s 1958 team went undefeated. The development was a dramatic turnaround after two seasons slightly under .500. Cahill was named college Coach of the Year, and rewarded with a multi-year extension, which also covered most of his staff.

  Nevertheless, Bob Ward, Cahill’s defensive coordinator, who doubled as the unit’s line coach, accepted the top job at Maryland, his alma mater. One of the best linemen in Terrapin history while playing both ways from 1948 to 1951, Ward succeeded Lou Saban.

  Knowing Cahill’s need for a replacement entering the 1967 season, Mickey Corcoran telephoned his former basketball lieutenant. “I’ve got the perfect guy for you.”

  On hearing Parcells’s name, Cahill reacted with silence. He knew firsthand that Parcells had been one of the best and smartest athletes in Bergen County, and his brother, Don, had graduated from West Point in 1965 after three seasons playing football for the Black Knights. But Cahill was also familiar with Parcells’s hyper personality. The coach had flashbacks of the hotheaded forward who kicked basketballs when things didn’t go his way, and the cocksure quarterback who occasionally ignored sideline instructions. He could only assume that Parcells, twenty-five, lacked the maturity to coach, especially at a program like Army’s, which emphasized leadership and disdained recalcitrance.

  After the brief pause, Cahill said, “Bill Parcells? Gee, I don’t know. Why do you think I should hire him, Mickey?”

  Corcoran responded incredulously to his fellow Irishman. “Why? Do you have to ask, Tom? Billy’s one of us! He’s a Jersey guy!”

  Cahill wasn’t convinced, so he mulled things over for a few days while Corcoran continued to prod. Finally, he agreed to take a chance on his former quarterback, naming Parcells Army’s new defensive line coach. The team’s youngest assistant, Parcells would be among colleagues who possessed extensive experience, in sharp contrast to his situations at Hastings and Wichita.

  Just before the beginning of each season, Army’s coaches spent two weeks on a retreat at Bull Pond, a fishing camp in a mountainous area eight miles southwest of campus. The tradition had begun in the 1940s, when Red Blaik arranged the getaway for his staff, some military brass, and a handful of sportswriters like the renowned Red Smith of the New York Herald Tribune. From late July to early August, the campers slept in a two-cabin compound that included a mother lodge. They gathered nightly to view team highlights and movies on a projector. Despite the emphasis on relaxing and bonding, substantial time was spent discussing the upcoming season.

  A perennial guest was Tim Cohane, the author and former sports editor of Look magazine. During the 1948 retreat, Cohane convinced Blaik to interview Vince Lombardi, a fellow Fordham alum and obscure assistant coach, for an opening at offensive line coach. Cohane had been the school’s publicist when Lombardi played for the Rams. The writer kept on attending the annual get-togethers even after Blaik retired as coach a decade later. Erudite, with a gruff personality, Cohane didn’t go long without lighting up a pipe or tucking into a glass of scotch.

  Parcells had always been intrigued by the written word. And with access to a top sportswriter, he wanted to exploit the opportunity to get pointers. One afternoon, Bill was getting ready to go for a swim in the pond when he spotted Cohane on a stationary raft alone, reading a book. Seizing the moment, Bill swam out to the barge and clambered on board.

  Parcells interrupted Cohane: “Tim, I want you to teach me to write.”

  Cohane glanced up at Parcells, grunted, and kept on reading.

  Parcells waited for a moment and reiterated: “Why don’t you teach me how to write?”

  Realizing Parcells’s sincerity, Cohane said, “All right, go back to the cabin and write me something about Bull Pond.”

  Parcells excitedly swam ashore and got to work. The writer wannabe used several fancy adjectives from the strong vocabulary that had helped get him into Colgate. He put great thought into describing the nearby mountains and picturesque scenery in extensive detail. After a few hours, Parcells was satisfied with the two pages filled with purple prose.

  He returned, taking care to keep his handiwork high over his head as he side-stroked back out to the raft. Handing Cohane the handwritten sheets of paper, Parcells silently awaited Cohane’s verdict.

  Cohane grunted every few seconds as he read, which Parcells considered a bad sign. His pessimism was confirmed when Cohane shook his head, and said, “This is horseshit!”

  Parcells felt crushed.

  Cohane, still reading, added, “Now, it’s punctuated correctly and all, but it’s horseshit.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not telling me anything. Be precise, direct, and to the point. Why did you come here?”

  “To have a good time with my friends.”

  “So go to your cabin and don’t come back until you’ve written about that. The first sentence should say something like: ‘Bull Pond is a place where I go each summer with my friends.’ ”

  Parcells went ashore to revamp his essay. He kept the flowery sentences to a minimum before returning to the raft a couple hours later.

&nbs
p; Cohane didn’t grunt while reading Parcells’s second take, offering some tepid praise.

  “Well, that’s better.”

  It was a nonfootball lesson Bill Parcells would never forget: be straightforward in written communication just as well as with the spoken word.

  • • •

  Some of Cahill’s concerns about hiring Bill Parcells surfaced early, even as the Black Knights won their first two against Virginia and Boston College. Parcells drove his players harder than any other Army football coach. He concedes that he was “impulsive, aggressive—maybe a little off the reservation,” but fellow coaches reined him in.

  Still, Parcells’s strengths, including his high energy and ability to galvanize, trumped his flaws. Ultimately, Parcells’s unit performed well, reassuring Cahill that he had made the right decision in hiring his former quarterback.

  The players related to Parcells, who was only a few years older than some of the upperclassmen, yet his demanding style and captivating persona helped affirm his authority.

  Just as he had at his previous jobs, Parcells had a habit of lining up for snaps to aggressively demonstrate what he was looking for. Defensive linemen hung on to Parcells’s every instruction and strove to gain his trust. The Black Knights relished playing for him, despite his tendency to be harsh. “They aspired to be Bill’s guys,” recalls Steve Yarnell, a former defensive lineman who became one. “Bill had something about him: magnetism, personality. You’re drawn to him.”