Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  The Cowboys aimed to use April’s draft to address the need for a workhorse tailback to replace Troy Hambrick. In a draft pool with several talented runners, Oregon State’s Steven Jackson was considered the best. But a knee injury during his final year with the Beavers caused him to slip toward the end of the first round. Pundits expected Dallas, which owned the twenty-second overall pick, to pounce on the all-purpose back. Instead, Jones agreed with Parcells on trading their first-round choice to Buffalo for a second-round selection, a fifth rounder, and a 2005 first-round pick. The Cowboys believed they could still land a franchise back in the second round by selecting the best runner still remaining.

  With the twenty-fourth overall pick, the St. Louis Rams selected Jackson, the first back drafted. And by the time Dallas’s turn came for the forty-third overall selection, four runners already had been picked. The Cowboys chose Julius Jones, a five-ten, 210-pounder out of Notre Dame.

  But his Cowboys career, notwithstanding flashes of brilliance, would be hampered by injuries while Jackson turned into an elite NFL tailback. Dallas’s most productive player in its poor draft class would be a seventh-rounder, wideout Patrick Crayton of Northwestern Oklahoma State. Another seventh-round pick, Rutgers cornerback Nathan Jones, would contribute as a solid reserve.

  Starting in the late 1990s, Jerry Jones had explored plans for a new arena, if not a significant renovation of Texas Stadium, the franchise’s home since 1971. Politics and financing issues had caused various possibilities to fall through in Dallas and the suburbs of Grapevine and Las Colinas. But in July 2004, seizing on momentum from the Cowboys’ playoff appearance, Jerry Jones announced negotiations with Arlington for a new stadium near the Texas Rangers’ ballpark. The city council agreed unanimously on a referendum for tax increases to collect half the stadium’s projected cost: $325 million. Voters soon approved raising taxes on car rentals, hotel occupancy, and retail sales to help construct the world’s largest domed arena, and the NFL’s most extravagant building. Cowboys Stadium was expected to open in time for the 2009 season.

  Jones had initially conducted preliminary talks with Arlington during the 1990s, but Parcells’s inaugural year in Dallas helped the owner seal the stadium deal. Parcells and Jones “needed each other at the same time,” says John Lucas, the Cowboys’ player counselor during Parcells’s tenure, who ran substance-abuse treatment centers in the Houston area. “You lose your house, you want to get it back. Sometimes you have to bring somebody in to get your house back.” Cowboys Nation exuded confidence about getting back to the playoffs; all of Bill Parcells’s previous NFL teams had shown tremendous improvement in his second season.

  Aiming to build on Dallas’s turnaround season after giving Quincy Carter more weapons while starting to phase in a 3-4 defense, Parcells opened training camp on July 31 in Oxnard, California. The change marked the team’s return to the Los Angeles area, where for twenty-seven years Tom Landry’s Cowboys had held camp in nearby Thousand Oaks; in 1990, one year after Jerry Jones purchased the franchise, he switched camp to Texas, with the thinking that sultry conditions would better prepare players.

  But Parcells’s opinion factored into a switch from San Antonio to the coastal city thirty-five miles west of Los Angeles. Although the Alamodome provided air-conditioning, Parcells favored a balmy climate for camp, to reduce the risks of dehydration and allow more repetitions as athletes played themselves into shape. So the Cowboys stayed at Marriott’s Residence Inn in Oxnard, and practiced on two gridirons near a golf course.

  Jerry Jones always remained conscious of the bottom line. So both sides of the fields at Oxnard were dotted with oversized signs from the team’s sponsors: Deja Blue, Ford, Miller Lite, and Tostitos. Throngs gathered behind fences that offered optimal views of the advertisements as much as the action.

  Only five days into a tough yet uneventful camp, Bill Parcells and Jerry Jones shocked the NFL by releasing Quincy Carter. The move ended his Cowboys career at 16-16, including the postseason. During an August 4 press conference, Jones described the move as “team policy, Bill’s philosophy, and what we are about.” Given the NFL’s confidentiality rules on substance abuse, such cryptic remarks, echoed by Parcells, indicated that the quarterback had failed a drug test.

  In early July, Carter had checked into the John Lucas Treatment and Recovery Center in Houston, and then followed up by seeing a drug counselor. Nevertheless, shortly before camp, the quarterback reportedly tested positive for marijuana. Another failed urinalysis would have resulted in a mandatory four-game suspension, a risk the Cowboys decided not to take. Looking back, Parcells believes that the addition of Testaverde adversely affected Carter’s psyche. “This guy was afraid of success,” he says. “That’s the only way I can put it. Black Dallas Cowboys quarterback, the first in history. He got his team into the playoffs and was as smart as a whip.”

  Parcells elevated Testaverde to the starting role, citing the eighteen-year veteran’s experience. Given Jerry Jones’s investment in Drew Henson, the former third baseman became Testaverde’s primary backup. More significant, it would turn out, the bombshell kept Tony Romo from being waived due to a logjam at quarterback.

  • • •

  Quincy Carter’s stunning departure haunted the team far beyond training camp. Typically playing from behind because of defensive struggles, the Cowboys lost seven of their first ten games, upending their postseason goals early. Despite Testaverde’s preternatural throwing arm, his lack of mobility behind inconsistent protection often made the forty-one-year-old look his age. However, the biggest discrepancy between this season and the last lay in the defense, hampered by the loss of safety Darren Woodson to a herniated disc in his lower back, and the free-agency departure of cornerback Mario Edwards. While dropping to 3-7, the Cowboys suffered four losses by at least 20 points, underscoring their poor play.

  Meanwhile, every Monday, Larry Lacewell was attending meetings with the team’s defensive assistants and scouts in a role that had been welcomed by Cowboys head coaches dating back to Jimmy Johnson. Lacewell’s background made him a guru of the 4-3, although he also possessed good knowledge of the 3-4. Two of Parcells’s defensive coaches were former college players under Lacewell: linebackers coach Gary Gibbs at Oklahoma, and defensive-tackles coach Kacy Rodgers at Tennessee.

  Several of Parcells’s inherited assistants admired Lacewell for his football intellect, passion, and storytelling flair. Lacewell was increasingly troubled by Parcells’s incorporating elements of his favored 3-4 scheme while still using the 4-3 as the base defense. Jones’s consigliere blamed the approach for some of the unit’s issues. He sensed that several of the coaches shared his outlook but were afraid to speak up. Exasperated, in one meeting of defensive assistants Lacewell blurted, “Bill keeps screwing up the defense!”

  Word reached Parcells, angering him. He complained to Jerry Jones that the defensive coaches seemed to be more influenced by Lacewell than the head coach, undermining his authority. Lacewell says, “I was guilty of saying it, and as a head coach I wouldn’t have liked it either. But it was the truth. Bill probably should have fired me that moment—or tried. I don’t blame Bill for our conflict. I probably created much of it.”

  Their discord stemmed from opposing philosophies, extending to the scouting department. Parcells had graduated from the bigger-is-better school of thought, and Lacewell had experienced success with small yet explosive players, especially as a college coach. “Who’s right?” asks Jeff Ireland. “Lacewell was part of the Cowboys’ Super Bowls, but he was also part of some 5-11 teams, which is the reason Bill was there. We had been great on defense, but they didn’t share the same vision, and Bill felt like he was fighting that a bit.”

  The sixtysomethings took disparate approaches to constructing a draft board, too. Lacewell, sixty-seven, targeted players purely based on scouting grades, while the sixty-three-year-old head coach put more value on size, character, and other intangibles. Parcells had learned from Bucko Kilroy to limi
t, if not eliminate, players who failed to meet the team’s standards, using the maxim “Well, they’re good, but they’re not good for us.” Or, as Tom Landry once warned him, “Bill, do not draft exceptions, or pretty soon, you’re going to have a team full of exceptions.” Parcells believed that the Cowboys’ personnel setup kept their scouts from finding players that fit the head coach’s philosophy.

  The differing mind-sets inevitably caused Lacewell and Parcells to butt heads in the draft room. Seeing himself as the most independent-minded voice in Valley Ranch, Lacewell often questioned Parcells’s assessments when they went against the majority, and Lacewell didn’t hesitate to tell Jerry Jones when he felt that Parcells was off base.

  Lacewell’s attitude had reversed since the start of Bill’s tenure, when he had advised Jerry to give the new head coach carte blanche, but Lacewell explains that he had underestimated Parcells’s conviction on personnel assessments. “If there were four scouts saying, ‘I want this,’ and he was saying, ‘I want that,’ he didn’t yield to the four,” Lacewell says. “He believed his opinion totally. Bill enjoyed intimidating people, but he couldn’t do that to me. First of all, I’m older than Bill. I was a defensive coordinator before he had even started coaching. I didn’t need his recommendation to move up in the NFL. Frankly, I felt it was my role to challenge him. He had to be challenged, but he didn’t want that.”

  Parcells counters, “I felt like he was retired, but hadn’t announced it. His intentions were good, and he was close friends with Jones. But our philosophies didn’t mesh. He did not know the prototypes required for a 3-4 defense in the NFL.”

  Injuries had delayed rookie Julius Jones’s debut as a starter until November 21 at Baltimore, where the Ravens handed Parcells’s team its seventh loss, one more than the previous season. During the final period of that 30–10 setback, Dallas’s third straight, Testaverde took a hit that forced him out because of a sore shoulder. With the outcome decided, Drew Henson made his NFL debut, overcoming a fumble on his first snap to complete 6 of 6 passes, including a touchdown. Julius Jones finished with 81 yards on 30 carries against Baltimore’s punishing defense, anchored by über-linebacker Ray Lewis. Parcells showed little hesitation turning his rookie runner into a workhorse despite Jones having missed the first part of the season.

  Testaverde’s injury limited his practice reps heading into a Thanksgiving affair at home versus the Bears, whose starting tailback was Julius’s older brother, Thomas. With only one victory in the previous seven games, Parcells hesitated to name Drew Henson the starter, but Testaverde’s situation forced Parcells’s hand, to the delight of Jerry Jones and most Cowboys fans.

  Henson had last started in the Citrus Bowl on New Year’s Day 2001, when Michigan edged Auburn, 31–28, as he tossed two touchdowns without an interception. During player introductions on Thanksgiving, Henson drew the loudest cheers from the Texas Stadium crowd of 64,026. The applause turned deafening when Dallas took an early lead after the former Yankee prospect guided his team on a five-play, 62-yard drive, highlighted by Julius Jones’s touchdown gallop of 33 yards. However, during the rest of an ugly half, the only points came from Chicago’s defense: Cornerback R. W. McQuarters intercepted a pass by Henson and returned it 45 yards for a touchdown.

  With the contest tied 7–7 at halftime, a desperately needed victory hung in the balance. Henson had collected only 31 yards on 4 of 12 passing, so Parcells approached the twenty-four-year-old rookie and said, “Good job,” before adding that the nicked-up Testaverde would start the second half. Spotting the forty-one-year-old on the field for Dallas’s first offensive sequence, the home crowd booed and groaned. The sight also dismayed owner Jerry Jones, watching from his suite.

  Offensive woes for both teams continued with a scoreless third quarter, but early in the final period several shifty runs by Julius Jones helped advance the Cowboys to Chicago’s 5. Then Testaverde capitalized on the situation, tossing a touchdown pass to fullback Darian Barnes. Midway through the final period, Dallas’s rookie tailback added his second touchdown burst, a 4-yarder, to close out the scoring, 21–7.

  Julius Jones finished the game with 150 yards on 33 carries, while Testaverde went 9 of 14, helping the Cowboys halt their skid. Thomas Jones, who led Chicago with 94 yards running and receiving, embraced his younger brother on the field and whispered congratulations. Julius’s rushing total was the second-most by a rookie in Cowboys history. Mike Zimmer’s struggling defense held the Bears to 140 yards, the lowest output against Dallas since 1996. Nonetheless, Parcells’s decision involving Henson sparked the first signs of friction between Dallas’s owner and its head coach.

  Jimmy Johnson had warned Bill Parcells that their compatibility would require Jerry Jones to be careful in his public remarks. Minutes after the victory against Chicago, the “really surprised” owner second-guessed his head coach, though with some diplomacy. “We cannot let that potential escape,” Jerry Jones told reporters, alluding to Henson. “I would want to see us have a game like that, ideally with Julius Jones having the night he had, with a young quarterback in there.”

  At any other juncture in Parcells’s head-coaching career, such remarks would have provoked him into withdrawing from his owner regardless of the consequences. But having clashed with Robert Kraft proved beneficial to Bill Parcells during this second stint under a proactive owner.

  So he decided to remain respectful of Jones publicly and privately. Despite the setback, both men enjoyed disproving the notion that a clash between monster egos was inevitable. As was their habit, in the days following a game, the owner and head coach met to discuss the team, and they spent extra time sharing their perspectives on Drew Henson.

  Bill Parcells named Vinny Testaverde the team’s starter for the rest of the season, and this time Jerry Jones calibrated his public comments to echo Parcells’s rationale. The owner even publicly broached the improbable scenario of re-signing Testaverde to play the starting role at quarterback in 2005, at age forty-two.

  Jones and Parcells were able to navigate the land mines threatening their partnership partly because of a genuine friendship. “I found Jones to be a compassionate person, a trustworthy person,” Parcells says. “A handshake was good with Jerry Jones. He was running the show. There wasn’t any doubt about that. I was an employee; I was working for him. And he had a lot more experience with football than Kraft did when he bought the Patriots, so there was a stronger basis for communication.”

  The relationship also thrived because the two accomplished commanders found themselves learning new things from each other. Before Bill met Jerry he generally used conservative methods to manage his money; Charles Parcells had conveyed to Bill a thriftiness that remained with the sixtysomething. As a millionaire by the mid-1990s, Bill Parcells had largely ignored advice from his accountant, Mike Lanni, to diversify his portfolio beyond municipal bonds. Although Parcells invested in stocks, he adhered to the principles of Warren Buffett and owned large, concentrated positions in a few value stocks. Even when it meant missing out on substantial gains, Parcells focused on his savings. Through his partnership with Jerry Jones, Parcells discovered the advantages of financial risk-taking.

  Parcells explains, “If you told Jerry, ‘Give me $10 million this November, and by next November I’ll give you $12 million,’ he’d have no interest in that proposition. But if you said, ‘Jerry, you give me $10 million, and next year at this time, there’s a 15 percent chance you’ll have $100 million,’ he’s in. Now, I could never understand that, but that’s the kind of guy he is; he’s a risk-taker.”

  Over time, Parcells grasped the benefit of Jones’s approach, and found him to be one of the most astute businessmen he had ever encountered. When Parcells complimented Jones on high-risk deals that panned out, the former oil-and-gas baron replied with humility. “I’ve got two legal pads full of deals like that which didn’t work out, Bill. You want to see them, too?” But Parcells noticed that Jones’s risk tolerance helped generate revenue
that more than offset those failed endeavors. And the head coach soon caught a strain of venture capitalism late in life.

  Conversely, Jerry Jones learned things from Bill Parcells about structure and organization that the Cowboys had lacked during his fifteen years of ownership. For example, the club no longer relied on just one college scout assigned to a geographic area, making sure his evaluation was cross-checked. Jones also heeded Parcells’s advice to end any overlap in the personnel department between his college and pro scouts. After one conversation with Jeff Ireland, Jerry Jones told the scout, “Gosh, Bill has brought so much more to the Cowboys than just coaching. We’ve learned a lot from him.”

  The quarterback debate quickly took a backseat to Julius Jones’s virtuoso performances. He led Dallas to a 43–39 upset victory at Seattle on Monday Night Football by rushing 33 times for 198 yards, while scoring three touchdowns. The Notre Dame product became only the second player in NFL history, after Earl Campbell, to carry the ball at least 30 times in three consecutive regular-season games. Despite Steven Jackson’s thriving in St. Louis on limited opportunities behind the great Marshall Faulk, Dallas’s draft-day decision to drop twenty-one spots seemed solid. Julius Jones was among the Cowboys’ few bright spots as they finished 6-10, losing three of their last four games. Starting in only seven games, the rookie amassed 819 rushing yards while scoring seven touchdowns.

  Jason Witten looked even more impressive, emerging as a star in his second season. He snagged 87 passes, the most in franchise history by a tight end, equaling Keyshawn Johnson for the team lead with six scoring receptions. The team’s disappointing record bucked Parcells’s string of producing at least a three-game improvement in his follow-up season steering a team.