Parcells

by Bill Parcells

  Dallas’s defense plummeted from being the second-ranked unit in points allowed to twenty-seventh, confirming Darren Woodson’s value. The injured thirty-five-year-old announced his retirement as the franchise’s all-time leading tackler, most coming on punishing hits. Woodson, perhaps the best safety in Cowboys history, ended up being the only player to experience both Bill Parcells and Jimmy Johnson. Having learned new things from Parcells even as a twelfth-year veteran, Woodson deeply regretted being unable to play more than one season under him. Woodson deemed Parcells a coaching mastermind.

  The team’s oldest player, Vinny Testaverde, accumulated 3,532 passing yards while throwing 17 touchdowns and 20 interceptions. But even with a rifle arm that was the envy of quarterbacks half his age, Testaverde’s best days were behind him. Drew Henson and Tony Romo were deemed too raw, so the franchise wanted another veteran signal caller to help reverse its course. An off-the-field issue also gnawed at the head coach: he could no longer tolerate the team’s chief scout. So Parcells approached Jerry Jones to tell him that Larry Lacewell’s presence had grown unbearable.

  The owner summoned his consigliere and chief scout into his office.

  “We can do this the hard way or the easy way.”

  Lacewell replied, “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, if we go the hard way, I fight Bill and you can stay. The easy way means you can retire.”

  “How did you know I wanted to retire?”

  Jerry Jones laughed. “Because of those two houses you’ve already bought in Arkansas.”

  Lacewell roared. “Hell, let’s make this easy. I’m outta here.”

  On January 5, 2005, Larry Lacewell announced his retirement after thirteen seasons in Dallas. One month from turning sixty-eight, Lacewell added that he would remain a part-time consultant while staying away from Valley Ranch. With Jerry Jones’s blessings, Parcells promoted Jeff Ireland to chief scout.

  “I’m not mad at Bill at all over what happened,” Lacewell says. “I don’t blame him. Shit, I was a head coach, too, so I understand. He was a very good coach. You write that down. But he wasn’t Bear Bryant. You write that down.”

  27

  Bill Belichick crossed his arms over his chest on New England’s sideline, watching the waning moments of Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville, Florida. His team held a three-point lead over the Eagles, who were backed up against their end zone on third down. When safety Rodney Harrison intercepted Donovan McNabb’s desperation heave with 17 seconds left, Belichick raised both hands, grinned, and then leaped a few times, pumping his right fist. Steve Belichick, bespectacled in a Patriots windbreaker and baseball cap, sidled over to his son; Little Bill, wearing his game-day hoodie, embraced his father as the Patriots celebrated their 24–21 triumph at Alltel Stadium, earning the franchise’s third Lombardi Trophy in four seasons.

  Hovering behind the Belichicks, linebacker Tedy Bruschi interrupted the moment by emptying a Gatorade bucket on them. Father and son released their hug, cringing and shivering from the cold, but nothing could dampen their joy. Bill Parcells was among the millions of TV viewers watching the moment on February 6. And his heart was tugged more than most because Steve Belichick, eighty-six, had lived long enough to witness his son’s crowning achievement.

  “I could see the pride in his dad’s face,” Parcells recalls.

  The Cowboys coach also felt sadness because his father, Charles, had died three years before Big Blue won its first Super Bowl. At the time Bill’s childhood friends remarked on how much Charles Parcells would have enjoyed witnessing the achievement. Bill Parcells never stopped wishing that his father could have been present for his defining triumphs.

  A few days after Super Bowl XXXIX, Big Bill sent a note to Little Bill, in his latest attempt at reconciliation. Parcells expressed happiness that Steve had been around to witness his son’s Super Bowl triumphs. But Parcells decided against mentioning his inner thoughts about Charles’s absences for Super Bowl XXI and XXV. Steve Belichick would die at home in Annapolis, Maryland, of heart failure on November 19, 2005, nine months after Parcells’s gesture.

  With Dallas’s quarterback situation unsettled, Bill Parcells again reached into his past, acquiring Drew Bledsoe on February 23, just one day after Buffalo had released the ex–Patriots star. The swiftness with which Bledsoe was signed to a three-year, $14 million contract indicated the strong mutual interest to reunite more than a decade after Parcells had drafted the bazooka-armed quarterback.

  When he was setting several passing records in his first four NFL seasons, Bledsoe had bristled at Parcells’s scathing style. As the years passed, however, the quarterback increasingly appreciated Parcells’s methods, an experience Bledsoe shared with many of the coach’s former players.

  NFL agent Brad Blank had twenty clients who played under Parcells. “Every one of them said it was hard,” Blank says, “but for some reason as soon as they were out of the league they gravitated back toward him, and told me, ‘This is the best coach I ever had. He got the best out of me.’ That, in my mind, makes him a genius when it comes to dealing with football players.”

  John Lucas, the Cowboys’ player counselor, adds, “I’ve spoken to more than a dozen guys who played for Bill, and they all said basically the same thing: ‘At the time I hated the experience, but he helped me become a man.’ ”

  During the 2001 season, Parcells had disarmed Bledsoe with a phone call when the 1993 top overall pick lost his job to Tom Brady. After New England dealt Bledsoe to Buffalo in 2002, Parcells made a follow-up call wishing him luck. That year Bledsoe delivered one of his best seasons, amassing 4,359 passing yards, to earn his fourth Pro Bowl appearance. But over the course of three years with the Bills he went 23-25, while showing too much inconsistency. However, the Cowboys, with two first-round choices and substantial cap space for free agents, envisioned Bledsoe helping to make them contenders.

  In early March, Jerry Jones paid a total of $29 million in signing bonuses for contracts worth $66.5 million to just three players: nose tackle Jason Ferguson, cornerback Anthony Henry, and right guard Marco Rivera. The Cowboys expected Rivera, who had made three consecutive Pro Bowls while protecting Brett Favre, to help the relatively immobile Bledsoe stay upright. As Jets chief in 1997, Parcells had drafted Ferguson in the seventh round. Despite being the eighteenth nose tackle chosen, he became a key reserve on Belichick’s stingy unit during Gang Green’s historic turnaround. And the following season, Ferguson seized the starting job at nose tackle, a difficult yet crucial position in Parcells’s 3-4.

  The Cowboys saw Ferguson and Henry bolstering their once-mighty defense, to which Parcells added yet another of his former players, cornerback Aaron Glenn, thirty-three. He intended to complete the installation of the 3-4 defense, free of an influential skeptic in Larry Lacewell. Former linebacker Carl Banks and ex–nose tackle Jim Burt agreed to help Parcells teach the scheme’s intricacies during training camp. Burt and Parcells had reconciled after their falling out in 1988.

  Dallas’s influx of top free agents transformed its roster, and the franchise awaited April’s draft to address more needs. Parcells’s staff also underwent significant changes after offensive coordinator Maurice Carthon departed to take the same position with new Browns head coach Romeo Crennel. Forced to reshape his staff, Parcells decided against giving Carthon’s title to anyone. Instead, Parcells named Sean Payton passing-game coordinator, and made the forty-one-year-old Dallas’s primary play caller. The striking move illustrated Parcells’s respect for his young lieutenant after only two years together. Parcells hadn’t ceded his play-calling role since 1993, his first season in New England, when Ray Perkins ran the offense.

  After having spent two years emphasizing to Payton the need to control the game’s tempo, Parcells trusted him with the offense. The two agreed on the approach of running the ball about thirty-five times per game and bleeding the clock, while helping to keep the Cowboys defense relatively fresh. Sean Payton’s new duties would
free Parcells to spend more time working with Zimmer on the 3-4.

  Parcells elevated tight-ends coach Tony Sparano to overseeing the offensive line as running-game coordinator. He also promoted quality-control assistant David Lee, who’d spent twenty-seven years coaching in colleges, to quarterbacks coach. Three new assistants also joined Parcells’s staff: Anthony Lynn, a running-backs coach with the Jaguars, accepted the same position in Dallas, taking many of Carthon’s duties. Todd Bowles came from the Cleveland Browns to guide Dallas’s secondary. And Paul Pasqualoni, Syracuse’s head coach for fourteen years, inherited Sparano’s former duties involving the tight ends.

  Before long, Anthony Lynn glimpsed a secret to Parcells’s success in creating a huge coaching tree. During staff meetings, the new running-backs coach took meticulous notes; seeing his eagerness to learn, Parcells started dropping by Lynn’s office to exchange thoughts.

  “A guy this brilliant values your feedback. He would pick your brain,” Lynn recalls. “But at the end of the conversation, there was a lesson in there. You thought you were giving him something, but he was really teaching you.”

  Lynn laughs at the recollection. The former special-teams ace had been a player or assistant under Wade Phillips, George Seifert, Mike Shanahan, and Jack Del Rio. “They’re all great coaches in my book, but when I got to Parcells I could see the difference,” Lynn says. “He’s a teacher, and you don’t have to beg to get lessons out of him. Other coaches know the game, but they don’t always go out of their way to teach it.”

  Despite being born and raised in Abilene, Texas, Jeff Ireland grew up a Chicago Bears fan because of his grandfather, Jim Parmer, the team’s director of college scouting from 1978 to 1985. During each of those summers, Parmer picked up his grandson in Abilene for long trips to colleges like Missouri and Oklahoma. And the pair sometimes slept in dormitories, where Parmer scrutinized soundless 16-millimeter tape. Young Jeff watched from the edge of his bed, dozing off after a few hours while his grandfather kept at it. The kid, who sometimes worked as a Bears ball boy, relished the scouting sessions.

  Jim Parmer had played halfback for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1948 to 1956, winning the NFL championships in each of his first two years, with Bucko Kilroy as his teammate. After his playing career ended, Parmer joined the franchise as a scout. Moving to the Bears, Parmer put his personal stamp on their roster, especially the 1985 team, one of the best in NFL history.

  Several years later, Jeff Ireland attended Baylor University, where he played placekicker. After graduating, Ireland broke into coaching, joining North Texas in 1992 to oversee its special-teams unit. He lost his job after two seasons when the entire staff was dismissed. Following a conversation with his granddad, Ireland decided to pursue scouting. He sent résumés to several NFL teams, working as a wildcatter for his father while awaiting responses. With Ireland receiving no sniffs, Parmer helped his grandson land a scouting job with the Indianapolis-based NFL combine. Jeff Ireland worked for the organization until 1997, when the Kansas City Chiefs hired him as an area scout. Then, in 2001, Larry Lacewell lured Ireland to the Cowboys with a better gig: national scout.

  While overhauling the way the Cowboys evaluated prospects in 2003, Parcells broke down his personnel philosophy with Ireland. Instead of having the team’s scouts simply find the best players, Parcells wanted the department to target talented prospects who fit with the head coach’s philosophy. One preference went beyond physical attributes: Parcells liked “beavers,” explaining their single-mindedness while cutting trees—in other words, players who shared his football passion.

  Parcells told Ireland, “Look, if I can just leave you with one thing, it’s my eyes. What do my eyes see?” In the 2003 draft, Ireland initially saw Tennessee junior Jason Witten as a weak blocker, but Parcells told his top scout to re-examine two specific games. After heeding the suggestion, Ireland came away seeing the tight end’s potential.

  He told Parcells, “That’s a totally different player as a blocker. Totally different.”

  The head coach smiled.

  Parcells admired Ireland’s football passion, work ethic, and conviction when it came to personnel assessments. Their first discussions about the 2004 draft sparked an argument over Iowa safety Bob Sanders. The Cowboys scouts had given him a first-round grade, but Parcells felt that Sanders’s five-eight frame made him too small for consideration. “He doesn’t fit our team. Take him off the board. You can eat peanuts off his head!”

  Ireland countered, “Who cares about that? He’s a good player; he’s a good kid. He’s explosive. He can cover.”

  When Jerry Jones sided with Parcells, the Cowboys removed Sanders from consideration, but the head coach respected his top scout for standing firm. Parcells recalls, “I was trying to get across to the Dallas scouting staff that I wanted prototypical players. They were bringing me exceptions. You get too many, then all of a sudden you have a team of exceptions. And I’m the one that has to coach those little guys.” The contrasting takes on Sanders would bear out during his eight-year NFL career. A hard-hitting safety, he made the Pro Bowl three times for the Indianapolis Colts while helping them capture the 2007 Super Bowl. But Sanders also became known for constant injuries; only twice did he make it through more than six games in a season.

  Despite the occasional disagreement, Parcells and Ireland generally saw talent the same way. The head coach trusted his top scout’s judgment, and took extra time to study film of prospects recommended by Ireland. With help from the new personnel chief, Parcells gained extensive knowledge of the roughly 120 players on Dallas’s 2005 draft board. Parcells once told Ireland, “I wish I’d have met you when I was younger. We would have had a helluva time. I’m sorry I came along so late, but your grandfather laid an egg, and it hatched thirty years later.”

  Jim Parmer died on April 20, 2005, only three days before Ireland oversaw his first draft, but the seventy-nine-year-old had lived long enough to watch his grandson earn the position of Dallas’s chief scout.

  With the Cowboys switching to a 3-4, the organization targeted outside linebackers and defensive ends who fit Parcells’s super-sized specifications. Dallas owned the eleventh and twentieth overall picks, providing a tremendous opportunity to land two top players for the new scheme. Jeff Ireland’s scouts were focusing on LSU defensive end Marcus Spears, and on Troy’s DeMarcus Ware, who was projected to be an outside linebacker after having played mainly defensive end.

  Spears entered the draft as a first-team All-American following his senior year under Nick Saban, Bill Belichick’s most successful disciple and a friend of Parcells’s. Spears had also excelled as a junior, helping LSU capture the national championship. DeMarcus Ware, perhaps the best defensive end in college, posted prolific numbers during four years at his small school in Alabama. The six-four, 253-pounder was expected to become an ideal rush linebacker in a 3-4 defense.

  Parcells considered Ware an attractive prospect, but saw Spears, a rugged, prototypical defensive end, as being integral to Dallas’s 3-4. During evaluation meetings leading up to the draft, Parcells raved about the six-four, 300-pound Spears. He insisted that the Cowboys choose Spears first, and use their second pick to land Ware. “People say that he wanted Spears instead of Ware. That’s not true,” Ireland says of Parcells. “He just wanted to make sure that he got Spears. Period. If it was at the expense of Ware, so be it. But he liked Ware a lot.”

  The consensus among Dallas’s scouts was the opposite. Having graded Ware markedly higher than Spears, they believed that the Troy product would definitely be gone by the twentieth pick. Seeking another trusted pair of eyes, Jerry Jones sent tape of both prospects to Larry Lacewell in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Then Jones visited his retired consigliere. Lacewell told him, “Jerry. There’s no question that Spears is good, but Ware might end up great.”

  The night before the draft, Jerry Jones and Jeff Ireland studied film together of Ware and Spears one last time. The session clinched the owner’s decision. The n
ext morning, Jerry and Stephen walked into Bill’s office for a closed-door meeting that included Jeff Ireland. Stephen Jones announced, “Coach, we’re going to pick Ware.” The verdict angered Parcells, who stayed upset for hours after the Joneses left his office. Ireland tried to calm him, suggesting he take a different perspective. “Coach, don’t look at it as Ware over Spears. It’s Ware and Spears. I think we can get both of ’em.”

  Parcells responded, “I don’t think you’re right, but we’ll see.”

  Ireland’s confidence stemmed from familiarity with the needs of every team; his only worry involved San Diego, with the twenty-eighth pick, which might try to leapfrog Dallas via a trade to snag Spears. Inside the Cowboys draft room during the first round, Ware’s availability after the tenth pick prompted cheers, smiles, and hand slaps. However, Bill Parcells sat stone-faced, stewing at having been overruled. Nine picks later Marcus Spears was still there, prompting Parcells’s first smile all afternoon. He leaned over and whispered to Ireland, “You’re just lucky!”

  Dallas used its second-round pick on another powerful, hard-hitting linebacker, Tennessee’s Kevin Burnett. Lacking a third-round choice, the Cowboys put two fourth-round picks to good use: tailback Marion Barber of Minnesota, the team’s first offensive player, and another defensive end in Chris Canty of Virginia. A pair of sixth-round picks brought Ball State defensive back Justin Beriault and Pittsburgh offensive tackle Rob Petitti. Using six of eight selections on defensive players, Dallas concluded the day by selecting defensive end Jay Ratliff of Auburn in the seventh round.

  Dallas’s 2005 draft haul would be among the greatest in franchise history, and the NFL’s best in several years. It formed the nucleus of a perennial playoff team for almost a decade. Ware ended up being the best pick by any team that year, setting the Cowboys’ all-time record for sacks while occasionally drawing comparisons to Lawrence Taylor. Despite lasting until the 224th choice because he was undersized at his position, Jay Ratliff became one of the NFL’s premier nose tackles, anchoring Dallas’s defensive line for eight years, four as a Pro Bowler.