Regardless of the team’s outcomes, Parcells felt increasingly conflicted about whether to return in 2007 for a final season. And he vacillated at night to his girlfriend.
“What should we do, Kel? Should I give this up?”
Bill Parcells Jr.’s New Orleans Saints were one of the NFL’s most surprising teams. At 8-4, New Orleans was thriving under the leadership of Sean Payton and quarterback Drew Brees, a league MVP candidate regularly posting gaudy numbers. With an upcoming showdown at Texas Stadium against his mentor and former team, Sean Payton had positioned the Saints to capture the NFC South. The improbable turnaround provided a salve to a region still slowly recovering from Hurricane Katrina. The captivating story played out as Sean Payton continued spreading the gospel according to Parcells. Payton put mousetraps in his players’ locker room, and awarded Louisville Sluggers to defensive players for pivotal haymakers in games.
Five Saints players had been on the Cowboys the previous year: wideout Terrance Copper, kicker Billy Cundiff, linebacker Scott Fujita, offensive tackle Rob Petitti, and linebacker Scott Shanle. Given the franchise’s transformation, Sean Payton’s players and coaches, including defensive coordinator Gary Gibbs, welcomed his constant channeling of Parcells. The clash between master and pupil leading two of the NFC’s best teams merited a Sunday Night Football appearance, but the Cowboys looked unready for prime time during a humiliating 42–17 loss, as New Orleans’s offense showcased Drew Brees plus tailbacks Reggie Bush and Deuce McAllister, amassing 536 total yards.
A native of Austin, Texas, Drew Brees tied his career high with five touchdowns despite spending almost the entire the final period handing off. His 384 passing yards gave him 4,033 on the season. With Sean Payton demonstrating dynamic play calling, third-year fullback Mike Karney scored the first three touchdowns of his career. In a sign of Payton’s respect for Parcells, New Orleans took a knee from Dallas’s 5 with about three minutes remaining on the clock.
Sean Payton and Bill Parcells shook hands on the field during an exchange that lasted only a couple seconds. Parcells told his former lieutenant, “Good job,” then grimly kept walking. Despite the embarrassing setback, Parcells deemed it an aberration and urged his players to move past it. They took heed, defeating Atlanta, 38–28, at the Georgia Dome behind two touchdown runs by Marion Barber in the second half.
The outcome, improving Parcells’s team to 9-5, kept the NFC East title in sight. And on Christmas, Dallas hosted the 8-6 Eagles with a chance to clinch the franchise’s first division title since 1998. However, Parcells’s team squandered the opportunity, losing 23–7, on its worst offensive production of the year. Romo collected a season-low 142 passing yards while the Eagles contained their nemesis, T.O., for the second time, despite his touchdown catch. Dallas’s hot streak near the middle of the season had assured Parcells’s team a playoff spot in a conference lacking superpowers. But with one game left, Philadelphia now controlled the division title, with its reward of opening the postseason at home.
Instead of exploiting their outside chance to capture the NFC East, the Cowboys ended their regular season with a stunning 39–31 setback against the punching-bag Lions at Texas Stadium. It was only Detroit’s third victory of the season, ending a seven-game skid. Despite amassing 321 passing yards, Romo struggled to hold on to the ball. He fumbled four times, losing it twice, confirming Parcells’s reluctance to anoint him based on his tiny body of work. Lions Quarterback Jon Kitna’s four touchdowns helped prevent his team from receiving the upcoming draft’s top selection, which went to the 2-14 Oakland Raiders.
In a repeat late-season collapse, Dallas allowed 132 points over its final four games. The Cowboys’ defense, after being stingy for much of the season, turned porous down the stretch, and the high-powered offense under an obscure backup turned Pro Bowl quarterback couldn’t make up for the slide. Stumbling into the playoffs at 9-7, Dallas earned a wild-card berth against the Seahawks at Qwest Field, perhaps the league’s loudest stadium.
Throughout his NFL career, Bill Parcells had constantly preached to his teams that by qualifying for “the tournament,” a championship lay within reach despite regular-season struggles. So the Cowboys hit the reset button January 6, 2007, in Seattle on a brisk, overcast afternoon with temperatures in the upper thirties.
For most of the first half, both offenses managed to produce only field goals, including a 50-yarder by Martin Gramatica, as Seattle took a 6–3 lead. Mike Zimmer’s unit returned to its early-season form, stifling tailback Shaun Alexander. Dallas delivered the matchup’s first touchdown moments before halftime on Tony Romo’s 13-yard pass to wideout Patrick Crayton. The completion capped a length-of-the-field drive, putting Dallas up 10–6. With about six minutes left in the third quarter Seattle reclaimed the lead on Matt Hasselbeck’s 15-yard completion to tight end Jerramy Stevens.
On the kickoff Dallas wideout Miles Austin, an undrafted rookie via Monmouth, dashed 93 yards to score, pushing the Cowboys ahead, 17–13. The play marked their first-ever kickoff return for a touchdown in the playoffs. Then, early in the final period, Martin Gramatica’s 29-yard field goal increased Dallas’s lead to 20–13. Midway through the fourth quarter, the Seahawks threatened to even the score by reaching Dallas’s 1. A defensive stand, though, derailed them after Hasselbeck’s pass fell incomplete on fourth-and-goal from the 2.
Tony Romo sought more breathing room on Dallas’s first snap, whipping a screen pass to Terry Glenn, but rookie cornerback Kelly Jennings raked the ball loose, causing a fumble into and out of the end zone for a safety. The Seahawks seized the momentum and a slim lead on the ensuing drive, when Jerramy Stevens produced another touchdown with a 37-yard reception. A failed two-point conversion kept the score at 21–20 with just over four minutes left.
In keeping with the theme of the wild-card game, Tony Romo orchestrated a drive from Dallas’s 38 to Seattle’s 2. His third-and-long pass to Jason Witten, who caught the ball before being hit by linebacker Lofa Tatupu, was initially ruled a first down. But Mike Holmgren’s challenge led to a reversal, making the situation fourth-and-1 from the 2 instead of first-and-goal from the 1.
So with 1:19 left, Bill Parcells sent in his kicking unit for the potential game winner, only 19 yards, or essentially an extra-point attempt. Romo remained on the field as the holder. Although the job generally belonged to backup quarterbacks, Romo kept it because he excelled at the duties: catching the snap and placing the pigskin on the ground with its laces facing away from the kicker, while slightly tilting the tip toward him.
Martin Gramatica, with his long hair flowing, jogged from the sideline as NBC flashed a statistic: over his career, Gramatica was 8 of 12 (67 percent) on lead-changing field goals in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter and overtime. Gramatica made the sign of the cross twice while Parcells, wearing a blue-and-white windbreaker, paced the sideline, staring at the ground. After several steps, he looked up, sighed, and licked his upper lip. No one stood near him as he zeroed in on Gramatica. With his arms crossed against his chest, Parcells ached for Dallas’s first playoff victory since 1996.
Tony Romo took a knee at the right hash mark of Seattle’s 10, waiting to put the ball. Despite catching a clean snap, Romo bobbled the pigskin while trying to place it down. Shocked at the sight, Gramatica aborted his windup. Chaos ensued. Romo regained control of the ball and sprinted to his left toward the corner of the end zone. Watching in disbelief, Holmgren thought the blunder might turn into a Cowboys touchdown, but cornerback Jordan Babineaux, trailing Romo, brushed aside Gramatica’s desperation shove before diving into the holder’s ankles. Romo went tumbling at the 2—one yard short of a first down.
Describing the action, Al Michaels, NBC’s play-by-play announcer, screamed, “Ooooooooooooh! And it’s fumbled by Romo. And then Romo’s gonna run to the end zone, and he’s gonna get tackled by Jordan Babineaux. Amazing!”
Color analyst John Madden added, “Unbelievable!”
Michaels agreed. “How crazy
is this?”
Surrounded by giddy Seahawks players, Romo sat on the gridiron tugging his face mask in disbelief, blood dripping from his left hand. A Cowboys offensive lineman trudged over to lift the forlorn quarterback.
Madden said, “There’s nothing automatic in football. The ball just slipped out of his hands. It was a good snap. He went to put it down, and it just slipped …”
Michaels added, “Wow.”
Madden commented, “Your whole season comes down to that.”
Instead of Dallas’s first playoff victory in a decade, one of the worst blunders in playoff history punctuated the team’s tailspin and heightened the uncertainty about Parcells’s future.
Anguish marked Bill Parcells’s face around midnight as he buckled his seat belt on the team plane for the three-and-a-half-hour flight to Dallas. Several minutes after takeoff from Sea-Tac Airport, Parcells draped a red blanket over the upper half of his body and shut his eyes. Sitting next to him, Jeff Ireland noted that Parcells seemed to be skipping his ritual of entering the cockpit early in the flight. After several minutes, Parcells cast the blanket aside and stared ahead. Ireland saw pain, and sensed that his boss’s mind was racing.
On the aircraft after a loss, Ireland would typically wait for Parcells to make the first remark. This time, Parcells stayed quiet much longer than usual before finally turning to Ireland. “Did you see that shit? Can you believe that shit?”
Ireland didn’t know how to respond. “Yeah, sorry, Coach. You’re right.” The reply ended their conversation for the rest of the seemingly interminable flight.
Parcells realized that details of the setback would remain etched in his mind for the rest of his life. One drawback of his preternatural memory was vivid recollections of losses from decades ago, some as far back as his high school years. “The games you remember most are on the negative side,” Parcells says. “I don’t know why. You’d have to speak to a psychologist about that. But the time you enjoy a win is minimal compared to how long you feel disappointed by losing.”
Sitting in silence next to Ireland, Parcells replayed the mishandled snap in his head several times, but he spent equal time on the play beforehand: third-and-7 from Seattle’s 8 with 1:53 left. Instead of calling a conservative play, Parcells allowed Romo to throw. After Jason Witten leaped to snag the ball at the 2, a referee initially signaled first down, spurring disbelief from the Seahawks and delight from the Cowboys. With Seattle down to its last timeout compared to Dallas’s three, new downs would have allowed Parcells to milk the clock before a gimme field goal. Or just as likely, Mike Holmgren would have let the Cowboys score in order to gain possession while down no more than seven. Midway through the flight, Parcells kept wondering whether Witten had been shortchanged by a measurement putting him eighteen inches shy of a first down.
Finally abandoning his exercise in self-administered torture, Parcells headed to the cockpit and commandeered one of the twin seats behind the pilots. Used to his presence, they commiserated with him for several minutes. During a quiet moment Parcells gazed out the cockpit window into the darkness. He sensed his career fading to black, and said to himself, “This is probably going to be my last football trip.”
Since Parcells joined the NFL in 1980, his off-season workload had multiplied. Downtime eventually almost disappeared thanks to the Senior Bowl, the combine, free agency, the draft, minicamps, and training camp. Coaches also needed to factor in time to deal with unpredictable developments, or as Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense, might call them, known unknowns.
Before the twilight of his NFL career, Parcells had especially relished his off-season football activities. But now at sixty-five, he had little appetite to prepare another team, especially given the chance of ultimately being undermined by a player flubbing a routine task in a game’s pivotal moment. “That was what got me,” he says, “because now it’s another year; we’ve got to go through a whole new cycle, when we were right there. We had a chance to win it and go to Chicago and beat the Bears. They weren’t that good.”
To guard against a snap decision from his mercurial partner, Jerry Jones set a distant February 1 deadline for a decision. Despite Parcells’s inclination to leave the Cowboys, he intended to deliberate, knowing that his third retirement would almost certainly be his last. Back at Valley Ranch he offered no sign of impending departure as he conducted discussions with the front office about free agency and the draft. The taskmaster also pressed his coaches about their off-season duties, with the Senior Bowl just a couple of weeks away.
“He was in it to win it,” Anthony Lynn recalls. “He worked like he was going to be coach of the Cowboys for the next decade.” Until Parcells made an official decision, however, Cowboys headquarters crackled with suspense. Hoping for his mentor’s return, Jeff Ireland refused to broach the topic. But when the chief scout discussed a schedule that included the 2007 draft, Parcells reminded him, “Hey, I might not even be here.”
Ireland replied, “Oh, yeah. Right, right.”
One clue to Parcells’s leanings could be found in the way he approached Cowboys coaches whose contracts were set to soon expire. Instead of insisting that they ignore other employment possibilities, Parcells emphasized the uncertainty of his situation. “I just don’t know if I have the energy to do this. I don’t know if I want to do this. I may want to get on with the rest of my life.”
David Lee informed Parcells that he had received an attractive offer from Arkansas head coach Houston Nutt to be his offensive coordinator. Parcells responded, “Let me call Houston Nutt right now. I want to ask him to give you another week, and then I’ll know for sure what I’m doing.” Obliging Parcells, Nutt gave Lee a one-week extension. When it expired on January 16, Parcells, still conflicted, walked into Lee’s office and said, “David, it may be in your best interest to take that Arkansas job.” The next day the Arkansas Razorbacks named Lee their offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, increasing speculation about Parcells’s departure.
On Friday, January 19, Ireland spoke to Parcells about the team’s arrangements for Senior Bowl activities, which were starting in three days. Parcells told Ireland that he would deliberate one last time over the weekend, while the chief scout headed off to Mobile, Alabama. On Sunday night Parcells and Kelly Mandart ate dinner at the Italian Cafe, a favorite spot across from their apartment building. Early on in the conversation, Parcells was upbeat about the Cowboys, emphasizing their pluses, which included a young franchise quarterback for a team on the upswing. He seemed bent on staying for the 2007 season, in order to attempt a Super Bowl run. Several minutes later, however, Parcells acted deflated, ticking off reasons to quit, including his team’s most recent flameout.
Kelly, exasperated, said to Parcells, “I can’t make this decision for you. Do you like the man that you are when you’re coaching?”
Parcells replied, “No, I don’t.”
“Well, there’s your answer.”
The table turned silent.
Before they left the restaurant, Parcells told Mandart that in the morning he would give Jerry Jones the news that he was quitting. The decision did not surprise Mandart.
In a striking parallel to his departure from the Patriots, Parcells was leaving a young, loaded team entering its prime, quarterbacked by a star twentysomething. “It was hard in only one respect,” Parcells says of his choice. “I knew this time when I did it, it was over for good. When you’re giving up your life’s work, it’s never easy. I love the game. The game’s been good to me. I’ve said it about players, but the same is true for coaches: eventually, you don’t want to go into the huddle anymore. The battle is over. You don’t want to fight. I was fighting for forty years.”
So on Monday, January 22, Bill Parcells arrived at his office characteristically early, and contacted Jerry Jones to come by for the verdict. When the Cowboys owner entered the room, Parcells cut to the chase. Showing no traces of vacillation, the head coach firmly conveyed his decision.
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“Jerry, I’m done. I just don’t want to go through another year.”
Jones replied, “Well, I kind of had an inkling this might be coming.” The two men, who had defied all predictions about an inevitable clash, weren’t sentimental during a brief exchange. The owner expressed gratitude for Parcells’s tenure; Parcells wished Jones and his organization well. As soon as Jones walked out, Parcells telephoned Jeff Ireland in Mobile. “Hey, I’m hanging up my cleats.”
Bill Parcells ended his Dallas tenure at 34-32, including losses in both postseason appearances, for an NFL career mark of 183-138-1. Beyond his own middling numbers, Parcells was leaving the team with a revamped culture and a roster containing the talent of a Super Bowl contender. But, he says, “It was time to go. It didn’t have anything to do with Jerry. It was me. The energy was gone. It comes back to looking at the man in the glass.”
31
Retirement kept football from intruding on Bill Parcells’s summers at “the happiest place on Earth.” Obliging Mike Tannenbaum, who’d been promoted to Jets GM in 2006, Parcells became an unofficial adviser to the team, but when the weather turned warm on the East Coast, he drove from Jupiter to Saratoga Springs, untethered to the NFL. His Colonial home stood on a cul-de-sac across a lake separating it from the Saratoga National Golf Club. As a member with an 8-handicapper, making him an above-average golfer, Parcells hit the links whenever the weather allowed. And just as conveniently, his off-yellow two-story mansion was also only a couple of miles from the Saratoga Race Course.
Quitting the Cowboys finally allowed Parcells to stay for the entire Saratoga meet, which ran for forty-two days starting in late July. Parcells sat with friends in a seasonal luxury box that contained five seats, not far from the one used by Buffalo Bills patriarch Ralph Wilson. Parcells owned horses with football-related names like Gameday News, a colt trained by his pal D. Wayne Lukas. He sees parallels between Thoroughbreds and gridders, describing the animals as athletes with their own personalities, attributes, and work ethics. Parcells also likens trainers to coaches.
Parcells Page 59