Ireland responded quickly, “You’re thinking of turning him into an offensive player.” Parcells nodded, pleased at his GM’s telepathic reply.
Since both Jeff Ireland and Tony Sparano were rookies in their high-pressure positions, Parcells encouraged them to lean on his expertise whenever they desired. His long-term goal was to put a new structure in place while using his personnel philosophy to revitalize the franchise. Parcells intended to gradually loosen oversight and retire, once he saw Ireland and Sparano taking Miami in the right direction. For the time being, Parcells cast himself as more of a guidance counselor than a micromanager. Parcells told Sparano, “Tony, I’m not looking over your shoulder. You take this staff, and you put it together.”
In one example of Sparano’s independence, the rookie head coach hired at least two assistants who Parcells felt were far from being ideal candidates. Still, Sparano chose to heed Parcells’s recommendation to make Dan Henning his offensive coordinator.
The football executive had hired one assistant before Sparano came on board: Ole Miss offensive coordinator David Lee as quarterbacks coach. The move showed Parcells’s ongoing respect for the ex–Vanderbilt signal caller, whose diligent work with Tony Romo had helped propel the gunslinger into stardom. Nonetheless, one thing Lee had done more than three decades earlier still bothered Parcells. After offering Lee the Dolphins gig, Parcells asked him in an irritated tone, “Why’d you get married the week before the Peach Bowl, anyway?”
Lee laughed. Seeing that Parcells was serious, however, he replied, “Well, Coach, we had the wedding planned for six months. Vanderbilt never went to bowl games.”
Early on, Bill Parcells delivered an introductory address to Dolphins players in the team’s auditorium. Among other comments meant to convey a new culture, he told the gathering, “I don’t want any punks. I don’t want any troublemakers.” Hearing those words, tailback Ricky Williams fully expected to be traded or released, a sentiment shared by many pundits and fans. The promising NFL career of the 1999 Heisman Trophy winner and fifth overall pick that year had been controversial, his career marred by multiple suspensions for marijuana use.
Two hours after Parcells’s inaugural speech, Ricky Williams got word that Bill Parcells wanted to see him, reinforcing the runner’s concerns. When Williams walked into Parcells’s office, the new boss opened the conversation without any pleasantries. “Do you feel trapped here? Are you just playing because you’ve got to play? Because you don’t have enough money? Tell me if you feel trapped here.”
Williams replied, “No, no. I don’t feel trapped, Coach. I play football because I like playing.”
Parcells’s response startled the runner. “Ricky, you can bounce back and do great things. God gave you the talent. If you’re not a lazy-ass, you can surprise everybody. Now, you can’t recoup all your abilities because you blew some of your best years, but you can thrive here.” Williams, who’d been diagnosed with social-anxiety disorder, felt inspired by the new regime’s desire to make him a key player. And despite the former Longhorn’s reputation as enigmatic, Parcells found him to be “stone-cold honest.”
In one of the NFL’s most infamous trades, Mike Ditka had relinquished all of New Orleans’s draft picks in 1999, plus first- and third-round choices in 2000, to Washington for the opportunity to select Ricky Williams. The athletic introvert experienced only modest success with the Saints, however, before being dealt to the Dolphins on March 8, 2002, for three draft choices, including two first-rounders. Williams then began to live up to his billing, leading the NFL with 1,853 rushing yards and scoring 16 touchdowns as Dave Wannstedt’s team went 9-7. He followed up with another strong season, with 1,372 rushing yards as Miami improved by one game.
But in 2004, Williams faced a four-game suspension plus a $650,000 fine when a drug test revealed marijuana in his system. Just two days before the start of training camp, the twenty-seven-year-old announced his retirement. After the abrupt departure of their best player, the Dolphins started 1-8, prompting Wannstedt’s dismissal. They finished with their first losing season since 1988, earning only four victories. Williams returned to the Dolphins a year later, and apologized to teammates before completing his suspension for drug use.
In February 2006, though, the NFL banned Williams for the entire season for violating its drug policy a fourth time. He turned to the CFL, playing that year for the Toronto Argonauts while the Dolphins retained his NFL rights. Then Williams failed another drug test just before the 2007 season, imperiling his NFL career. He won reinstatement from commissioner Roger Goodell in October of that year, but in his November 26 debut at Pittsburgh, Williams suffered a season-ending injury to his right shoulder, just days before Wayne Huizenga showed an interest in Bill Parcells.
Given that six years had passed since Williams’s masterful season in 2002, his value was questionable, but Parcells considered the five-ten, 230-pounder a better pure runner than the talented Ronnie Brown because of his sledgehammer, north–south style. And Tony Sparano felt that the smashmouth offense he planned on would benefit from having both tailbacks.
Lawrence Taylor lived in Pembroke Pines, Florida, less than ten miles away from the Dolphins complex, so when the team’s voluntary workouts commenced in March, Parcells asked L.T. to make an appearance in the team’s weight room. “Just cruise in there for a minute. Then I’ll let you go. You don’t have to say anything or do anything. Just let ’em see what somebody like you looks like.”
Dolphins players were exercising and chatting in the weight room one afternoon when Parcells entered with L.T. Even at age forty-nine, the former superstar appeared to be near his playing weight of 240, belying the sprinkles of gray in his facial hair. As Bill Parcells and Lawrence Taylor scanned the room, the Dolphins players seemed to increase the intensity of their workout.
L.T. whispered to Parcells, “We got any real players in here?”
Parcells replied, “I’m not sure.”
“Well, we better get some.”
Taylor’s choice of pronoun delighted his former coach. Parcells recalls, “He said ‘we.’ He was already in there with me.”
The two Giants icons spent a few minutes interacting with the Dolphins players. Linebacker Jason Taylor, the only player from the 1-15 team to make the Pro Bowl, was conspicuously absent from the voluntary session, angering Parcells. The thirty-three-year-old had secretly demanded a trade through his agent, insisting that he intended to play only one more season, and wanted to do so on a Super Bowl contender. So instead of attending team workouts, Taylor, who had two years left on his contract, participated in Dancing with the Stars, the ABC series that paired celebrities with professional ballroom dancers. The Dolphins linebacker had raised his national profile by finishing in second place with Edyta Sliwinska.
Parcells scoffed. “The bus station is full of these Hollywood wannabes. You want names? Jim Brown, O. J. Simpson, Joe Namath, Brian Bosworth. You think they were really successful in Hollywood? The most successful guys were Merlin Olsen and Fred Dryer.”
Two days later, Parcells bumped into L.T. at the Grande Oaks Golf Club, a few blocks from team headquarters. L.T. played golf there almost every morning, and Parcells happened to be at the establishment early, honing his swing before work. L.T. was with several friends, one of whom pointed to Taylor and said, “You know, Bill, this guy loves you. He’s told us so many stories about you.”
Parcells replied, “Yeah, well, I’ve got a few good things to say about him, too.” A few minutes later, as Parcells prepared to swing his club, L.T., still quick as a cat, snuck up behind Parcells and kissed his nape. Even before turning around, the Dolphins chief smiled, knowing the perpetrator’s identity. L.T. told Parcells, “I’ve got to go. We’re teeing off here at nine o’clock.” The intimate gesture remains a ritual, particularly when the two men haven’t seen each other for at least a few months. “It means a lot,” Parcells says. “That’s his way of telling me. ‘Hey, I love you.’ It’s a special thing to
me.”
For predraft meetings, Bill Parcells sat at a round table in the team’s conference room, along with Jeff Ireland, Tony Sparano, and several of their scouts. The bespectacled GM held a small black gadget attached to a Dell laptop that controlled video enlarged on a wall. Watching tape of the prospects, Parcells jotted his observations in a notebook, using a black pen and orange and yellow markers to keep his take color-coded, occasionally sipping from a cup of iced tea.
Video compilations for each prospect were often watched in silence, but sometimes they led to heated, healthy debates. One such meeting was under way when Jason Taylor chose to make his first appearance at the team’s complex since the regime change. After learning the location of the Dolphins brass, Taylor, on break from his Los Angeles–based TV gig, headed for the so-called war room. The franchise’s most recognizable player opened the door, smiled, and took a few steps inside.
Parcells glanced sternly at Jason Taylor before quickly returning his gaze to the monitor. Everyone else in the room followed suit; nobody spoke as the silent tape kept running. Unacknowledged, Taylor turned around and walked out, looking incensed. GM Jeff Ireland turned to Sparano and gestured with his head as if to say, “You’d better address this situation.” Sparano got up and stepped into the hallway to speak with the humiliated TV star.
Ireland recalls, “He walked in at the most inopportune time for a homecoming. Our purpose was to get through the draft meeting. If one of us needs to go pee, we run out and come back, ’cause we’re not stopping. The only time we do is when Parcells wants to break. Jason should have told us he was coming, so that we could do things the proper way.”
Parcells adds, “He’s a sensitive guy that’s used to getting attention, and if you don’t give it to him, he doesn’t like it. I don’t mean he’s a bad guy, but he has a sense of entitlement, and his ego gets bruised. He can’t take his feelings being hurt.”
Reporters soon got wind of Jason Taylor’s chilly reception, prompting newspaper articles about a rift between Parcells and the franchise’s most popular player. The media focused on Taylor’s decision to participate in Dancing with the Stars instead of attending voluntary workouts, and speculated on the possibility of his being traded. However, the real drama went undiscovered. While publicly professing his love for the franchise that drafted him in 1997 via Akron, Taylor had issued the Dolphins an ultimatum: unless they traded him, he would skip training camp or quit the NFL to pursue an acting career, leaving the team with nothing in return. The previous season, fans had voted the former third-round pick onto the Dolphins’ all-time team. Taylor, a pillar of the community, concealed the threats by operating through his agent, Gary Wichard.
Parcells believed that the thirty-three-year-old’s overriding goal was to secure one final jackpot before his NFL career ended, by playing for any team willing to provide him with a rich extension. Taylor’s current contract, averaging about $8 million annually, was set to expire after the 2009 season. Although the linebacker had double-digit sacks for the sixth time in his career, Parcells saw him as a player past his prime. During the early 1980s Tom Landry had conveyed to Parcells the wisdom of jettisoning such players a year too soon rather than a season too late.
The Dolphins chief, however, planned to keep Taylor until the franchise received good value from a suitor. Parcells said, “If I cut him today, he’ll sign a three-year deal with somebody else—even after all this dramatic bullshit that he’s not going to play. At the end of the day, he’ll have to choose whether he wants to earn his money or go on with a different aspect of his life. And if that’s the case, so be it.”
While plummeting to the NFL’s worst record in 2007, the Dolphins had used three quarterbacks who produced just a dozen touchdown passes among them. Only the Tennessee Titans had tossed fewer. So Miami’s new front office spent considerable time and resources analyzing the top three quarterbacks in April’s draft: Boston College’s Matt Ryan had earned distinction as the best passer in college, while Delaware’s Joe Flacco rated ahead of Michigan’s Chad Henne.
Bill Parcells’s due diligence included sending his GM, head coach, offensive coordinator, and quarterbacks coach on three trips to scrutinize each prospect in rigorous workouts. The executive vice president spent countless hours alone in his office reviewing film of every throw made by Ryan, Flacco, and Henne during their senior seasons. The Dolphins brass came away uncertain about Matt Ryan’s chances to be a franchise quarterback. While breaking Doug Flutie’s school record with 31 touchdown passes during his senior season, Ryan had finished with a troubling statistic: 19 interceptions, the second most in the nation.
Ultimately the Dolphins’ coaches and front office reached the consensus that there was not much difference in NFL potential among Henne, Flacco, and Ryan, so the Dolphins switched gears and used their top choice on Michigan’s star left tackle Jake Long, widely viewed as a future Pro Bowler, figuring they’d land a quarterback with one of their two second-round picks. The left-tackle position, which protected the quarterback’s blind side, remained one of football’s most important spots, and part of Miami’s 2007 struggles had stemmed from poor pass protection.
Parcells applied historical perspective in reaching the Dolphins’ decision: drafting an offensive tackle early contained the least margin for error, and a glaring mistake with a top pick meant salary-cap consequences that could last for several seasons. The first player drafted in 2007, quarterback JaMarcus Russell, had received a six-year, $68 million contract, including $31.5 million guaranteed from the Raiders after he held out of training camp. The LSU product would end up being released two seasons later as perhaps the biggest bust in NFL history.
The Dolphins removed any suspense involving the top pick of 2008 by signing Jake Long four days before the draft to a five-year, $57.75 million contract, including $30 million guaranteed. Parcells had taken a similar step with Drew Bledsoe in 1993 after deciding on the Washington State product instead of Notre Dame’s Rick Mirer.
When defensive end Chris Long of Virginia went second overall in the 2008 draft to St. Louis, the Atlanta Falcons took Matt Ryan, having come to a different conclusion from the Dolphins. The Boston College product would ink a rookie-record contract worth $72 million, including $34.75 million guaranteed, but by making Ryan the fourth-highest-paid quarterback in the NFL, Atlanta needed him to start—and produce—from jump.
To begin the second round, Miami selected Clemson defensive end Phillip Merling, factoring in Jason Taylor’s tenuous situation. Joe Flacco had been chosen in the first round, eighteenth overall, by Baltimore, so the Dolphins used the fifty-seventh pick to make Chad Henne their quarterback of the future.
Exploiting a strong arm at Michigan, Henne had finished as the storied school’s all-time leading passer. Another thing Parcells found appealing about the six-three, 230-pounder involved salary-cap flexibility: by lasting until the second round, Henne commanded a much smaller salary than that of Ryan or Flacco. He would sign a four-year deal worth $3.5 million with $1.4 million guaranteed. Parcells felt that most passers needed time to develop. Great ones like Tom Brady and Joe Montana had benefited from being middle or even late-round picks, avoiding the pressure to excel sooner than later.
In the fourth round, Miami drafted Utah State tackle Shawn Murphy, son of the ex–pro baseball slugger Dale. Three Dolphins selections in the sixth round brought the team Toledo tailback Jalen Parmele, Connecticut guard Donald Thomas, and Montana tailback Lex Hilliard. Miami’s final pick, defensive tackle Lionel Dotson of Arizona, came in the seventh round, but two undrafted players would turn out to be key contributors: Montana kicker Dan Carpenter and Hawaii wideout Davone Bess.
During the 2008 draft Miami exchanged proposals with several teams interested in acquiring Jason Taylor. Tony Sparano and Jeff Ireland preferred to move on from the disgruntled linebacker instead of dealing with a possible holdout in training camp, but dissatisfied with offers that went no higher than a third-round choice, Parcells counsel
ed against pulling the trigger. Preferring a first-round pick, Parcells said of his GM and head coach, “They just would like these problems to go away, because it makes things more comfortable for them. They haven’t yet learned that by acquiescing without getting what’s best for the organization, you’re really opening yourself to a lot more trouble.”
So after the two-day draft ended, the Dolphins stressed to the media that they planned to keep Taylor, whose leadership on the field they especially valued. In one of Parcells’s few public remarks as executive VP, he declared, “The only way Jason Taylor doesn’t play for the Dolphins in 2008 is if he retires.” Behind the scenes, Parcells disclosed the rationale for his statement. “With a new regime, you have to establish a little law and order. One of the first rules is that a player isn’t going to be allowed to shoot his way out of the place. If you let that happen, then you’ll have a parade. It’s monkey see, monkey do. Even if you wind up trading the player, you can always say, ‘Well, I changed my mind.’ Or, ‘It was an offer that was much better than we anticipated.’ Things like that.”
At 7 a.m., Tuesday, June 3, Bill Parcells spotted a Dolphins player already on the practice field: reserve wideout Derek Hagan stood alone, sweating in the early humidity while snatching pigskins every few seconds from a jug machine. Parcells walked to the sidelines and scrutinized the six-two, 210-pounder from about twenty yards away. Although Hagan snagged every ball, Parcells detected a fundamental flaw in his form, so after about five minutes, Parcells approached the third-year player, making him nervous.
“I’m going to tell you one thing you’re doing wrong while you’re catching the ball.”
The best way to catch the ball, Parcells said, is with the thumbs touching or barely apart. Parcells added that keeping your hands too far apart increases the chances for drops, a problem that had plagued Hagan since being a 2006 third-round pick via Arizona State. Hagan immediately heeded Parcells’s instructions, eliciting an “attaboy” from the executive VP, who then spent the next forty-five minutes going over other techniques, like arching one’s back on curl routes to provide crucial extra inches in fending off defensive backs. At the end of the impromptu session, Parcells teased Hagan. “Do I have to teach you every goddamn thing? Do you know anything at all?” Hagan, his nervousness evaporating, laughed.
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