Belichick

by Ian O'Connor

  In only two seasons, Parcells had turned a 1-15 hoax of a team into a serious contender to win it all. The Patriots of Pete Carroll were holding their own, reaching the playoffs in his first two years, after 10-6 and 9-7 regular seasons, but the four draft choices they had acquired in the Parcells trade (linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer, receiver Tony Simmons, running back Sedrick Shaw, and offensive lineman Damon Denson) would start a combined 28 regular-season games in their NFL careers. To make matters worse, the Jets had pilfered New England’s star running back, Curtis Martin, by way of a poison-pill clause in the $36 million contract Parcells offered the restricted free agent.

  Kraft had desperately wanted his former coach to fail in his new job. In fact, after Giants coach Jim Fassel won the 1997 NFL Coach of the Year award, he ran into the New England owner at the league meetings. “Kraft gave me a big hug,” Fassel recalled, “and said, ‘Man, you made my life. You got Coach of the Year, and Parcells was across the river.’ Kraft hated Parcells. Hated him.”

  The border war had boiled over by the time New England arrived in the Meadowlands for its fifth meeting with the Bill Parcells Jets, who had won three of the first four against the Pete Carroll Patriots. Kraft had feared that Parcells would prove to be worth more than a draft pick at the top of the first round and, much to his dismay, his fears were being confirmed. The Jets had held a 10–0 lead in the third quarter of the AFC Championship Game at Denver eight months earlier before John Elway and Terrell Davis took over, and the visiting team starting playing loose with the ball in the Mile High winds.

  This was going to be the Jets’ year, finally, more than three decades after Joe Willie Namath won their one and only Super Bowl title by honoring his guarantee of an upset victory over the mighty Baltimore Colts. Elway had retired. Parcells had fortified his win-now time by signing a parade of older free-agent veterans. Big Bill was going for it, and if there was going to be a rebuilding price to pay with the roster down the road, Little Bill, his contracted successor, would be the one to pay it.

  Belichick’s former quarterback in Cleveland, Vinny Testaverde, was returning from the best season of his career, and he was inspired to try to win a ring for the memory of his father, Al, who had died of a heart attack on Valentine’s Day. The Jets were loaded on offense, with Testaverde and Martin in the backfield and former No. 1 overall pick Keyshawn Johnson on the outside. They had a defense that had allowed a mere 266 points the year before, second best in the league, and they had an unmatched power couple on the sideline in Parcells and Belichick.

  But the Jets couldn’t even get through the 1999 opener with their season intact. They were driving on the Patriots in the second quarter when Martin fumbled the ball and Testaverde made what appeared to be a benign move to try to recover it. He collapsed in pain and immediately grabbed at his left ankle. His Achilles tendon had snapped, and he knew it the second it happened. Testaverde pounded his fist into the turf. He was done for the year, and so were the Jets. “It was like a piece of every one of us was being carted off the field with him,” Martin said.

  The Jets lost six of their first seven games before a meaningless 7-2 close to the season left them out of the playoffs and, at 8-8, in a last-place tie with the Patriots in the AFC East. The Testaverde injury had made the evolving Parcells-Belichick relationship more relevant than the games.

  That relationship had appeared strained as early as 1997, their first season together with the Jets. One prominent starter said that Parcells berated Belichick in front of the players, leaving the defensive coordinator muttering under his breath. Nobody was surprised. In their post-Giants time together, Big Bill had something new on Little Bill. Parcells wasn’t just the boss anymore. He was the boss who had watched his most valuable subordinate fail in his attempt to be the boss in Cleveland, a truth that gave Big Bill a bigger hammer to wield.

  “Oh, yeah, Parcells berated Belichick right in front of me one time,” recalled Ray Mickens, reserve defensive back. The Jets were running through their Friday dress rehearsal for a Sunday game, and Big Bill expected things to go smoothly after some long hours on the practice field.

  “He got the red ass on Friday,” Mickens said, “if anyone made a mistake . . . We made four mistakes in a row [on defense], and on all four Parcells didn’t say anything. He just sat over there. He starts turning red on the first and second mistake, and the next play comes and . . . he gets redder. After the fourth one, he just goes off on Belichick, just literally. I cannot even say what he said—I don’t want to repeat it. He just went off in front of all of us on Belichick. I’ve seen that happen a lot from Parcells. He’s tough on all his coaches, players, the trainers . . . It wasn’t a personal thing. It’s just the way it was.”

  Belichick weathered the storms, as always, and made his unit better, as always. Mickens said he had no idea how much he didn’t know about football until he met Little Bill. Belichick was the first coach who told him to sit in on receivers meetings to learn how they’re taught to beat defensive backs. The first coach who told him to survey the offensive backfield at the line of scrimmage, and to understand how he could find clues to the receivers’ pass patterns in the positioning of the running backs.

  Neil O’Donnell, starting quarterback in ’97, had competed against Belichick’s Browns for five years in Pittsburgh and found him to be an extremely difficult defensive coach to beat, especially on third down. O’Donnell recalled that when they were co-workers on the Jets, Little Bill was a quiet, even-keeled assistant who liked to jot down notes to himself on a piece of paper. The quarterback also thought that on the practice field, Belichick tried to keep his distance from Parcells, whose verbal assaults were relentless, especially those directed at his offensive coordinator, Charlie Weis.

  “Belichick would just go on his way,” O’Donnell said. “He wouldn’t change. He wouldn’t let Parcells rattle him. You hear so much about how close they were, and I really question that. It was a weird relationship between Belichick and Parcells. They didn’t really interact much. Parcells was in meetings with the defensive side of the ball, but you never saw them even on the practice field talking much . . . They didn’t seem close at all.”

  One Jets executive who had extensive dealings with Big Bill and Little Bill confirmed that the two were not what anyone would describe as friends. “I think they tolerated each other because they thought each other was pretty good,” the executive said, “and because Parcells saved Bill’s career after he was fired in Cleveland.”

  But there was tension between Belichick and his crew from Cleveland and Parcells and his loyalists, like Dan Henning and Dick and Todd Haley. None of this was helped by Big Bill’s talent for ripping into Little Bill at the drop of a headset. David Halberstam reported in The Education of a Coach that a successful Belichick blitz in one game—a call at first opposed by Parcells—inspired Big Bill to scream into an open microphone, “Yeah, you’re a genius, everyone knows it, a goddamn genius, but that’s why you failed as a head coach—that’s why you’ll never be a head coach . . . some genius.” Halberstam described the barrage as “deeply shocking” to all the coaches who heard it and as “the cruelest words imaginable.”

  One scout heard something similar during a Jets practice, when a defensive breakdown compelled Parcells to shout at Belichick, “Dammit, this is why your ass got fired in Cleveland.” Big Bill and Little Bill were wildly different people, and the gulf between them was growing wider by the week.

  Belichick didn’t want to be Parcells’s assistant for much longer. He didn’t want to be anyone’s assistant for much longer. He was doing some things behind the scenes to improve his odds of succeeding as a head coach the next time around—if there was going to be a next time—and media relations was part of his private rehab program. Just as he had with the Giants in an earlier life, Belichick established good working relationships with some of the beat writers covering the Jets. Parcells had made his assistants off-limits to the media, if only to reinforce his authoritarian ru
le and to stem the tide of information on the exploding phenomenon that was most concerning to Big Bill: the Internet.

  But understanding that he needed to repair the bridge to the news media that he’d firebombed in Cleveland, Belichick was helpful to reporters looking for background, context, and maybe an off-the-record confirmation or two. He took a liking to a young PR staffer named Berj Najarian, a confidant of Keyshawn Johnson’s. Belichick generally had no use for PR people, but Scott Pioli told him he should try to get to know Najarian. The coach and the intern often worked out on the treadmill side by side, and they talked about ways Little Bill could better deal with the media while working around Big Bill’s restrictions.

  Belichick knew he had to give something to get a return on the back end that could help clear a pathway to the top job. An example: Rich Cimini, of the Daily News, was tasked every week with drawing up one of the opponent’s favorite plays so it could be printed in the Sunday morning edition. So after the press room cleared out every Thursday night, he’d call Belichick and ask the coach if he could stop by and diagram the Xs and Os for him. Sure enough, without Big Bill or anyone else knowing, Little Bill would appear with that familiar pencil behind his ear and draw up a play on a card, which Cimini transferred to Xerox paper and faxed to his office.

  Belichick also agreed to sit with Cimini for a story on how he’d broken down tape before the 1998 season opener against San Francisco. Little Bill dissected Steve Young’s game for the writer, and shockingly mocked the 49ers’ offensive line (“They can’t block anybody”) and identified the pass rush as the key to victory (“To me, this is the way to beat San Francisco”) on the record, before the game was played. Belichick had a stack of VHS tapes with him; he’d spend more than 100 hours studying the 49ers before the Jets lost to them in overtime, on Garrison Hearst’s 96-yard touchdown run. During the film session, Little Bill joked with Cimini about Big Bill’s likely reaction if he ever stumbled upon this scene.

  “He wanted to get out from under Parcells’s thumb,” the writer said, “and get his name out there and get some credit.”

  Belichick filled in for Parcells as head coach of the AFC team in the Pro Bowl, and while in Hawaii—where league rules requiring head coaches to be available to the media trumped Big Bill’s gag order—Little Bill gave his first interview in five months and told Cimini that he had no plans to pursue other jobs around the league. (Belichick had engaged in serious talks with Al Davis about coaching the Raiders after the 1997 season.) “I’m happy where I am,” Belichick said. “I’m excited about the future of the Jets. I think we’ve made good strides in two years, and I think we can get better.”

  A year later, so much had changed. Little Bill was worn out working for Big Bill, and the one owner he really wanted to work for—an owner who would give him personnel control—was suddenly in the market for a head coach. Robert Kraft thought sunshiny Pete Carroll had effectively turned the Patriots’ facility into Club Med, where accountability was a part-time thing and where players felt free to be late for meetings and to take complaints directly to the personnel chief, Bobby Grier. Kraft fired Carroll after an 8-8 season, and he was ready to do what he couldn’t bring himself to do after the stormy Parcells exit three years earlier—hire Belichick. Only there was a problem. When it came to the Patriots and the Jets and Big Bill and Little Bill, there was always a problem.

  Parcells had resigned after the Jets finished their season with their fourth straight victory, over Seattle, and after their fans chanted at the coach, “One more year.” By contract, Parcells’s exit automatically made Belichick his successor (though Big Bill planned to keep a front-office role). Little Bill had pocketed a $1 million bonus from owner Leon Hess, who had died in May, to remain on board and wait for Parcells to resign and/or retire, and he was fully expected to fulfill his obligation. Yes, there were questions about Big Bill’s resignation, and why he told team president Steve Gutman he was leaving Sunday, about an hour after the final game.

  Did Parcells merely realize that the Jets’ championship window had slammed shut on his fingers, and that he didn’t need a few days or a week to see that it was the perfect time to walk away? Or did Parcells know that the Patriots were about to seek permission to interview and hire Belichick, and that he needed to quit immediately to trigger the clause that made Little Bill coach of the Jets?

  One Jets official said he believed Parcells “had no intention of stepping down” until he realized he could lose Belichick to the Patriots. Either way, after New England sent a fax to the Jets on Monday morning requesting the opportunity to talk to Belichick, Parcells crumpled it into a ball and threw it away. Big Bill figured there was nothing to talk about. He told Little Bill on Saturday that he was 99 percent sure he would retire, and Parcells said Belichick responded, “I’ve been waiting for this.” Kraft would have to find his replacement for Carroll somewhere else.

  But when Parcells met with Belichick on Monday, he was surprised to learn that his defensive coordinator had some concerns about his promotion. Eight months after Hess’s death, the sale of the Jets still hadn’t gone through to either of the two billionaire finalists, Cablevision founder Charles Dolan and pharmaceutical heir Robert Wood (Woody) Johnson IV, and Belichick was frustrated by the delay. Of course, Belichick was also uneasy about Parcells’s continued role in the organization, especially after getting word through back channels that he would be offered complete control in New England. Big Bill swore that Little Bill would have the final word on personnel decisions, but, given their shared history, it was a hard claim to buy.

  “Maybe if you feel that uncertain about it,” Parcells told Belichick, “you should think about not taking this job.”

  So Belichick thought about it. An emotional Parcells met with the players in the team’s auditorium to tell them he was stepping down.

  One of the Jets’ defensive ends, Anthony Pleasant, who had played for Belichick in Cleveland, sat next to Little Bill when Big Bill told the team he was leaving. “Belichick was sort of surprised that it was announced he was taking over for Parcells, and he didn’t agree with it,” Pleasant said. “I can recall Parcells asking Belichick in the team meeting, did he have anything to say, and Belichick said, ‘No.’ You could tell he wasn’t happy about it at all.”

  Parcells had a scheduled news conference in which he would make his resignation public, and the Jets’ longtime PR man, Frank Ramos, came up with the idea that Big Bill should introduce Little Bill as his successor immediately after his announcement. Ramos ran his proposal by Gutman, and then by Parcells. “Why don’t you ask Bill Belichick about that and see what he thinks?” Parcells responded.

  “I think if you told him that’s how we’re going to do it,” Ramos said, “that’s how it will be.”

  “You go talk to him,” Parcells insisted.

  Ramos found Belichick and shared his idea about Parcells introducing him in his retirement news conference. Little Bill told the PR man that he didn’t want to intrude on Big Bill’s day, and that he’d do his own announcement on Tuesday. In a statement to the media, Belichick apologized for being unavailable for comment.

  Ramos had been with the Jets for 37 years; he was working for them before Joe Namath was drafted. So he’d been around long enough to know something wasn’t right. Ramos expressed his concerns to Gutman, who grew nervous about the handoff from Big Bill to Little Bill even as Belichick was meeting with staffers about current Jets and players to chase in free agency.

  The team president had every right to be nervous. Years later, Parcells would write in his autobiography that Belichick had found him in the coaches’ locker room around 6 p.m. and informed him that he wanted to consider New England’s interest in him, given the uncertainty of Jets ownership. Angry, Parcells reminded Belichick that the late Hess had given him a $1 million bonus to stay and honor the terms of his contract. “He made a deal, and then tried to get out of it,” Parcells wrote. “A deal’s a deal. You want out? You’re going to pay.
Simple.”

  Of course, Parcells had already established himself as a coach who knew how to maneuver his way out of a contract like nobody else in the NFL. He’d used Belichick as a stooge in his own successful shell game to jump from the Patriots to the Jets, but he wasn’t about to let Belichick run a misdirection play of his own from the Jets to the Patriots.

  Little Bill remained determined to liberate himself from Big Bill once and for all. He went home that night and talked things over with Debby and their three kids, and arrived at the team’s Long Island facility to a newspaper headline calling his absence at Parcells’s press conference “a PR blunder.” It was plenty more than that. Belichick showed up for work Tuesday morning preparing to stun the football world.

  He actually held a half-hour staff meeting at 10 a.m., talked about the Senior Bowl for college prospects, and scheduled another meeting for the following week. Most of the players were excited to have Belichick continue the Parcells program, minus the booming Parcells volume. Victor Green, safety, had purchased him a crystal paperweight at Tiffany’s the day before that set him back a few hundred bucks. Testaverde told reporters that Belichick had grown since their days together in Cleveland.

  “I see a different coach,” the quarterback said. “I know for a fact he’s ready to take on this role and be successful. Some of his ways have changed . . . his demeanor, the way he talks to the players.”

  Belichick decided to blow off some steam with a workout, and he ended up on the treadmill next to the one occupied by Kevin Williams, a second-year cornerback and return man out of Oklahoma State. Williams had just been released from a New York hospital after suffering from a rare bacterial infection that traveled from his throat to his lungs and nearly killed him. He’d been in a coma for 15 days, had lost nearly 40 pounds, and had been on a respirator. His agent and the Jets waged an unseemly battle over whether the team needed to pay the full balance of his contract.