by Adam Lazarus
“I like Phil Simms, and I don’t wish him any bad luck,” Hostetler wrote in his 1991 autobiography, One Giant Leap, coauthored with Ed Fitzgerald, “but I’m the one who sat on the bench for six and a half years and I hope I don’t have to do it anymore. I think I’ve proved that I can not only hold the ball while somebody kicks it, but I can throw it, too—and run with it.”
A pair of experienced Super Bowl winners was not the abundance of riches it seemed. Neither one wanted to return to the sidelines.
As spring approached, the front office submitted designs for diamond-encrusted Super Bowl championship rings, “Mr. and Mrs. W. Jeffrey Hostetler” attended a White House state dinner (Vicky sat with President Bush and the Guest of Honor, Denmark’s Queen Margreth II) in February, and the New York Giants looked toward next season.
“For more than an hour, Bill Parcells and Ottis Anderson were center stage yesterday, with the Vince Lombardi trophy and the new Pete Rozelle Trophy,” New York Times columnist Dave Anderson wrote upon attending the Monday press conference after New York’s triumph over Buffalo. “But not once was the word ‘dynasty’ mentioned in asking about the Giants’ future. Not once were the Super Bowl XXV champions described as the ‘Team of the 90’s.’ Maybe people are finally learning that dynasties don’t exist in sports anymore.”
Beneath a gray sky and light rain, Pan Am Charter Flight 8207 took off from the runway at Tampa International Airport. Somewhere along the route from Western Florida to Buffalo, New York, Marv Levy left his seat and walked down the aisle to look over his team. His somber, silent players turned away from the in-flight movie, Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, and looked up at their equally somber head coach.
Returning to his seat, Levy leaned back and looked out the window.
“I recalled a poem that was in a slim volume of English poetry that my mother had given me way back when I had joined the Army Air Corps during World War II,” Levy said years later. “It was by an unknown British poet in the 15th century about a Scottish warrior. It went just four lines”:
Fight on, my men, Sir Andrew said.
A little I’m hurt, but not yet slain.
I’ll just lie down and bleed awhile.
Then I’ll rise and fight again.
The plane eventually touched down at the Greater Buffalo International Airport, where the team embarked on its final obligation of the 1990 season. Although no players really wanted to attend, the city had organized a rally to thank them for a great season. None of the players or coaches aboard the team buses knew what to expect.
Trailing behind ten police cars and beneath two helicopters, the team buses traveled across New York State Route 33, then reached Niagara Square, the center of downtown Buffalo. At city hall, the buses parked, and players and coaches took the stage. Before them, thirty thousand fans stood in subfreezing temperatures cheering, “Thank You Bills, Thank You Bills.” The rally, scheduled for 3 p.m., was just about to commence when a new chant—“We Want Scott, We Want Scott”—started then billowed into a full-fledged deafening roar. Encouraged by his teammates, the modest Scott Norwood reluctantly walked to the podium.
“I’ve got to tell you that we’re struggling with this right now,” he said, fighting back tears. “I know I’ve never felt more loved than this right now. We all realize the sun’s going to come up tomorrow, and we’re going to start preparing this football team.”
“The reception that he got from the fans was indicative of how they feel toward him and how much football they know,” Bill Polian said. “They knew exactly what had taken place. And they knew that Scott did his best, and that’s all he could do. That’s all you can ask of any athlete. It’s just unfortunate that people who don’t know football as well as those fans have cast him as some sort of a goat because it’s easy to do.”
The master of ceremonies, Buffalo’s Chamber of Commerce President Kevin Keeley, eventually began the scheduled portion of the rally, which included several local dignitaries addressing the crowd. From the Bills, owner Ralph Wilson, James Lofton, and Mark Kelso spoke, along with Marv Levy, who—as he had to his team a day earlier—told the crowd that not a single loser resided in Buffalo. The sea of Bills fans erupted.
“[We] get back to New Jersey,” Giants cornerback Everson Walls later said, “and no one wants to foot the bill for a parade. Then I look on TV, and I see the Buffalo Bills got a freakin’ parade. Come on, man! That was so disappointing, extremely disappointing.”
New York Governor Mario Cuomo also took the stage. Earlier that week, Cuomo dodged the obvious question about which team he would cheer for. And although Cuomo’s office later sent a telegram to Giants Stadium that read, “It was a great game between two great teams and you are deserving champions. Congratulations!” he appeared on stage at the Bills’ rally at Niagara Square.
“They have made the entire state proud by their performance this year,” Cuomo declared. “They showed more class, more character coming up one point short than most teams show in victory”
Those words didn’t rile up the crowd nearly as much as his wardrobe: underneath his overcoat, the governor sported a sweatshirt that read “Buffalo Bills: Champion Super Bowl XXVI, Minnesota in 1992.”
“It was off the charts, yelling and screaming,” Carlton Bailey said twenty years later. “What more can you say about Buffalo? They understand and support their football team. It’s in their nature. It’s in their blood. It was outstanding. You would have thought that we won the Super Bowl.”
[1]At the time, a fourteen-man committee of sportswriters voted for the game’s MVP. Ballots had to be turned in late in the third quarter. Several sportswriters later believed that Thurman Thomas’ performance (fifteen rushes for 135 yards, five receptions for fifty-five yards, and his go-ahead, thirty-one-yard fourth-quarter touchdown) was worthy of the award. Despite averaging 9.5 yards per touch, he earned just one vote. Only once before (Chuck Howley in Super Bowl V) did a player from the losing team win the Most Valuable Player, and Thomas himself didn’t think he deserved the award: “We didn’t win the ball game, so you have to say that someone on their team deserves to win the Most Valuable Player,” he said that evening. “If we would have won, it would have been different. In my opinion, you always have to give that award to a player on the team that won the game.”
[2]A Plan B free agent was allowed to negotiate freely with any other NFL team until April 1.
13
January 15, 1994
Newspapers wrote about the story with zeal and intensity. Each of the major news magazines—Time, People, and Newsweek—ran cover stories about it. Correspondents from all the major television networks were dispatched so that live reports would be available for the evening news. And considering the international implications, detailed updates quickly spread to nations around the world.
But Americans were the most invested in the strife. And throughout the winter, they desperately wanted to know: Had ice skater Tonya Harding really hired her ex-husband to break the leg of her figure skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan, in order to force Kerrigan out of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer?
Less than a week passed before the truth began to unfold. On January 12, 1994—exactly three years removed from the day when the House and Senate voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein and Iraq—warrants were issued for the arrests of Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, and her bodyguard, Shawn Eckardt. Harding herself would agree to a plea bargain, after admitting her complicity. Still, Harding was allowed to compete against Kerrigan in the Olympics later that winter, and the television broadcast of the women’s short program in late February would attract a greater audience than any Super Bowl in history.
Somehow, the NFL managed to carry on with its postseason. And on the third Saturday of the new year, anyone who took a break from the mass-media coverage—right when the scandal was at its juiciest—to tune in for the second round of the 1993 NFL playoffs, was treated to a comp
elling and eerily familiar doubleheader of playoff football.
On May 15, 1991, television crews and sportswriters filled the press box at Giants Stadium. Bill Parcells took the podium to announce his resignation.
“I just think it’s time. That’s all there is to it. My instincts are usually good. I just think it’s time to move on,” he said.
“It’s been a great experience. Who’s been luckier than me? My hometown, my home team, my family and friends here. Nobody could have had a better job than me.”
As early as March, the New York media had speculated that Parcells might step down. The New York Times reported that he was experiencing chest pains in the months following the Super Bowl—a December 1991 angioplasty revealed an irregular heartbeat.
Still, the news shocked many of his assistants and players.
“I was just in [Giants Stadium], talking with Bill a day ago,” Ottis Anderson said. “We talked about the coming season. We talked about him losing weight and getting in shape. He looks good. I had no indication he was quitting.”
Offensive coordinator Ron Erhardt and quarterback Phil Simms had virtually the same stories. But at least one person very close to Parcells saw his resignation on the horizon.
“I had a pretty good idea it was going to happen, just because I knew him,” Parcells’ personal secretary Kim Kolbe recalled years later. “I knew a lot of it was his health. I kept praying it wasn’t gonna happen, but I was kinda thinking it might. I was actually on jury duty the day of his press conference. I was crying so hard they let me go.”
Even after the announcement, rumors continued to swirl. Considering that in February, Tampa Bay had hired Richard Williamson, a low-profile coach, the Parcells-to-Tampa idea was a possibility, as were whatever coaching options opened after the 1991 season. Dismissing the notion that he was leaving the Giants because of a strained relationship with the team’s general manager, Parcells told reporters at his farewell press conference that he enjoyed working beside George Young. Parcells’ resignation inevitably produced more acrimony between the two.
“I knew something was wrong [with my health]; I didn’t know what it was. I asked George Young when both [Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin] left, ‘Do you want to keep them here?’” Parcells said in 2010. “George said ‘No, let them take their opportunities.’ What he was telling me was that he knew there was a chance I was gonna step down. He knew because I was very clear to him: ‘Do you want to keep them here?’ He said no. He had made up his mind what he would do if I left.
“After the fact, that never came out. He never admitted to that. He said, ‘Had I known . . .’ That’s not true. He did know.”
An hour after learning of Parcells’ intentions, Young promoted running backs coach Ray Handley to fill Parcells’ spot.
The Ray Handley era began auspiciously. In Week One, the Giants trailed San Francisco 14-13 at Giants Stadium. And thirty-two weeks after his field goal erased a one-point deficit to win the NFC championship, Matt Bahr nailed a last-second thirty-five-yarder to defeat the 49ers 16-14.
From that point, however, the Giants were wildly inconsistent during an 8-8 season.
“When the [1991] season started, we played the 49ers and we’re like ‘Wow, we’re back to where we started, we can do this again, let’s try to run the table,’ Stephen Baker recalled.
We had great chemistry the year before. The following year—and that’s so important in sports, chemistry—it was all gone. Not to discredit Ray Handley, he did the best job that he could. But we’d lost the chemistry. It was very frustrating: from being the Super Bowl champion to playing how we played. It was probably the worst time in my life playing football.
I thought we were working hard and the practices were all going well, but maybe it was Parcells. I wish I could put my finger on it, but we were doing the same plays. . . . Change in chemistry messes up everything.
Losing Parcells and Belichick certainly hurt the Giants defense those two seasons. Even with the same starting lineup that finished 1990 tops in the NFL in points allowed, they slipped to twelfth, then twenty-sixth, over the next two seasons. On the other side of the ball, the Giants offense—which featured mostly the same faces, aside from Mark Bavaro who sat out 1991 and signed with Cleveland the following season—also tumbled.
Transitioning from Ottis Anderson to Rodney Hampton went smoothly. By Week Three of the 1991 season, Hampton became the feature back, and Anderson never started another game for New York. After playing thirteen games for the Giants in 1992—carrying the ball only ten times—the MVP of Super Bowl XXV retired from football. Hampton subsequently became a Pro Bowler. But the offense never approached the level of consistency that produced dozens of wins under Parcells.
“When Ray Handley took over that team, I never really thought much about it,” said Bob Mrosko.
And then I remember Handley, when we got to minicamp, talking to a lot of players. He always said in the papers, “This is my team now; it’s not Bill Parcells’ team.” It began to get apparent that he was gonna have a different philosophy. And I always equate it to the way Bill Walsh left the 49ers and George Seifert took over. He just stepped in and took over the team, and didn’t miss a beat. He kept the same team, same philosophy, and he won football games.
And I felt when Handley came in and took over, he wasn’t gonna be content with going in there and winning and having people say, “Oh, that’s Bill Parcells’ team.” He wanted to put his own mark to it. By doing that, he decimated an unbelievable good team, a team that was still poised to win more football games. He created a lot of dissension.
The identity of the Giants starting quarterback created the greatest dissension. Jeff Hostetler arrived at training camp a day late in the summer of 1991, while the final details of a two-year, $1.8 million contract were negotiated. The ensuing battle between Hostetler and Simms would essentially produce a draw during the next two seasons.
Hostetler won the job in training camp, surprising many teammates and members of the media: “In my mind without a doubt,” Mrosko said, “Simms was the winner in that competition; he had an unbelievable preseason.”
Beginning with the opener against San Francisco, Hostetler played fairly well. But the Giants offense struggled to score: after nine games, the 4-5 Giants scored just thirteen touchdowns. And in a stroke of irony, a devastating late-season, season-ending injury to Hostetler—a crushing hit by the Buccaneers Broderick Thomas fractured three vertebrae in his lower back and he left the game on a stretcher—enabled Simms to reclaim the starter’s job.
Handley returned to Hostetler for the beginning of 1992, a season that saw even more of a quarterback carousel. Simms, Hostetler, and rookie Kent Graham each started at least three games. New York’s 6-10 record was the team’s worst since Parcells’ rookie season as head coach.
“[1991 and 1992] were two of the most surreal years I’ve ever been through. It was like it came out of another dimension,” recalled Ernie Palladino, the beat writer who covered the team for twenty years. “You always had the image of Parcells sitting at home laughing about this.”
Parcells didn’t sit around to watch the Giants crumble for long. Successful bypass heart surgery and a new healthier lifestyle convinced both Parcells and the New England Patriots to agree on a partnership. In late January 1993, the New England Patriots gave him a five-year, $5 million contract to rebuild their inept franchise.
“I started my coaching career here in New England, and I am going to end it here. This will be my last coaching job,” Parcells said.
On the day that the governor of Massachusetts publicly welcomed Parcells during his introductory press conference at Boston’s Westin Copley Hotel, George Young and the Giants’ front office worked feverishly to sign their next head coach. Ray Handley was fired at the end of the 1992 season, and, five days after Parcells signed with New England, Dan Reeves took over the Giants. Reeves quickly settled on Simms as his starting quarterback.
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sp; “I didn’t need that kind of controversy here,” Reeves later said.
For the first time since leading the Giants to victory in Super Bowl XXI, Simms started all sixteen games in 1993. At age thirty-eight, Simms earned his second Pro Bowl invitation as the resurgent New York squad opened up 5-1. NFC East champions, the Giants hosted Minnesota in the opening round of the playoffs. Trailing at halftime, a pair of second-half rushing touchdowns by Rodney Hampton—who finished with thirty-three carries and 161 yards—propelled the team to victory.
“Maybe we’re not as flashy, but we can control the clock,” Hampton said afterward. “If we control the clock, we can keep those other teams that score a lot of points off the field.”
The win earned New York a place in the second round and a cross-country trip to San Francisco. Since their unforgettable showdown in the 1990 NFC Championship Game, the 49ers had also undergone a series of changes to their lineup. Gone was Joe Montana, replaced by Steve Young, the league’s Most Valuable Player the previous season. And like the Giants, the 49ers boasted a new, younger model at running back: Pro Bowler Ricky Watters took over for Roger Craig.
But the apparent upgrades at those prominent positions were the only similarities between the two teams. Despite a shaky end to the regular season, the 49ers won the NFC West and earned a first-round playoff bye, largely because of an incredible offense that averaged nearly thirty points per game, twelve more than their divisional round opponent.
Against a revamped, yet still powerful, 49ers offense, the Giants would have to do battle without many of the stars from their vaunted 1990 defense. Pepper Johnson was gone, having left that off-season to join Bill Belichick in Cleveland; Carl Banks, who signed with Washington for the 1993 season, would join them both the next year. Everson Walls, Gary Reasons, and Leonard Marshall, the great pass rushing defensive end, weren’t there either.