While some people may see us as a bunch of uncontrollable violent animals, the reality is that fights play a very important role in our world. If you don’t fight back, you are seen as weak and will be pushed constantly. Some coaches use fights as a motivation tool. If a good old-fashioned fight is sometimes the best Rx for a tired team, coaches will poke and prod certain guys.
Bill Parcells secretly used this ploy to perfection during the Giants’ Super Bowl week when they were preparing for the Bills for Super Bowl XXV. One story involves the great John “Jumbo” Elliott and the greatest defender of all time, Lawrence Taylor. The thing about Jumbo was, if you beat him on a pass rush in practice, you better watch your eyes, your throat, your head and your ankles or else he’ll get you. I thank G-d every day I got to practice against him early on in my career, because as bad as he gave it to me during practice, Sundays were a playground.
Jumbo was just plain vindictive, which is exactly what you’d want from your lineman on game day, but not against you every day in practice. You want your tackles to piss off the defense so much that they want to spit in somebody’s face after the game. Jumbo made you want to spit in his face damn near every practice. He was always slipping his fingers under my face mask into my eyes or punching me in the throat. Every time he did it, I’d wince and take the pain and then yell, “Damn it, Jumbo! Cut the shit!” He’d giggle to himself and walk away like, “What? What did I do?”
I not only had to prepare for battle on Sundays, Jumbo Elliott made me lace up and become a warrior every day of practice during my formative NFL years.
Anyway, one week Bill Parcells wanted to really, really get under Jumbo’s skin. He was going to have to block Buffalo’s Bruce Smith in the biggest game of Jumbo’s life.
“We were exhausted from the 49ers game in the NFC Championship Game,” Jumbo recalled. “We were so lethargic, completely spent, and I didn’t know he did this until years later. Parcells decided to spice it up by getting us into a fight.”
What Parcells failed to factor in was just how much Jumbo could lose it when he was in one of those moods. Usually you have the scout-team guys working against the first team, but Parcells asked the starters to rush Jumbo. He wanted to infuriate the big man. And infuriate him he did. Parcells asked Pepper Johnson to go at Jumbo. Then he asked Carl Banks to take a shot. And then came the great one, LT.
It didn’t take Nostradamus to predict that those two fireballs were headed for a fight, Super Bowl week or no Super Bowl week.
Apparently LT got past Jumbo to the quarterback, although to this day Jumbo denies it! The two started jawing and LT called him a big stupid white boy. Jumbo responded by calling LT “nothing but a speed rusher.” How great is that one! I love it. Jumbo is a classic.
LT got him again on another pass rush (Jumbo denies this one, too) and then said something else to piss off the 6 foot 71/2, 320-pound blocker.
That’s when it happened. “It” being the unspeakable. “It” being the unthinkable. Jumbo let a sentence escape from his lips that simply should never be uttered, never spoken, never even joked about.
“Yeah, well, you’re nothing but a fucking crackhead!”
Practice came to a screeching halt. Like the scene in Animal House when the white frat boys accidentally meander into an all-black bar.
After everyone collectively picked their jaws up off the ground, the coaches immediately stopped the 9-on-7 drill they were running and tried to diffuse the situation. But Jumbo kept after him. I think even LT was stunned. He didn’t really say anything back. He was probably concerned that Jumbo had lost his mind. Nothing like a giant loss of sanity to rile the troops before a Super Bowl.
“When I’m tired and hot and pissed, I say whatever comes out of my mouth,” Jumbo recalled, laughing. “But what people may not understand, that night me and LT hung out. I guess I said something that was off-limits, but it had no effect on us after that practice ended. We hung out that same night and never brought it up.”
You might be surprised there aren’t more violent instances. We go crazy on each other right up to the point before it reaches criminal assault. I think deep down we know it could end up hurting the team. Even the Gragg thing, I don’t know if I would have reacted that way had it happened during the season as opposed to the off-season when there’s plenty of time to heal.
How we are able to turn on and off that “other guy” like the flip of a switch is beyond me. How Gragg and I or LT and Jumbo can hang that same night defies logic. The guys who can’t don’t last long in this league. As much as fighting and violence is a part of our world, there’s a time and place for it. And a line is drawn in the sand.
The one guy who really crossed that line was Bill Romanowski when he coldcocked a Raider teammate and broke his eye socket. This stunned his teammates and got him sued. I’m not sure why this particular violent act appalled everyone so much. Maybe it was his reputation or that he suckered this guy. Maybe it was the fact that we all thought he was juicing or that he continuously got fined for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Isn’t it amazing that considering how big and strong we are, more of us don’t inflict worse damage on each other? Actually, practice fights become more of a release than a personal grudge. You can almost feel it in the air when the team needs a good old-fashioned fight to break the boredom.
Sometimes we fight over the dumbest stuff imaginable. We once had a defensive lineman named Chris Maumalanga who knocked out not one but two guys—one-punch KOs—over a video game. Two of our former defensive linemen, Erik Howard and Eric Dorsey, once got into a fight in training camp over the water tube. Both grabbed the water tube to get a drink at the same time. Neither was willing to let go.
It takes a lot of provocation for a guy to fight someone inside the locker room. That’s the space you try not to violate. So you need to learn to throw verbal jabs in our world. The tongue is a lot more painful than the fist.
The sharpness of the tongue can lead to meeting-room fights. While these fights are verbal, they can soon turn into physical haymakers. The problem with meeting-room fights is that the coaches are often in harm’s way. If you’re going to fight, you have to fight either in front of or through the coach—not exactly ideal. Just ask my teammate of last year, LaVar Arrington. He and fellow Pro Bowler Jeremiah Trotter went at it like champs when the two played for the Redskins together.
LaVar said the tension between him and Trotter had been brewing for a while. These guys used to have disagreements over whose defense it was and who was the leader of the room. In other words, it was all about ego. It came to a head one day in a meeting room.
The fuse was lit when the two of them argued about a particular call on a particular offensive play. LaVar was actually correct in this case. After it was cleared up, Trotter said something that prompted LaVar to proclaim, “I told you I was right!”
Trotter was already standing up when suddenly LaVar rushed him. BAM. Trotter nailed LaVar flush. LaVar fell back, hit the table and was OUT! LaVar never admitted to me that he was out. He claimed he had the wrong shoes on to fight, but both Antonio Pierce and Jessie Armstead were there and word is, my boy got KO’d.
However, it didn’t end there. LaVar woke suddenly and jumped up like someone had attached jumper cables to his pecs. The two of them started going at it again, like two pit bulls. Trotter threw LaVar off him and actually hurt the coach. As the two were wrestling, throwing each other into walls, punching, it took five Redskins to break it up. They actually left an indentation in the wall. I heard that LaVar went as far as calling some of his boys to get Trotter.
Again, that’s a very rare, extreme case and while a lot of guys threaten to bring their boys into the fray, it rarely, if ever, actually occurs. I’ve heard guys personally claim they would bring their homies in, but it never happens. It’s just emotion. If they ever did bring their boys to our fight, I think we’d all lose respect for the guy and afterward he might be booted from the team.
Th
e most inappropriately timed fight was in the locker room before our first game back after 9/11. Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. It was the game where they passed around a fireman’s boot to collect money from the fans to help out the rescue operation. A wonderfully humanitarian collective effort by 80,000 people. But before I got to feel the love of thousands, I was treated to the antics of two.
Our guard at the time was Glenn Parker. He once had to be separated from fighting Bruce Smith at a post–Super Bowl bash after losing to the Bills. Anyway, Parker was taping his hands and rolling little balls of tape, throwing them into the trash. Keith Hamilton’s locker was next to the trash bin. Parker accidentally hit him. And Hamilton, aka Hammer, asked him to stop.
Parker wound up another ball, tossed it at Hammer. Suddenly it was Tuesday Night Fights. Except it was Sunday. Hammer walked over, told Parker to stand up like a man. As soon as Parker stood up, WHAM! Hammer went nuts. He completely lost it. Howard Cross jumped in to break it up, yelling, “Hammer, stop. You’re going to kill him!” Parker to this day insists he never got hit, but later in the game he had to leave the field with a concussion. We all secretly knew the concussion came from the fight, not from the game.
To put it bluntly, our locker rooms have a prison mentality. When a guy gets sent up the river, the first thing he needs to do is knock out someone who challenges him. Same thing in our world. You have to stand up for yourself, especially whenever somebody does something to disrespect you in front of everyone else. Once Hammer issued his warning, in our eyes he had no choice but to follow through.
The greatest fight I’ve ever seen took place on Jeremy Shockey’s first-ever official day as a signed, sealed and delivered New York Giant. Allow me to set the stage. We were in our cafeteria at the University at Albany when Shockey had just arrived. That first night, man, did we get our money’s worth from this brash new kid.
One of the rites of passage by vets is to get the rookies to stand on a chair in the cafeteria and entertain us with a song. Rookies are also required to stand up and yell out their name, followed by school, draft pick and signing-bonus amount. We want to know how how much cash you have to take us out to dinner or buy our morning breakfast bagels and doughnuts.
While others caved to our demands, from his very first day, Shockey didn’t act like a rookie. He stood up for himself. It’s happened to all of us. If you don’t follow the rules of tradition, there are ramifications. Even the coaches get pissed off by a kid who won’t follow these unwritten rules.
Shockey was asked earlier by the group to announce his name, school, bonus etcetera. He had the audacity to tell the group, “Later, I’m eating, I’m hungry.” Later? Hell, rookie, you don’t set the time line. We set the time line! Who the hell is this rookie to tell us when he’ll stand on a chair and make a jackass of himself? The nerve of this kid. Brandon Short, aka B-Short, aka Shortfuse, took it exceptionally personally when he loudly informed Shockey, our new tight end, that his time had come and that time was now. Shockey told him again, “When I’m done eating.”
In between all the bantering a few of the guys chimed in with “Ohhh, wowww! You gonna let him talk to you like that B-Short!?”
Shockey finally took center stage and stood up on a chair between quarterbacks Kerry Collins and Jesse “The Bachelor” Palmer and christened his first official day as a New York Giant in style.
“Jeremy Shockey, University of Miami, signing bonus, 4.9 million. Is that loud enough for you, B-Short!?!”
What happened next was straight out of a movie. With people like our owner, Wellington Mara, general manager Ernie Accorsi, guests of management and ownership, women, coaches and much of our locker room all sitting in the training camp cafeteria, linebacker B-Short jumped up without warning and sprinted toward Mr. First-Day-On-The-Job. You know how most fights occur: Two guys square off, they jaw at each other, start pushing and maybe some fists fly. Not this time.
B-Short didn’t jog or mosey, he sprinted at Shockey while Collins and Palmer quietly got up and moved away from the table. Short never slowed down. He was striding toward Shockey like Dan Jansen going for the speed skating gold medal. It was unbelievable.
With the entire room watching in disbelief, without one word, B-Short threw a wild haymaker at his new teammate as the two of them went crashing over the table, throwing bombs. And I mean bombs, people! The table flipped over. Food went flying everywhere.
Both men think they won. It was like the twelfth round, a split on the judges’ cards, completely down the middle. That’s the type of punches Short and Shockey lobbed at each other. It was like a hockey match. Huge punches. When the table and all the stuff on it went flying over, we couldn’t find a break to stop it. I’d never seen anything like it in this league. I’m sure the other players and guests hadn’t, either.
Can you imagine what was going on in the minds of Mara, Bob Tisch and Accorsi as they watched Short try to tear the head off their brand-new toy on his very first day on the job? That day, as ticked off as we were with this rookie’s behavior, was the day Shockey gained my respect, although I couldn’t admit it at the time. Shockey was no normal rookie. He soon learned that to make it in this league, you’ve got to fight for your rights. That was the greatest football fight in the history of football fights.
Another great fight was during walkthrough a few years back. Shaun Williams, one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet in your life, and Dhani Jones started jawing back and forth. Actually, it was more Dhani. Dhani will get on your last nerve and jump up and down on it. He loves to question EVERYTHING! We had a rule in meetings that Dhani could only ask two questions a day. Otherwise he’d ask a question every two seconds. No answer would satisfy him. He loves to debate. If every guy from Michigan loves to argue and debate, he’s the most annoying of them all.
Anyway, Sean says something to Dhani during a walkthrough before practice. Dhani is a philosophical fella who likes to discuss things! Shaun, well, there’s nothing philosophical about him. The man is just plain tough. Shaun, aka Left Jab, is the type of guy who will swing first and apologize later. Dhani is more a guy who will walk over in a very threatening manner, pretend he might engage in an altercation, but in the end thinks a discussion is the best way to solve things.
After the two of those guys started jawing back and forth about a misunderstood defensive formation, Dhani started walking over toward Shaun in said threatening manner. I could see the look on Shaun’s face. I immediately thought to myself…this isn’t going to be pretty. Dhani thought they would just get into each other’s face, only to have it broken up. In the middle of that bright idea Shaun unloaded. He unleashed those hands, bap, bap, bap, bap. Man, it was nice from where I was standing. I could see Dhani’s head snap back. Afterward he had some abrasions. Plus his ego must have been permanently bruised.
After the fight I said to Dhani, “Next time you get in a heated discussion, you better walk up with your hands up.” We never let him live that one down.
While walkthroughs are usually extremely peaceful, sidelines are a different story. On the sidelines of games we fight verbally all the time. Tempers are hot. We’re hurting. Tensions are always running high. We get into it all the time. I love it when the media gets hold of an instance and tries to blow it up like we’re a team in turmoil. Sorry, guys. It happens every single game, inside every single locker room. No scoop there.
I’ll yell at my coaches all the time. It’s our normal mode of communication. If I disagree with a defense, I’ll yell at my defensive line coach to tell the defensive coordinator that the call will not work. Hey, I’m down in the trenches. I can feel what the offense knows is working for them and what is giving them fits. Yelling at coaches is all part of the heat of battle.
The most humiliated I’ve ever been in my career involved a fight on the field amongst ourselves in front of the world. Playoffs, 1996. Phillippi Sparks was arguing with a player about an assignment when Jessie Armstead, who was clearly our team leader, told t
hem to shut up. We called Sparks “Deuce Deuce” for his No. 22 jersey. Later it was because we suspected he had two personalities. He snapped back at Jessie to shut the fuck up!
Uh-oh, bad move.
Jessie snatched him and yoked him up. You have to understand, the Vikings are breaking their offensive huddle. They’re walking to the line, yet here we are fighting each other. It was kind of like watching someone step back during a fight and punch himself in the face. After that, we collapsed. After that, we lost the game. I was completely embarrassed to be a member of the New York Giants that day.
And, of course, there’s an insane fight that involved Chris Maumalanga, who I wrote about earlier, who knocked out two guys over a video game. He once fought a lineman from Iowa named Scott Davis during training camp practice. Chris hit Davis so hard in the face, his face mask actually snapped off of his helmet and cut Davis’s nose, which Maumalanga also broke in the melee. He snapped that face mask right off. I don’t know how many pounds of pressure it takes for that to happen, but I’ve never seen it before or since. Those things are made of steel; I thought they couldn’t break. Unfortunately for Scott Davis, that day I was wrong.
As for my beef with Tiki, I felt lucky I never got Tiki alone on the street. Fortunately I never did the unthinkable, and fortunately we were able to get past it. But, man, that one day? Had I seen him, I would have gone above and beyond what I did to Gragg. I would have violated the law. But just as sad, I would have violated our own unwritten code.
Codes, rules and laws. It’s all part of the NFL. Only a few days later, I would encounter a whole new set of them in the form of Head Coach Tom Coughlin’s own wacky universe of rules.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Coach and Player Relationship
October 20, four days before our Monday nighter in Dallas
The traffic getting to work on this particular day was brutal. Damn Lincoln Tunnel. Like the rest of the entire New York metropolitan area, I’m snakebitten by one of the Hudson River crossings. Late for work is never a good option for any employee in America, but for me I don’t have the luxury of just walking away with a hard look from the boss. My superiors show no understanding, monetarily speaking.
Inside the Helmet: Hard Knocks, Pulling Together, and Triumph as a Sunday Afternoon Warrior Page 4