“Feckless” doesn’t quite do justice to a sorry franchise that has had its fourth coach (and should soon have its fourth owner) in five years. Other NFL teams have endured drug scandals, but none that broke right after a Super Bowl in which the team had been stoned by five touchdowns. Other teams have had sex scandals, but none in their own locker room involving the harassment of a beat reporter for the local paper. Other teams have had troubled superstars, but none who crashed his car near the stadium during a game. “Just having Parcells gives this team more credibility than it has had in its entire history,” says Will McDonough, The Boston Globe columnist who serves as NBC’s football guru.
Credibility alone won’t be enough to lift a team that has plummeted to the NFL basement since its humiliation in the 1986 Super Bowl. Parcells’s no-nonsense approach with its emphasis on mistake-free football will be severely tested by the Pats. Last year the team majored in mistakes, averaging three fumbles, one interception and 65 yards in penalties a game. Which leads to the obvious question: why would Parcells, who was in the pantheon of NFL coaches when he exited with a Super Bowl championship in 1991, risk his reputation trying to shape up the Patsies? Foolish question, says the coach, who told NEWSWEEK he has “nothing to prove and no fear of the consequences.” After all, when he took over the Giants in 1983, New York’s winning percentage over the previous 10 years was a pathetic 32 percent, which makes the Pats’ 44 percent mark over the past decade seem almost lofty.
Still, Parcells hates dwelling on the past. This is the new New England Patriots. Gone are the old red and white uniforms for blue and silver. Gone from the helmet is the cartoony Revolutionary War patriot for a soldier who looks as if he might fight in “Star Wars.” And gone, too, are some of the Pats’ biggest-name players; wide-receiver Irving Fryar, quarterback Hugh Millen and running back John Stephens were all dealt for draft choices before training camp even opened. When it did, Parcells quickly established the tenor. Reggie Redding, a starting guard last season, was cut after he showed up overweight and out of shape. Linebacker David Howard, the team’s second leading tackler in 1992, was dumped when he couldn’t practice with a toe injury that the brass didn’t deem serious.
Those who remained quickly adjusted to a steady torrent of high-volume criticism. “When you screw up,” says tight end Mary Cook, “everybody knows it–you, the whole team and any fans at the practice.” Parcells’s style is not that of the remote field general. His practices are pressure packed and Parcells almost singlehandedly provides the pressure. He shifts his attention from offense to defense to special teams, getting in everybody’s face. Defensive line coach Romeo Crennel says Parcells was a little apprehensive the first day of camp–that perhaps the game had changed or that he was rusty. “But after a day he knew it was football and he could still coach,” says Crennel, who has been alongside Parcells for 13 years. “He let loose on rookies, veterans, coaches, even the ball boys–anyone who wanted, needed it or deserved it.”
That includes high-priced rookie quarterback Drew Bledsoe, the first pick in the entire NFL draft. After his exhibition debut at San Diego, Bledsoe seemed relieved when the coach assessed his performance as “pretty average.” But then Bledsoe made the mistake of telling reporters he was happy with his progress. When he missed badly with his first pass in practice the next day, Parcells began a blistering tirade: “Still happy with your progress, Drew?” Former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, who is joining NBC this season, has always marveled at Parcells’s ability to goad his players into extraordinary efforts. “They’d come to play us and he’d be telling [all-pro linebacker] Lawrence Taylor, ‘Those guys don’t think much of you’.” recalls Gibbs. “I’d say, ‘Ah, be isn’t going to fall for that.’ But come game time LT would be coming at us like an absolute lunatic.”
Many viewed Parcells’s departure from the Giants as a classic case of coaching burnout. Parcells himself demurs. “I left ‘cause I wasn’t feeling good,” says the coach, who under-went three heart procedures and finally bypass surgery in June 1992. “Now I am.” Though Parcells looks thinner and fitter (as well as tanner and blorider) after two years with no heavy lifting as a TV commentator, his young team will surely test his coronary condition. He opened camp with 49 players who had two years’ or less experience, a roster that seems to preclude overnight miracles. Parcells, who like many successful coaches displays a healthy dose of paranoia, believes there are people waiting to pounce if he stumbles. “Who cares what these idiots–some jerk newspaper guy or some guy who’s on TV because he screams-say?” says the coach. “I’ve thought more about football in one week than they have in a lifetime.”
Parcells believes that creating so much pressure in practice makes game pressure seem a relief. Bruce Armstrong, one of the only four current Patriots to play in a Pro Bowl, says it’s easy to become cynical as coach after coach parades through Foxborough, Mass., with his own views and pronouncements. “But when Parcells says something, he not only means it, he goes out and does it,” he says. “There’s a new confidence here that even if winning doesn’t come instantaneously, we’re at least building a foundation.” Gibbs says it is simply a matter of Parcells having a formula that he knows works. He can visualize the Patriots circa 1996–a ball-control offense, a soft bend-but-don’t-break defense and superspecial teams. And most experts can see something else in the Patriots’ future–a winning team.
