Parcells Meets His Jets, Outlines Expectations Players Are Told To Look To Future, Forget The Past - Because He Has

There were no messages to be delivered, except perhaps to a recalcitrant linebacker who didn’t show. Nor were there any major decisions made this March Monday.

Bill Parcells simply wanted to meet and greet his new team, the New York Jets. And, by the way, remind them he couldn’t care less about their losing past.

Parcells, on the job as Jets coach and chief of football operations for three weeks, emerged from his bunker for a long get-together with his team, which comes off two straight seasons with the NFL’s worst record.

“I talked to them a little bit about what we’re going to try to do, what to expect from the coaching staff, what to expect from me, and what I kind of expected from them in terms of participation in things,” he said. “And what I was going to try to accomplish with the team, what kind of team I want to have, what kind of players I want on it.

“I mentioned some things that are important to me: to be a smart team, be able to do certain things well. Basically, it was football things, like not to be heavily penalized, know how to use the clock, have players who could make decisions the coach would make without having the coach tell him to make them.”

One decision this coach apparently has made is to let linebacker Bobby Houston hang in no-man’s land. Houston was the only missing roster player, and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, said it was for personal reasons.

Parcells was less evasive..

“He told me he didn’t intend to come to this meeting and didn’t want to play here any longer,” Parcells said. “We’ll deal with that as time goes on. I don’t know what it was about and I am not really concerned with that.

“Bobby didn’t quit the team. He’s just in limbo and he will stay there.

“I won’t try to accommodate anybody. If I felt it was in the best interest of the team, I might do something. Letting a player shoot his way out, we’re not letting that happen.”

While Parcells preferred not to deal with specific positions or players, he did say he plans to move Marvin Jones from inside linebacker to outside and put one of his former players with the Giants, Pepper Johnson, in the middle. Johnson, a free agent, signed Monday.

But Parcells does not expect to see free-agent center Steve Everitt join the salary-cap-strapped Jets. New York offered Everitt $11.8 million for five years, but he wants more than the $1.5 million signing bonus included in that deal.

“I don’t think that is going to work out,” Parcells said. “It may, but I would be surprised. We’re shoveling sand uphill in our capacity to be totally competitive on some things. I’m not saying it’s over, but my guess is he would probably be somewhere else.”

Parcells made it clear he expects the players to be around, beginning March 17, when the off-season workout program begins. He blamed the club’s history of injuries partly on conditioning.

And he emphasized the importance of forgetting the past.

“I don’t talk about history in football,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything to me, just what are we going to do here …

“I didn’t talk about attitude too much. I thought it was important I get them here and introduce my staff and myself to them, and kind of give them an idea of what is important to me. I used to have guys go all spring just on hearsay, talking to players who used to play for Bill and finding out what’s he like.

“I’d rather tell them myself.”