Retirement or ‘retirement’ for Parcells?

In 1979, Bill Parcells accepted a job to become linebackers coach of the New York Giants. He then backed out, persuaded by his wife and daughters to stay in Colorado, where he had been head coach at Air Force.

A year later, he got the same job with the New England Patriots. A year after that, he became the Giants’ defensive coordinator, joining a rookie linebacker named Lawrence Taylor.

A quarter-century later, he has left football – or so he says.

“Bill can always tell you his game plan for the next three games. But he rarely can tell you what he’ll do the next day, let alone the next month or the next year,” the late George Young, Parcells’ boss during eight seasons in which he won his only two Super Bowls, often said.

Which raises a question: Is Parcells’ retirement really the end?

He’s said to have put out feelers about coming back to New Jersey to take the Giants’ general manager job that was filled from within by Jerry Reese. There are expected to be a number of coaching vacancies after next season – New York’s Tom Coughlin, a Parcells disciple, could be one and so could Joe Gibbs, his longtime rival in Washington.

Young knew Parcells as well as anyone.

As the Giants’ general manager from 1979-97, he hired Parcells as an assistant twice – the second time breaking his rule of “never hiring a guy who quits on me.” Then, when Ray Perkins quit as coach to succeed Bear Bryant at Alabama, Young gave Parcells his first NFL head coaching job, forging a sometimes turbulent relationship that brought the Giants their titles after the 1986 and 1990 seasons.

The Tuna (a sobriquet given him in 1980 by his New England linebacking corps) went on to coach the Patriots, Jets and Cowboys, moving a step backward at each stop. He got New England to the Super Bowl after the 1996 season and the Jets to the AFC title game two years later. But he was only 34-32 in four seasons in Dallas, losing two postseason games.

Great coach or just good one?

Probably somewhere between.

His success with the Giants, for example, was partly luck.

How many Super Bowls would the Giants have won if Bum Phillips, then the coach in New Orleans, hadn’t used the first pick in the draft on running back George Rogers? The other 27 would have taken Taylor and the Giants, who had the second pick, got a future Hall of Famer without whom they may not have won a thing.

He left the Giants after their Super Bowl win over Buffalo in January 1991. His health was poor and he was worn out by internal battles.

That was because Parcells always thought he knew personnel better than he did.

But he could sure pick assistants.

The staff of that 1990 Super Bowl team included Coughlin, Bill Belichick, Romeo Crennel, Al Groh, Charlie Weis and Ray Handley, all future NFL, major college coaches or both (Groh and Coughlin).

Why did he step down from Dallas in good health?

Those close to him lately suggest Parcells was convinced that if he couldn’t turn around a team in three or four years, the players would tune him out and the results would be as they were in Dallas this season. A few good wins, some puzzling losses and nothing much better than mediocrity.

But give him a year off – likely in a television studio – and who knows?

He’ll be 67 then. Ready for a new challenge.