Videos: Parcells in a Nutshell
By Matt Cordon (kh). Filed in Dallas Cowboys News in Brief, Video Clips |
There are quite a few videos of Bill Parcells that would be fun to show, but I found three that I think provide a good sketch of the man as he relates to the Dallas Cowboys.
(1) Tell me whether this demonstrates that Parcells is a Giants guy. I maintain that it does.
This is from Peter King:
The other night, NFL Network aired one of the shows NFL Films has done about the best Super Bowl teams of all time. Parcells was in rare form through the show, chiding Lawrence Taylor and Phil Simms in old NFL Films footage, throwing out the kind of barbs that have made him famous, and listening to Simms say that not a day goes by that he doesn’t bring up a Parcellsism, in some way or other.
(2) Parcells gets his first win as the Dallas head coach against the Giants in the Meadowlands. The Cowboys had some big wins, but they could not maintain momentum in any of the four seasons he was here.
(3) Parcells could still play the media, but he did not get a free ride, especially this year.
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Miscellaneous comments from…
As of last Friday, according to people who knew, Bill Parcells leaned toward coaching the Cowboys in 2007. Yet on Saturday, he felt like retiring. So on Monday, feeling no different, he did.
Hence the time line of the private wrestling match Parcells conducted with himself. He wore down and out of the profession at age 65. That’s why he’s gone from Valley Ranch and joins an ever-enlarged list of coaches who have failed to resurrect the franchise to former heights.
Forget the inevitable conspiracy theories that account for Parcells quitting. Such as beloved owner Jerry Jones forcing the issue by demanding Parcells stop dawdling with his decision. Or that he refused to pacify Parcells on new contract terms. And finally, that Jones wasn’t overwrought to see Bill leave.
None of it is true. Neither money nor pressure from any outside source was a factor in his exit. Still, the Parcells departure registered as surprise and semi-shock to a majority of local railbirds.
In his four years here, he was a constant study in contradictions, entertaining and personable one moment, cold and impersonal the next. We never could figure out Bill Parcells.
More importantly, he never did figure out how to win again in today’s NFL.
As we expend ourselves over the next few days in newspaper print, on the radio, on television, trying to analyze why Bill Parcells elected to announce his retirement from coaching football Monday, we have to keep coming back to the bottom line.
He didn’t win. Not enough. Not at the right times. Not when it mattered most
This is his fourth coaching search since Jones last hoisted a Lombardi Trophy in January 1996. None of his three most recent hires was able to win him a playoff game, much less another Super Bowl.
First Jones hired a guy who knew offense (Chan Gailey). That didn’t work. Then he hired a guy who knew defense (Dave Campo). That didn’t work, either. Finally, Jones hired a guy who knew how to win – a head coach with almost as many Super Bowl rings as the Cowboys’ owner himself.
Jones gave Bill Parcells more power than any Cowboys coach since Jimmy Johnson. He let Parcells build a roster he wanted to build and play the schemes he wanted to play.
Parcells constructed a team that leaned heavily on veteran players, much as Joe Gibbs has done at Washington in his second go-round. Gibbs won three Super Bowls in the pre-salary cap era and Parcells two. You could afford to start older players and carry veteran backups under the old system. But not under the new system.
With salary-cap limits, you must play youth. That means drafting well and playing them early on. Neither Gibbs nor Parcells grasped that. They tried to win the way they won in the 1980s – with older players.
More from King:
When Parcells decided with certainty in the last 48 hours that he couldn’t do it, he told owner Jerry Jones, in effect, that he didn’t think he could muster up the 12 months of effort needed to get to that point where Dallas was a couple of weeks ago — on the verge of winning a playoff game with a chip-shot field goal. That chip-shot field goal went awry. And Parcells, 65, realized for him to go back to the grind would mean starting today in Mobile, Ala., and going right to free-agency when he got back, and then to the scouting combine, and then to draft trips and draft meetings, and then the draft, and then to mini-camps and off-season practices.
Parcells is at the point in his life where six weeks off a year just isn’t enough, particularly when he lives 1,400 miles from the part of the world he loves the most — the New Jersey/New England/Upstate New York area. The football demands on his time are too great.
“It’s time,” he said Monday afternoon from his office at Valley Ranch. “It’s a young man’s game. I’m in good health, but it’s time to give someone else a chance. I’m looking forward to whatever life has in store for me, and right now I have no idea what that is.”
