NY DN: For Tuna, it's still his way or the highway

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One-way street

For Tuna, it's still his way or the highway

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/story/114456p-103283c.html

By HANK GOLA

DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

Bill Parcells is back on the sidelines in Dallas.

Parcells helped mold Phil Simms into a Super Bowl-winning quarterback with the Giants.

In 1983, Bill Parcells was on the list of head football coaches most likely to be fired.

The Giants he inherited from Ray Perkins were going nowhere in his first season, but he had devised a plan to change that. In his pocket, Parcells carried a list of seven things that had to be done, ranging from a new weight room to a more athletic offensive line. He was certain he could turn the team around if he implemented those changes.

The rest isn't just history. It's legend.

Over the next three years, each of Parcells' seven pillars were in place, and so too was the Vince Lombardi Trophy at Giants Stadium. He took a team that was 3-12-1 in 1983 and won two Super Bowls in the next eight years.

Next up: New England.

When Parcells took over the Patriots in 1993, they had won three games the previous two seasons. By his third season, Parcells had them in the Super Bowl.

In 1997 he took over the Jets, who were coming off a 1-15 record in Rich Kotite's final season. In two years, they played for the AFC championship.

Challenge IV in Dallas is no less daunting. The team's record each of the last three years: 5-11.

Can Mr. Fix-It work another miracle? Certainly, he has the right formula.

As he explained in a piece he wrote for the Harvard Business Review three years ago, Parcells' knack for turning around hopeless teams goes back to that basic lesson he learned 20 years ago.

"At that point, I knew I had nothing to lose so I decided I would do it my way," he says. "I was going to lead and the players were going to follow and that's all there was to it."

Parcells' fingerprints can be found all over all the teams he has coached, and even a few he hasn't. Some would call him a control freak. Even Dallas owner Jerry Jones, a dominant personality himself, knows this: In order for Parcells to make headway, you must get out of his way.

Parcells' methods are simple. As he wrote in the Harvard Business Review:

"Make it clear from day one that you're in charge. Don't wait to earn your leadership. Impose it."

"Confrontation is healthy."

"Set small goals and hit them."

In each of his four stops, Parcells has brought the same intensity.

"I don't know if you can capture it in words: his personality, his presence, his intolerance on the smallest details about doing your job right," says Phil Simms, who Parcells helped develop into a star quarterback for the Giants. "Developing the mental part of the player as much as anything — his mental toughness, a player's willingness to try to excel on every play and not to accept any doubts. He does that with every position and all those characteristics just make a more functional, tougher football team."

Changing the culture

In Dallas, Parcells cleaned house by doing away with old traditions like the domino games and cell phones in the locker room. At minicamp, he made the rookies earn their stars by giving them blank helmets. He also sent a message to the veterans: Even they would have to wear their last names across the tops of their helmets. He started testing and probing them early. Cowboy players were shocked by how much time he spent in the weight room, shooting the bull on many topics beyond football. He immediately got on running back Troy Hambrick to shed weight. He enlisted veteran safety Darren Woodson (he nicknamed him "Methusela") as one of his locker room agents.

Parcells and his staff walked out on practice one day, a Bobby Knight tactic he used with the Patriots and Jets. He's revived some of his old tricks to make points. Looking for more discipline from cornerback Derek Ross, he told him he played like a "dog chasing cars."

It's the same thing he used to tell New England linebacker Chris Slade.

Most of all, the coach has been watching, because what sets Parcells apart is his impatience with players who don't buy into the program. Parcells doesn't need superstars to win — although having Lawrence Taylor didn't hurt — he just needs his kind of guys. Everywhere he's been, it has taken a year before his plan was fully in place.

"He is being smart right now, feeling his way," says Ron Wolf, the former Packers GM who along with Chuck Fairbanks and Tom Coughlin showed up at Cowboys training camp as "observers." "He doesn't want to do anything rash, but he has an uncanny ability to evaluate talent. Once he figures out what he has and what he needs, he'll get it going."

One of Parcells' pet sayings is that "confidence is born of demonstrated ability." In other words, you can't do it in a game if you haven't done it in practice. That's why he pushes his players so hard.

"You don't have to have the most talented team and he's proven that," says Steve DeOssie, a former Giant who was brought into New England to preach the gospel. "And part of the reason is — and I know this in New England — there were guys who he brought in who were going to help the team immediately, guys like (David) Meggett and Bob Kratch, but there were a few guys like myself and William Roberts who were brought in to simply show first-hand the level of work that it takes, not just on the field."

Players were shocked at Parcells' expectations, says DeOssie. "When he got to the Patriots, if they didn't want to practice, they just told the trainer that they needed a day off," he says. "They'd saunter into meetings five minutes late, they wouldn't come in early to do extra film work. They wouldn't stay late.

"It sounds kind of corny but he's got to run some guys off. They've had how many years of Jerry Jones running the team? He's got a lot of dead weight there."

Simms, who was in the TV booth for the Cowboys' third preseason game, says that the Parcells touch is already evident.

"Look, the Cowboys might go 2-14 this year, I don't know, but I'm telling you as an ex-player and I'm watching closely, that I see a tremendous difference already," Simms says. "People think their coaches are tough on them until they meet a certain breed of coach and Bill would be one of those. You think you've worked hard and tried and then you go, ‘Wow.' You realize the effort, the attention to just doing it right all the time, the no-taking-days-off in practice."

Simms can see the progress Cowboys' young quarterback Quincy Carter is making under Parcells. "I get so sick of reading, ‘Well, he's got Quincy Carter and Chad Hutchinson (at quarterback).' Well, shoot, the NFL is about coaching," Simms says. Carter, Simms said, is being held to a higher standard than ever before.

"There's no more gray area," Simms says. "Too many times, coaches give their players gray area and they'll live in there. They'll just take advantage of it."

Simms can remember a similar point in his own career.

He was watching film with Parcells after a good game. On one play, he dropped back to throw a 12-yard out, when a defensive lineman got "kind of in the way.

"I came off of it and I looked for the tight end over the middle. I threw it down and it was incomplete," Simms says. "We're watching the film and the receiver was open. So he asked me why didn't I throw it?

"Well coach, the defensive lineman ...

"Was he open?"

"Yes sir, he was open."

"Well it's your job. So what are we talking about?"

"I said, 'Nothing. I didn't make the throw.' That was it. I quit trying to make excuses. It was open, get it done. Boom, quick, anticipate. Whatever you gotta do, get it done."

A few familiar faces

Parcells only has three of his ex-players on the Cowboys — Terry Glenn, Richie Anderson and Ryan Young. But Anderson says that he has been fielding questions from players every day on how to read the coach.

Except for Maurice Carthon, Parcells no longer has his usual complement of assistants who know his system inside and out. With the exception of a brief time in New England, he's always had mastermind Bill Belichick running his defense. But Parcells says that working with a new staff has invigorated him and he's even bowed to special teams coach Bruce DeHaven on a punt protection scheme that's different than the one he's always believed in.

For now, Jones seems willing to let Parcells do it his way. "I can't imagine a situation when I wouldn't defer to Bill's wishes when it comes to players," Jones said earlier this summer. "When you come right down to it, this represents a change in philosophy for me. A deliberate change, might I add. I want to win that badly."

Parcells says he can relate to Jones, that they're from the same generation. But DeOssie, a first-hand observer in New England, throws in this word of caution: "The transition period will be absolutely no problem. I think the problems will come when he starts winning ballgames," he says. "That will be the test because Jerry Jones is still a guy who enjoys the limelight and the face time and the credit. Jerry Jones isn't just a guy who will put in face time, he will put in mouth time, too."

We know one thing about Parcells. He will put in the time, even though he may leave abruptly. And his players will learn how to do the same