The New England Patriots, what more can I say about this proud and highly successful team? Since 2001, the team has achieved five Super Bowl appearances, three Super Bowl wins, eight conference championship appearances and 13 straight winning seasons with head coach Bill Belichick.
However, there was a time where the modern era of winning didn’t seem like it was going to happen.
In 1990, five years after their first Super Bowl appearance in 1985, the team went through one of the worst seasons in NFL history, a 1-15 record, after starting the season 1-1. While they improved to 6-10 in 1991, in 1992 New England dove back into the miserable depths of the 1990 season, managing a 2-14 record.
After the disastrous 1992 season, there were rumors that the Patriots would be moved to St. Louis. This was due to owner Victor Kiam selling the team to entrepreneur James Orthwein, a native from St. Louis, after 1991. Orthwein himself admitted he was planning on moving the Patriots. Easy to see why, since they were pathetic.
Bill Parcells changed all of that. The legendary two time Super Bowl winning head coach of the Giants during the 80’s decided to come out of retirement and coach the Patriots in 1993.
During Parcells’ time in New England, he helped revive the team’s credibility and laid the foundation for a winning team. This, along with new owner Robert Kraft’s strong campaign to keep football in the Boston area, prevented the team from being moved to St. Louis.
With his discipline and the help of a first overall drafted quarterback Drew Bledsoe, Parcells transformed New England from zeroes to heroes in two years, clinching a playoff spot for the first time since 1986, where they lost at Cleveland to the Browns 20-13, who were coached by someone very familiar to New England fans.
Bill Belichick.
Belichick at the time was the closest assistant to Parcells, having been with the Giants since 1979 as an assistant defensive coordinator, and was named the defensive coordinator by Parcells himself in 1985. With Parcells’ coaching, the help of quarterback Phil Simms, and the mindset of Bill Belichick’s defense, the Giants won two Super Bowls (1986, 1990), and both coaches became legends in Giants folklore.
After the 1990 season, Parcells briefly retired from the NFL (before taking the Patriots HC job in 1993) and Belichick accepted an offer to become the head coach of the Cleveland Browns. When Belichick was fired from the team a week after its move to Baltimore in 1996 (before the Browns came back as an expansion team in 1999), he became the Patriots assistant coach that same year, under a familiar face; Bill Parcells.
With the duo’s coaching chemistry, they and quarterback Drew Bledsoe among other players led New England to the team’s second Super Bowl appearance in 1996, where they came up short in a 35-21 loss to the Green Bay Packers. The following year, Parcells and Belichick left for the Jets, as head coach and assistant head coach / defensive backs coach respectively.
With the Jets, the dynamic coaching duo gave the team a 29-19 record in 3 seasons, including a trip to the AFC Championship Game in 1998. They had no losing seasons, and in all 3 years, the Jets ranked in the top ten on fewest points allowed on defense. After the 1999 season, Parcells stepped down as HC, and Belichick left to go back to New England as head coach, where he remains to this very day.
You may be asking yourself what all this has to do with the title of this article. Like it or not, Bill Parcells is a more important figure in Patriots history than Bill Belichick. Of course, that’s not to say Parcells was a BETTER Patriots coach: obviously Belichick is the better coach for New England here.
But without Bill Parcells, there wouldn’t be a Bill Belichick in New England. The duo’s chemistry, friendship and Parcells’ mentoring was in my opinion a big deciding factor into Belichick’s return to coaching football. Though he was a good coach before joining New England in 2000, Parcells’ mentoring of Belichick elevated the heart and soul of the Patriots (all apologies to Tom Brady) to the next level.
Even when he wasn’t working with Belichick Bill Parcells had an involvement on how ownership treated the current Patriots coach. After the 1996 Patriots season, Parcells left New England due to a bitter relationship with Robert Kraft, in which he felt he wasn’t given enough control over player decisions, primarily in the NFL Draft. In a famous statement when he left New England, Parcells said “They want you to cook the dinner; at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.”
This statement perhaps had a tremendous effect on how the Patriots owner handled the hiring of Bill Belichick, as Kraft gave him complete control of most of the football decisions, including drafts, signings, and cuts. As we have seen, this has helped build a dynasty in the new millennium, and the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady duo will eventually go down as the greatest head coach-quarterback duo in the history of the NFL.
Bill Parcells didn’t just save the Patriots organization: he built the foundation, a foundation for a winning culture. Without Parcells, football in Foxboro would cease to exist. He created the blueprint that allowed Bill Belichick to himself build the most successful football team in the 21st century.
Sadly, this might go unmentioned amongst some Patriot faithful, which is shame considering the value from Parcells’ time in Foxboro from 1993 to 1996. But longtime fans will appreciate Parcells’ contributions to the team’s modern day success and record breaking seasons. You could say the Hall of Fame coach was ahead of his time with his formula in the 90’s.
In short, The Big Tuna should be remembered fondly for contributing to the foundation of The Big Dynasty.
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(Stats via pro-football-reference.com)
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