To Play Or Not To Play?

Obvious headline aside, Shank calls on former New England Patriots coach Bill Parcells (who's still speaking to Shank) to discuss the pros and cons of starting a rookle quarterback (I.e. Drake Maye):

To play or not to play a young quarterback? Bill Parcells discusses the pros and cons.

Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells knows all about veteran journeyman quarterbacks, first-round franchise quarterbacks, and quarterback controversies.

He also knows a thing or two about the Bob Kraft franchise and the mind-set of New England football fans. He knows the Patriots are rebuilding and that there’s going to be pressure to play No. 3 overall pick Drake Maye over eight-year veteran (five teams) Jacoby Brissett.

“Fans always want to see what’s new, particularly if you’re losing games,” Parcells said when I tracked him down on the phone this week.

No specifics, please. Parcells worked for the Krafts for four full seasons — it ended badly, perhaps you’ve heard? — and has mentored Brissett since he was a 15-year-old high schooler in West Palm Beach. The Tuna roots for Brissett to succeed, but won’t butt into New England’s football operation.

Yeah, we heard, Shank - you were one of the writers cirling like pirhanas.

DHL Dan CXCVIII - Tuna Talk

Shank's taken some interest in the post-Patriots Bill Belichick. Shank talks to another former Patriots head coach for some clues as to what's next for the other Bill:

Getting Bill Parcells’s take on Bill Belichick’s next move, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering why wannabe Patriots general manager Jonathan Kraft was called away to deal with a corrugated cardboard issue while the team he runs was introducing its new coach …

▪ Bill Parcells, now 82, is a Hall of Fame coach who won two Super Bowls with the Giants, then changed the culture of the Patriots when he came to New England in 1993. After four seasons and a trip to the Super Bowl with the Patriots, Parcells coached the Jets and Cowboys, then retired from the sideline at the age of 65.

The Tuna knows what it’s like to work for Bob and Jonathan Kraft, and he knows what it’s like to take on a new team late in his coaching life.

When I reached him on the phone this past week, Parcells was careful not to say too much about what went down in New England or what might happen with Bill Belichick.

DHL Dan CXLIII - The Tuna Speaks

Shank keeps the Mac Jones / Bailey Zappe thing going for a little bit longer:

Here is Bill Parcells’s philosophy on players losing jobs to injuries, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering how my invitation to Bob Kraft’s wedding got misplaced …

▪ As we wait to see whom Bill Belichick starts at quarterback Monday (going into the weekend, the best guess was that Mac Jones is coming back), know that Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells doesn’t subscribe to the notion that an NFL player should never lose his job while he is injured. The Tuna believes professional sports is a results business.

“I’m not speaking for Bill [Belichick],” Parcells said via phone this week. “This is just me. Players will say, ‘You don’t lose your job to injury.’ That’s right. You lose your job for two reasons: 1. You’re not playing well, or 2. Someone else is playing better.

“I would tell my team that. If you’re out of the game and someone else goes in and obviously plays better, then you lose your job. That was my approach.”

DHL Dan CLVIII - The Tuna Speaks

Shank caught up to the former New England Patriots coach and gets his opinion on a few things:

Picked-up pieces while stacking cordwood …

▪ Bill Parcells was the last Patriots coach to turn his team over to a rookie quarterback. In his first season as New England’s head coach (1993), the Tuna put the ball in the hands of No. 1 overall pick Drew Bledsoe and watched the Patriots lose 11 of their first 12 games. The Patriots finished with a four-game win streak, made the playoffs a year later, and went to the Super Bowl in Bledsoe’s fourth season.

Fast-forward to 2021 and Parcells likes what he is seeing from Bill Belichick’s Patriots and rookie quarterback Mac Jones.

“I’ll tell you something,” Parcells said from his Florida home. “I thought last week’s Patriots game was superb. I liked their time of possession [32:29]. That’s my kind of game right there. I really like that.

“The guy [Jones] is taking care of the ball and you had control of the game from beginning to end. You can’t ask anything else of a quarterback. If you can play like that, you’re going to win a lot of games. I really think they’ve got a good chance. I really do.

Hackles Raised

Thar she blows! Another twofer type column from Shank:

It’s ridiculous that Bill Parcells isn’t already in the Patriots Hall of Fame

Bill Parcells is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

He is not in the Patriots Hall of Fame in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Parcells is good enough for football's ultimate shrine, but not good enough for a gallery in the shadows of Bar Louie and Skipjack's at Patriot Place.

You folks know exactly where this column is going, don't you?

It is ridiculous and embarrassing. It’s like somebody gaining admission to Harvard, then getting a rejection letter from the University of Kentucky. It’s like serving two terms as President of the United States, then losing an election for state rep. It’s like Jack Nicholson auditioning at your community theater and not getting the part.

Do I make my point?

Yes, you do - it's just not the one you think you're making. More on that in a moment.

It was announced last week that for the fourth time since 2011, Parcells is a finalist for the Patriots Hall. He’s on a ballot with Richard Seymour and Mike Vrabel, two worthy candidates. Between now and May 8, fans can vote for their favorite candidate at patriots.com/hof. The Patriots will announce the winner in mid-May. If form holds, the winner will not be Parcells. Petty and preposterous will prevail.

And there you have it. This column exists for one reason only, which will be obvious by the end of it - to further criticize and pile on Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and nothing more. The twofer is using Parcells' Patriots HOF selection to praise him, a halfway clever manner to conceal the other part (dumping on Kraft yet again).

Now I'm A Believer?

That one's for you, Monkeesfan!

Shank sits down with Bill Parcells, who tells Shank what football's all about:

What’s the secret to the Patriots’ success? Let Bill Parcells explain

When you cut through all the analysis, strategy, fame, and gossip that’s been part of this historic two-decade Belichick-Brady dynasty, there’s one football element that’s more important than anything else:

The Patriots win because they don’t turn over the football.

It’s really that simple. The 2019 Patriots are an NFL-best 10-1 (tied with the Niners). Not coincidentally, they have the best turnover differential: plus-19. The next-best team is plus-10. The Patriots have 29 takeaways and only 10 giveaways. It is the annual secret to their success.

I could have sworn that on a number of previous occasions Shank had described Belichick's turnover philosophy as 'obsessive' or some such denigration. Unfortunately, I came up emptyhanded looking for examples and actually found the opposite from an old column:

Zero turnovers in the cold and snow of Chicago is particularly impressive. Absence of turnovers is the ultimate formula for success in the NFL.

DHL Dan LXXXVII - Piling On Some More

Since it's still a bit too early for Shank to take a crap on the New England Patriots, he's reached just about the six foot level in burying the 2019 Boston Red Sox.

Dave Dombrowski may have to take the fall for Red Sox’ falloff

Picked-up pieces while planning a rare October vacation . . .

■ I’ll be shocked if Dave Dombrowski is back with the Red Sox next season. Boston’s president of baseball operations has increasingly isolated himself with pals Frank Wren and Tony La Russa and has few friends inside Fenway’s walls. Dombrowski is under contract for just one more season.

When you have the top payroll in baseball and don’t make the playoffs, somebody has to go. Alex Cora isn’t going anywhere. Dombrowski has been exactly what we thought he would be. He delivered a championship. But he gets the blame for the Chris Sale and Nathan Eovaldi contracts and for failing to address the bullpen need. He’s clearly not the guy to oversee a much-needed farm system rebuild.

Was I just saying something about Shank not crapping on the Patriots? Boy, was I WRONG!

■ Fans who don’t think Bill Parcells should be in the Patriots Hall of Fame are irrational, immature, or just too young to know anything.

The Krafts want you to think they are the ones who turned the franchise around. No. Everything changed when Parcells was hired by then-owner James Orthwein. Parcells delivered instant credibility and got a 2-14 team into a Super Bowl in four seasons. He brought Bill Belichick to New England. He drafted Lawyer Milloy, Tedy Bruschi, Ty Law, Curtis Martin, and Willie McGinest.

Parcells left on bad terms after Kraft betrayed him, instructing Bobby Grier to make a first-round draft pick behind Parcells’s back.

Ask yourselves this, Parcells haters: How would Belichick have handled things if Kraft ordered Nick Caserio to overrule Belichick on draft day — without informing Belichick of what was going to happen?

Naturally, that is not the entire story about the Bill Parcells Era with the Patriots. Shank left a few things out in making his pitch.

This Will Be Good For A Few Shank Columns

Due out in a few months - The Two Bills, an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on NFL coaches Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick:

When Parcells stepped down as Jets coach after the 1999 season, he planned to have Belichick succeed him, but the day after Parcells announced his departure as coach, Belichick surprised the team by promptly announcing his resignation to a shocked media. He went to the Patriots and the rest is history.

“The Two Bills” trailer aired during the “Nature Boy” film and will premiere sometime this winter. With the cooperation of NFL Films, “The Two Bills” includes interviews with Giants legend Harry Carson and Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, who said Belichick should have followed Parcells as Giants head coach.

The documentary brings Parcells and Belichick together in one room for a rare interview. We’ll see how cordial the two Bills are after all of the history between them.

I'm guessing 'next to none'!

There's one question I think we agree ought to be asked - which Bill ordered the disinvite to Shank on that Patriots / Green Bay Packers Super Bowl Party?

What's interesting here is the italicized part above. When the New England Patriots played in their second Super Bowl in 1997, the Patriots threw a party and Shank was not invited. We believe this to be the point where Shank became a lifelong bête noire of the Patriots. If he disliked the Patriots at that point (or, more specifically, owner Robert Kraft), this snub was the proverbial nail in the coffin.

Brady, Patriots Make The CHB Wet

Now that an NFL investigation is complete, the Patriots in general and Tom Brady in particular are going to pay a tremendous price for their role in deflating footballs during the playoffs last season.

The Patriots are sanctimonious, arrogant, and "obstructionists."

Tom Brady is a lying cheater.

Bob Kraft is an insane whiner.

That's The CHB's column today in a nutshell.

So Tom Brady is now a wicked person, in the vein of other evildoers like Manny Ramirez, Nomar Garciaparra and Theo Epstein. Obviously whatever the worst offense you ever committed in your life is who you are. (What does that say about (Son of) Sam Shaughnessy, who got drunk and was busted for assaulting a cop?)

We needn't loo far in the Shank canon for instruction. Here's what The CHB wrote on Bill Parcell's induction to the Hall of Fame in August 2013:

He is renowned as the great, almighty Tuna, the quintessential Jersey guy who engaged reporters and insisted, “You are what your record says you are.’’ ... Parcells is the man who rescued the Patriots from irrelevance and maybe from a move to St. Louis. More than Bob Kraft, Tom Brady or Bill Belichick, Parcells is the man who changed the culture of football in Foxborough.

If Parcells is a local hero, and responsible for the Patriots culture, then isn't Parcells to blame? And if you are what your record says you are, well, doesn't that mean Patriots are Super Bowl champions?

Ever since their second Super Bowl loss to the Giants, The CHB has been writing some variation of the theme that the Patriots are done. This past year scuttled that pseudo franchise-in-the-making. Shank may be saying a hard rain's gonna fall (wicked bad cliche alert!), but it says The CHB is, once again, all wet.

The Big Tuna

Former Patriots coach Bill Parcells will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this weekend, and Shank pens a righteous column about him and his time with the Patriots.

Bill Parcells takes his rightful place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame this weekend, and there will be noise about his two Super Bowl championships with the New York Giants (remember Scott Norwood and wide right?), and his rebuilding of the Jets, Cowboys, and Dolphins. Parcells is the only man in NFL history to lead four franchises to the playoffs and he is one of only five men to take two franchises to the Super Bowl. He is renowned as the great, almighty Tuna, the quintessential Jersey guy who engaged reporters and insisted, “You are what your record says you are.’’

All swell. The Tuna deserves props and is overdue for a bust in Canton. But it is his four-year stint as head coach of the Patriots that matters most to us here in New England. Parcells is the man who rescued the Patriots from irrelevance and maybe from a move to St. Louis.

More than Bob Kraft, Tom Brady or Bill Belichick, Parcells is the man who changed the culture of football in Foxborough.

Legacy

Shank's column from Saturday takes a parochial turn; because when you're at the Super Bowl, it's all about the Patriots.

NEW ORLEANS — Bob Kraft is the benevolent, all-powerful NFL owner, overseeing an infinite string of sellouts and success. Bill Belichick is the strategic mastermind, drawing comparisons with Vince Lombardi. Tom Brady is one of the best quarterbacks in the history of the league.

They are the holy trinity of New England football.

But they did not invent the winning culture of the New England Patriots.

It was Bill Parcells.