MIAMI. Emerging from his office with reddened eyes and a blank look on his face, Bill "The Big Tuna" Parcells tried to hide the pain that his players could detect from across the room sitting in the whirlpool. "I have not been crying," Parcells said brusquely to a reporter who bravely asked the question that was on everyone's lips. "I've been watching game film--lots of game film."
Jason Taylor and Edyta Sliwinska
The source of Parcells' irritation is the lack of attention Jason Taylor, star defensive end for his team, the Miami Dolphins, is paying to offseason training. The six-time Pro Bowl selection has been spending time not lifting weights or pushing blocking dummies around, but dancing, in front of millions of people, with partner Edyta Sliwinska on "Dancing With the Stars," while Parcells sits at home, his hair up in curlers, waiting for Taylor to call.
"I love you, man . . ."
"I broke up with him," Parcells said as he drove away on a golf cart to supervise drills by quarterbacks, receivers and defensive backs. "He didn't break up with me."
"This is way better than a crack-back block!"
Taylor's run at dancing ended last night as he and his partner Edyta Sliwinska finished second to Kristi Yamaguchi and Mark Ballas in Tuesday's Dancing With the Stars finale, but Hollywood is calling, leaving Parcells wondering when he'll ever see his down lineman again.
"My partner is in there somewhere."
"'Edyta Sliwinska' sounds like a triple-word score in Scrabble," Parcells said. "I don't know where she came from, so I think I'll call immigration officials and see if they're looking for an illegal ballroom dancing immigrant."
FOXBORO, Massachusetts. Five times the New England Patriots had made it to the AFC Championship Game, and five times they had won. Until Sunday night.
Belichick and Pioli
"It was a tough loss, but we've got to move on," said Scott Pioli, the Patriots' VP of Player Personnel regarding the Indianapolis Colts' 38-34 come-from-behind win over the three-time Super Bowl champions.
Pioli says he and Bill Belichick, the Patriots' notoriously detail-oriented head coach, will be reviewing their depth chart over the next few weeks in an effort to improve the team, and that they won't stop at the sidelines. "We intend to take a hard look at some of our fans, many of whom have done a great job with their game-day fetishes over the years, but who may have lost a little of their mojo."
"36-42 cover, shoot--ready? Break!"
In Weymouth, Massachusetts, for example, Brian Shaw has carried the Pats' (as they are referred to affectionately around here) for years with a superstitious routine that involves the same underwear he wore in 1985 when the team "Squished the Fish", defeating the Miami Dolphins 31-14 to advance to Super Bowl XX against the Chicago Bears. "I've gone from a 36 to a 42 waist in the past two decades," says Shaw, "so the boxers were getting kind of small." "Frankly, Brian has lost a step," said linebacker Tully Banta-Cain, "and you can't play one-on-one defense against Marvin Harrison with a guy whose underwear is too tight for him."
The Barnacle
In nearby Hull, Massachusetts, a seaside community where locals gather at The Barnacle on Sundays to watch the Patriots on five TV screens, regular Howie Slater has traditionally "held it in" the entire second half in the belief that the football gods look with favor on his sacrifice. "You look back to the Snow Bowl game against Oakland in 2002, where we got the call on the 'tuck rule'," Slater says. "I stayed right on my barstool waiting for the replay and the challenge, and I'd been drinking pitchers of Miller Lite all freakin' day," he recalls. "Ever since, I don't move the whole second half even if I have to pee down my leg."
"I've heard of wet tee-shirt night, but never wet pants leg."
Pioli says there will be a number of interesting free agent fans on the market in the offseason, including Floyd Turnbull, a Broncos' season-ticket holder who refuses to bathe for the entire weekend during football season unless Denver has a bye week.
Shanahan: "Either get that guy out of the stadium, or get me some Glade Air Freshener!"
"Mike Shanahan has owned the Patriots for the past two seasons, and adding Turnbull could be a difference maker for New England," said ESPN pro football nerd John Clayton. "It's a move that would be welcomed be Broncos fans, who like to give Turnbull a mile-wide berth at Mile High."
FOXBORO, Mass. Bill Belichick, the defensive mastermind who has led the New England Patriots to three Super Bowl championships, is often casually referred to by sportscasters as a "genius" for his game plans. The contemplative coach bats such praise aside as if it were a pesky tyke hounding him for his autograph, saying "A genius is somebody who comes up with a cure for polio, or maybe Jon Bon Jovi," his favorite rock singer.
But no more. The MacArthur Foundation Fellows Program today announced that Belichick will receive one of this year's $500,000 "genius" grants, making official his status as a giant among the small fraternity of highly-competitive men who pace the sidelines at NFL games.
"It was only fitting, " said Cynthia Lichtenstein, executive director of the program. "Who can forget the fly pattern to Troy Brown he called on the last play of that overtime game against the Dolphins in 2003, or the way he's turned Peyton Manning into a personal love poodle with his defensive sets?"
The MacArthur grants are awarded to a wide range of scientists, artists and social reformers, and come with no strings attached. Last year's winners included a sculptor, a public-health researcher, a documentary filmmaker and the entire cast of "The New Hollywood Squares."
At least one person who was passed over for a grant was not ready to concede that Belichick's contributions to society outweighed hers. Miranda Rush-Goldie, a performance artist who smears Elmer's Glue on her nude body before boarding crowded New York City buses and subways, said she was more deserving. "He can probably make tons of money endorsing clothes, which I obviously can't," she explained.
"Not true," said Scott Winstead, a spokesman for the Patriots. "You've seen how Belichick dresses for games--homeless people don't buy new clothes."
FOXBORO, Mass. In a sharply-worded warning, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue cautioned New England head coach Bill Belichick to "keep his offense out of the single-wing era" after the Patriots used a long-moribund technique to score an extra point against the Miami Dolphins today.
Belichick called aging Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie's number for a dropkick extra point, and in his post-game press conference threatened to revive other early twentieth-century plays if necessary to reach the Super Bowl for the third year in a row, and fourth in the last five.
"We're looking at the quick kick, the Statue of Liberty, and the student-body sweep," Belichick said. "We'll use every socket wrench in the tool box."
There had not been in a successful drop-kick in the NFL since 1941 before Flutie connected in the fourth quarter of New England's season-ending loss to the Miami Dolphins. Tagliabue said he would ask league officials to monitor the Patriots' offense next week against the Jacksonville Jaguars to ensure that they are not unfairly reviving plays that have fallen into well-deserved disuse.
"Belichik thinks he's a genius because he's read a couple of football books instead of just the waffle-house menus other coaches carry on the sidelines," Tagliabue said. "We have a pro football Hall of Fame in Canton for people who are into history. Fans don't want to watch that stuff on TV."
Tagliabue particularly cautioned Belichik against using the Flying Wedge, which was outlawed by President Theodore Roosevelt after several student fatalities in the early years of his administration.
For his part, Belichick was unapologetic. "As Victor Hugo used to say when we were assistant coaches with the Browns, 'There's nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come and gone.'"
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
