THOSE with a Bill Parcells obsession (you know who you are) will trumpet Monday night’s Giants-Cowboys mismatch as another in a series of great returns. Yes, this is where he got his start, where the legend was spawned, where that famously edgy coaching style took root.
We know. We know. We know.
Parcells arrives hauling in his newest reclamation project, the woebegone Cowboys, and using history as a guide, this will be one lousy season, but by next year Dallas will be a winning team. This is big news in Irving and Fort Worth, but don’t try selling the Parcells factor inside the Giants locker room.
“You look at those films of Parcells winning those Super Bowls with the Giants, I mean, it doesn’t even look the same, it just looks older,” defensive end Michael Strahan said. “It just looks like the quality of the film, the players, the uniforms, the hair styles, everything just looks old.”
Old. And tired.
This is a worn, redundant story that might elicit a ripple of emotion within the memories of the paying customers and is sure to generate a quickened beat in the hearts and minds of the Mara family. As for Jim Fassel, he’ll shake his head for public consumption, but deep down, beating Parcells means a great deal to him, as the ghost still lingers in the ante-ways of Giants Stadium.
It won’t, however, register with those who actually don the Giants uniform. Parcells departed (in ugly fashion, if you recall) after a second Super Bowl triumph, following the 1990 season; the first of the current Giants, Keith Hamilton, came aboard in 1992. Strahan arrived in 1993. For the vast majority, Parcells’ link with the Giants is ancient history, the way a 20-something-year-old considers anything that happened way back in the ’80s.
For all the Giants know, Parcells is nothing more than the former Jets coach and one-time TV analyst.
“I wasn’t here with Parcells, nobody was here with Parcells,” said Strahan, in his 11th year with the Giants. “If anything, it’s more the fans were here with Parcells. For them, I think it’s a little bit of a different feeling, they’ve been Giants fans for so long. For us as players, we’re not that directly attached to him.”
Back in 1999, it was a big deal for Parcells when he returned to Giants Stadium with the Jets and Fassel’s Giants spanked him, 41-28, a game that might have saved Fassel’s job. This time around, there’s little room for nostalgia, not for Parcells, who’s at the helm of a lousy team that lost 27-13 in its opener, at home, to a Falcons team playing without Michael Vick. The Cowboys were 5-11 in each of the past three years under Dave Campo and might not finish much better in the first season under Parcells.
Does anyone truly think the Cowboys, mired in problems, are going to rise up and rally around their new coach just because Jeremy Shockey, in the vernacular of a junior high punk, called Parcells “the homo” in an off-season magazine rant?
Of course, Dallas will play hard because every Parcells team does that, first out of fear, later out of habit.
“They’re going to fight you until it’s over,” Strahan said. “Nobody’s going to lay down and quit.”
Those are not characteristics anyone would pin on the depleted Cowboys the past few years.
“Not that they had quit, but I don’t think it was the same intensity level that Parcells brings,” Strahan said. “He brings an intensity. It’s only a matter of time before that’s definitely a really good team.”
That time isn’t now. This game isn’t about Parcells. Not to the Giants, who see a flawed opponent led by a gray-dyed-blond-haired coach whose greatest Giants glories came a long time ago.
