Bill Parcells revived a moribund Jets franchise, leaving it stocked with players who have sustained the team in the two seasons since he left. But on Sunday, Parcells, in his latest incarnation as Dallas Cowboys coach, has a chance to undo much of the good.
A loss to the Cowboys, who seemed to be one of the weakest opponents on their schedule, would leave the Jets with an 0-4 record and end almost all hope for a second straight miraculous turnaround. It would also magnify the stress of a job that coach Herman Edwards said was enough to ensure that he would not follow Parcells on an extended tour as an NFL coach.
"I promise you, I won't do it to myself," the 49-year-old Edwards said. "I don't have enough energy to last that long. I sleep four hours a day. I give everything I can to this team. You won't see me at 60. In New York, it's like dog years. I've been here three years, it's really been six. When you start off like we start off, it's like 10 years."
But Parcells, 62, in his 16th year as coach with his fourth team, believes he knows different. When he resigned as coach of the Jets after the 1999 season, he said it could be written on a chalkboard that he would not coach again. He spent a season as general manager and then walked away, leaving the team to Edwards and Terry Bradway. A year later, he was flirting with Tampa Bay, as a possible replacement for Tony Dungy. And this year, he finally succumbed to Jerry Jones' enticement to come back.
"Herm said no way he could be coaching when he's 60?" Parcells said. "You tell Herm that I made that statement, only it was 50. You get into the game, it beats you down and it eats you alive and then you find out. At some point, the game ceases to be a job and it becomes your life. And at some point, you no longer are ashamed of that. You say, 'I can do it one more time.'"
Nobody outside the Jets knows the team better than Parcells. Ten starters were here during his tenure, including Vinny Testaverde, who Parcells said was still the best pure passer in football. He drafted Chad Pennington, but he admitted he did not know how he would turn out. He is particularly fond of Curtis Martin ("He's the kind of player that inspires you as a coach to give of yourself everything you have to give him"), whom he coached in New England and with the Jets.
He was interested in drafting the Jets' first-round pick, Dewayne Robertson, who he said was going through a period of adjustment just as Reggie White and Richard Dent did when they joined the league.
While Parcells still bristles at the suggestion he left the Jets in a salary-cap squeeze, his influence on the team was so great that the Jets face a nearly no-win situation on Sunday. Parcells took a team that had been 1-15 in 1997 to the American Football Conference championship game in 1998. Many players remain indebted to him for drafting them or signing them as free agents.
If the Jets lose Sunday, it will be perceived as a sign the franchise is slipping from the perch Parcells helped to put it on. And if they win, they will have done it with a large stock of Parcells' players.
Parcells thinks that the wealth of veterans on the Jets' roster insulates them when the season starts poorly.
Still, Parcells gives credit to Bradway and Edwards.
"All I know is it's a lot better off than it was, a lot better now and a lot better after we got there," Parcells said.
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