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Thursday, December 04, 2014

The Parcells era Saints

Larry Holder finds lots of neat stuff in Bill Parcells' biography about his relationship with Sean Payton and, thus, the influence he's had over the way things have developed in New Orleans over the course of Payton's tenure here.  Most surprising is how close Parcells seems to have come to actually accepting the job of substitute coach during Payton's 2012 suspension.  The weird bit would have been that he wanted to hire additional staff. 
Parcells strongly considered taking over as Payton's temporary replacement as head coach before the NFL barred Payton from the Saints' facility for his season-long suspension connected to the bounty scandal. Even former Giants great Lawrence Taylor pushed Parcells to take the job. The Saints gave Parcells permission to contact Al Groh, then at Georgia Tech and former Jets and Virginia head coach, and Eric Mangini, an ESPN analyst at the time and former Browns head coach, about joining him as Parcells knew no one on the Saints' staff. Saints general manager Mickey Loomis was described as being reluctant about Parcells coming in. "Who knows what Loomis really thought," Parcells said. "I don't have any idea. I don't know Loomis; I only met him once. But guys like me threaten guys like him." Ultimately, Parcells decided not to take the job. Taylor even called Parcells with disappointment saying, "Coach, I had never known you to (expletive) out on anything."
I wonder if that's a way of writing that Loomis actually nixed this. 

1 comment:

mominem said...

Hire additional staff or replace existing staff with his guys? Sounds like he wanted a lot of control for a temp job.