Patriot Games : Parcells Has New England in AFC Title Game, but He May Be on His Way Out

FOXBORO, Mass. — New England Patriot Coach Bill Parcells had a surprise for Bob Kraft when the team owner came up to wish Parcells luck before Sunday’s AFC playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Parcells reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of jewelry a friend had given him for luck. On it was the Hebrew word chai, which means life.

Kraft, who is Jewish, smiled and turned the

piece around. Hebrew is read from right to left.

Parcells had been holding it up backward.

From Kraft’s point of view, that wasn’t all Parcells seems to have backward. Only one victory away from the Super Bowl, Parcells should be thrilled at finding himself headed back to the top, not considering starting all over again at the bottom.

But no matter how far the Patriots go this season, those nagging rumors just won’t go away.

The whispers can be heard all around Foxboro and Boston:

Parcells wants out.

Parcells is still angry about being stripped of his power in personnel decisions by Kraft.

Parcells is going back to New York to be both coach and general manager of the Jets, or perhaps to coach the Giants again.

More glory is not enough. Parcells wants more power.

Is it true? Is he gone?

Parcells won’t talk about his future right now. Not to reporters. Not even to Kraft.

Parcell’s contract runs out at the end of this month, and then he and his owner will talk.

According to a report in a New York paper, Parcells could get a three-year, $10-million deal from the Jets that would include unlimited power in all personnel matters.

Although there is no concrete evidence that the Jets have been guilty of tampering by talking to Parcells while he is still under contract to the Patriots, there seems little doubt they would love to have him, would grant him whatever he asked for in the power department and perhaps what he asked for on his paycheck.

And it also seems logical to assume that Parcells will use all that as leverage in his talks with Kraft. But just how much leverage Parcells has remains to be determined. It’s one thing for a Super Bowl-winning coach to make demands. It’s another story if the coach has fallen short. And if New England loses decisively in Sunday’s AFC title game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Foxboro, then what?

“I have one of the greatest coaches in the game,” Kraft said. “I would like to have him back.”

No kidding. But at what price?

Ask Parcells about going back to the Meadowlands, and the New Jersey native will say only, “Ask the Boston guys. I like this team.”

But he has also been throwing out other signals. His agent, Robert Fraley, told the Boston Globe recently that Parcells would like to stay “in the right situation,” meaning with more authority.

And Parcells, who once said the Patriots would be his last team, said last month that he reserves the right to change his mind.

There is another factor in all this. Kraft desperately wants to get out of Foxboro Stadium, which is a quarter-century old, doesn’t have luxury boxes and doesn’t even have hot water in the showers all the time. Quarterback Drew Bledsoe emerged shivering from the shower after Sunday’s 28-3 victory over Pittsburgh.

“We’re trying to patch up an old shoe,” Kraft said.

He is also trying to patch up relations with politicians in South Boston who are fighting his plan to build a new stadium there. Kraft, who says he is willing to raise $200 million for the project, is hoping the current success of the Patriots will trigger support for his plan.

But if he loses Parcells, he may also lose some of the local optimism about the team’s future.

Parcells spent eight years as coach of the New York Giants. But after winning two Super Bowls, Parcells, troubled by a heart condition, gave up coaching, turning in his whistle for a microphone.

After two years in the broadcast booth as a television analyst, however, Parcells’ heart was aching for another reason. He missed being on the sideline. He had been coaching since 1964, when he started as defensive line coach at Hastings College in Nebraska and, at 52, wasn’t ready to spend the rest of his life living on memories.

So he signed a five-year deal with the Patriots for what looked like a miserable job, even for a guy with a good heart. New England was coming off a 2-14 season under Coach Dick MacPherson and was 9-39 over three seasons, a long drop from its appearance in the 1986 Super Bowl.

Parcells started 5-11 but by his second season was back in the playoffs with a 10-6 team that lost in the first round to the Cleveland Browns. The Patriots slipped to 6-10 last season and again didn’t make the playoffs.

Parcells then raised eyebrows all through New England when he asked Kraft to let him out of the final year of his contract, 1997. Parcells says it was because of a clause in that contract, negotiated with former owner James Busch Orthwein, that would have obligated Parcells to pay the club back $1.4 million if he failed to coach in the fifth year for any reason.

Kraft agreed but there was obvious tension between the coach and his owner.

That tension increased last spring when Parcells declared that the Patriots were going to use their top draft pick, the seventh overall, to take a defensive player.

Not so fast, Kraft said. He told Parcells that Bobby Grier, the team’s director of player personnel, was making those decisions, and Grier had decided to select Ohio State wide receiver Terry Glenn.

Parcells seethed.

When Glenn was slow to return to form after suffering a hamstring strain in training camp, Parcells told reporters, “She isn’t ready yet.”

When asked by a reporter about Parcells’ sarcastic remark, Kraft responded, “That’s not the standard we want to set. That’s not the way we do things.”

Kraft, however, is pleased with the way the Patriots are doing with Grier’s drafting. His first three picks in 1996 have been big contributors to this season’s team. Glenn caught 90 passes for 1,132 yards and six touchdowns in the regular season and his 53-yard catch at the start of Sunday’s game ignited the Patriots. New England’s second pick, Lawyer Milloy, is the team’s starting strong safety. And Grier’s third choice, linebacker Tedy Bruschi, also plays a lot.

The knock on Parcells has long been that he is a poor evaluator of talent. He would disagree.

As for additional authority, if he were tempted to go back to the Giants, he would have to operate under General Manager George Young. With the Jets, he might get the general manager’s job.

Either way, though, he would have to start from scratch.

Boston Globe reporter Ron Borges told Parcells last month that, if Parcells let his intelligence rule, he would stay, but if he let his ego rule, he would leave.

Parcells didn’t disagree.