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Busy day SI's Peter King breaks down the coaching moves
Posted: Tuesday January 04, 2000 04:16 AM
Sports Illustrated Senior Writer and NFL Insider Peter King talked with CNN/SI about the coaching news in the NFL on Monday: CNN/SI : Peter, let's start off with the Jets. When exactly did Bill Parcells make this decision to step down? Peter King : He made the decision after the game yesterday. He'd been thinking about it for a long time. He informed his staff this morning at about 9:45. I must say he stunned several of them. CNN/SI : Help us make sense of this situation. Parcells voluntarily steps down, Bill Belichick is then seemingly elevated to head coach of the Jets. There's an assumption there that Belichick wants the job. Has he made that clear? Peter King : It's still a pretty confused situation and it may turn out, in fact, that the commissioner of the NFL, Paul Tagliabue, will have to look into this. The commissioner informed the Jets last week that if another team called to ask permission to talk to Belichick with Parcells still the Jets coach, that team was going to be granted permission. Early Monday morning, Patriots owner Bob Kraft called the league and said, "I want permission to talk to Bill Belichick as my coach and general manager." Kraft believes that he should be able to talk to Belichick because being coach and general manager is a higher position in the NFL than just coach, and the only job that Belichick has right now is the coaching job with the New York Jets. I think Belichick is a little bit confused as to why he wasn't given the authority and freedom to talk to the New England Patriots even though most people around the NFL believe that eventually he would be the coach of the New York Jets. CNN/SI : Belichick is intelligent and intense but he's not a quote machine. Is a coach's personality an important factor in hiring in the media mecca of New York? King : Two hours a day of an NFL coach's job is taken up with some aspect of the media and Belichick did a poor job with this when he was in Cleveland. He not only was under .500 as a coach, he was a lot worse than that as a communicator. But more important, I think, he was a poor consensus builder among the players on the team. He did not build a togetherness on the Cleveland Browns, so that when things started to go bad and they started to lose some games, Belichick didn't have players that he could rely on who really were in his court. As a good friend of Belichick's told me on Monday, "Bill Belichick is a smart guy. And smart guys learn from their mistakes. He knows where he went wrong in Cleveland and that's not going to happen with the Jets." We'll see about that, I'm not sure whether it will or not, but Belichick is a 1,600-on- his-SATs kind of guy. CNN/SI : Let's talk a little about Parcells' state of mind. His bypass surgery in 1992 and his health since then -- and also this year he lost his agent and very good friend Robert Fraley in that jet crash that also claimed the life of Payne Stewart. How much could all of this come in to play with this decision? King : Well, I'm sure at age 58, and Bill has mentioned this to me once earlier this year, that whenever he did leave the game he wanted to have time to do something else with his life. And now he has chosen this time. I think it is going to be very, very interesting to listen to Bill because Bill at times like this is usually very honest and he pours out his feelings when he talks about why he makes a major life decision like this. All signs pointed to him going back to the Jets. I think it's a very interesting decision from that perspective, plus you bring up the Robert Fraley aspect of the story. I think this may have some impact on him because Bill went to Fraley's funeral and was terrifically impacted by it. He really liked Fraley as much as a friend as an agent. I do think that played some part in it. CNN/SI : It is so hard to imagine the team he is giving up right now. Not many teams looked any hotter than the New York Jets. King : Absolutely. The Jets are better than six playoff teams right now even with Ray Lucas playing quarterback. The Jets ended the season with a four-game winning streak, all against playoff teams. That's why I was so surprised. I talked with Bill three to four weeks ago and one of the things he said is that last year at the end of the year he was physically exhausted, drained. He didn't know if he would come back. But he said, "You know I'm feeling pretty good this year. These guys are playing hard for me and I'm energized by it." That's why the events of today I think are going to surprise a lot of people. CNN/SI : Let's talk about the Packers' situation, probably not so surprising although the timing definitely is, Peter, after one season. How surprising is that? King : I think it's very surprising because things had to be really bad in the discipline department. I think Ron Wolf, the Packers' general manager thought they were bad enough that they necessitated a change. I think that Ray Rhodes had run this team with a lax hand this year. He had told people around the office in the last week or so, "Hey, I'm going to be a lot tougher next year." Well, that's not exactly something, as a general manager, that you really want to hear. I think Ron was very concerned with the lack of discipline. Last week, after they lost in Tampa, Rhodes gave the team two days off with a playoff game basically against Arizona, staring them in the face this week. Very unusual in NFL circles, and I just think Wolf didn't like the way this situation was going. CNN/SI : It wasn't just Rhodes, Peter, it was the entire staff that was cleaned out. What was behind that? King : I think Ron has always been the kind of guy that when you hire a coach, you let him bring in your own guys. I think if he was going to fire Ray, he's going to fire everybody on the staff. It's going to be very interesting to see if there is any repercussions or any comment now, especially in the minority community of giving Rhodes and the two coordinators, the first all-black, basically head coaching and coordinating staff in NFL history. It will be interesting to see if the Packers get any guff for this, because it was being very closely watched by a lot of people. CNN/SI : Let me ask you then because it is such a sensitive issue, but will it be played out here, is it fair? King : I think it's fair to ask the question but I think overall, Ron Wolf saw a situation that was basically, I wouldn't say was careening out of control, but it was just a situation where Ray Rhodes was not the guy that Ron Wolf thought he was after one year. Ray Rhodes came in with a tough-handed reputation, a disciplinarian reputation, and he was a lot softer on this team, much softer than Mike Holmgren was. And I think it very much surprised Ron Wolf and it surprised a lot of people. Plus I think his best players this year, were either stagnating or having poor years. Brett Favre had a mediocre year. Antonio Freeman wasn't the impact guy he was -- nor was Dorsey Levens despite a great game yesterday. So I think all that played in to the firing and he [Wolf] looked at it that way, and I don't see this as race issue at all. CNN/SI : So there are at least two coaching vacancies. Stir up the pool of possible successors. Who's going to end up in New England and Green Bay? King : If Kraft isn't allowed to interview Belichick, he's going to go to the drawing board and go for, probably, a hot coordinator of the day, or maybe he'll give a more established guy a second chance like Art Shell, the former Raiders coach. I don't think the Patriots are going to go for Marty Schottenheimer at all, even though that has been rumored. If you're looking at the Green Bay Packers, I think general manager Ron Wolf is probably more likely to go after a college guy. I've heard Florida's Steve Spurrier; I've heard Wisconsin's Barry Alvarez, who's very strong there; and I've also heard Miami's Butch Davis. But it's going to be very, very important for Ron Wolf to get a disciplinarian, a guy who's not going to take any guff from his players and is willing to take stars like Brett Favre and sit them down in his office when need be and lay into them when he has to.
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