Three men are responsible for saving the New England Patriots. They are: Robert Kraft, Drew Bledsoe, and Bill Parcells.
Bledsoe already is a member of the Patriots Hall of Fame, and the organization has now finally done the right thing and is inducting Bill Parcells as well. Team owner Kraft announced the decision on Tuesday.
“The hiring of Bill Parcells in 1993, a two-time Super Bowl champion, brought instant credibility to the franchise,” he said in a statement. “We had never had a head coach with his credentials.”
The ending for the Kraft-Parcells partnership was rocky, to say the least. As head coach, however, the latter brought the Patriots into relevancy, and drafted a ton of the players that were important to the Patriots’ first Super Bowl win under his former assistant Bill Belichick in February 2001.
Let’s go back to 1992, though, and the Patriots coming off a 2-14 season, that tied them with the Seattle Seahawks for the worst record in the NFL. Since the inception of the franchise in 1960, 32 years earlier, the Patriots had a total of four playoff wins, one in 1963, and three in 1985, when they made it all the way to the Super Bowl and got blown out by the Chicago Bears. They were also in a terrible four-year stretch where three different coaches celebrated a combined 14 wins.
At that point in time, the Patriots were a laughingstock in the league, and a distant fourth in the hearts of fans in New England. They had just been sold by Victor Kiam to James Busch Orthwein, who was looking to move the franchise from New England to St Louis. To get some more media attention to his team before the planned relocation, he convinced Parcells to come out of retirement to become head coach before the 1993 season.
Kraft, of course, ended up blocking Orthwein’s attempt to move the team and bought it in 1994. At that point, the Patriots had already become a team that people were once again paying attention to, thanks to the play of Bledsoe, and the coaching prowess (and personality) of Parcells.
That laid the foundation for his eventual Hall of Fame candidacy, as did the work that he did.
Parcells was a fantastic talent evaluator, and knew exactly what type of player he was looking for. He was unapologetically himself, and he had no problem making tough roster decisions. One of the first moves he made when he walked in the door was to cut Irving Fryar, the former No. 1 overall pick, and, at one time, the best player on the entire team. The message had been sent: no one was above the team, and only one person got to decide what to do, Bill Parcells.
He was also a great drafter. In 1993, right out of the gate, he drafted Drew Bledsoe first overall right followed by Chris Slade in the second round and Troy Brown in the eighth; future contributors Todd Rucci, Vincent Brisby, and Corwin Brown also were brought board.
The next year — the first with Kraft as owner — he added Willie McGinest, followed by a 1995 draft that was one of the best in the NFL and saw him select two Hall of Fame players in Ty Law and Curtis Martin, as well as future starters Ted Johnson, Jimmie Hitchcock, and Dave Wohlabaugh.
For reason only known to him, Kraft decided to insert himself into the draft process in 1996. Nonetheless, the team still ended up with Terry Glenn, Tedy Bruschi, and Lawyer Milloy ass the top 3 picks that year. The players — or should we say, “groceries”? — he brought in would be cornerstones of the first dynasty.
Not only did he bring in talent, Parcells also coached said talent up and transformed the Patriots into a disciplined and competitive team that won double-digit games in two out of the four years he was the head coach. His tenure culminated in a Super Bowl appearance in 1996.
In the end, he made the Patriots relevant again. People cared about the team in a way they hadn’t before. A big reason was because Kraft made it so that they were stable and not going to move, but a Parcells press conference was appointment television, and he was more than just a quote machine: he was a Hall of Fame coach.
Yes, the ending was bad. He left his team out to dry, as the entire Super Bowl week was tainted by reports of Parcells leaving the Patriots to join the rival Jets. He didn’t even fly back with the team after the Super Bowl loss to the Green Bay Packers, which, understandably so, left both Kraft and Patriots fans distraught.
Some fans and media members never forgave Parcells for his betrayal, and, while that is understandable to a degree, it’s been 30 years. It’s time to let it go and appreciate what Parcells did in his time in New England.
Frankly, Parcells helped lay the foundation for what was to come. His induction to the Patriots Hall of Fame was not only overdue, but necessary.