Read an Excerpt
If these Walls Could Talk
Michigan Football Stories from the Big House
By Jon Falk, Dan Ewald Triumph Books
Copyright © 2013 Ernie Palladino
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62368-339-9
CHAPTER 1
Super Memories
Trains, Horse Races, and Poker Games
Jim Fassel remembers it as "the day I lost my mind." His team had just taken a bad 31–21 loss in Detroit to send the 2000 season into a tenuous 7–4 situation. Sensing a sag in his team's confidence and the need to take some media heat off his players, Fassel decided to take the psychological offensive that Tuesday night. He talked over his plan with the team's savvy publicity director, Pat Hanlon, but even Hanlon's suggestion that he could make himself the target of ridicule couldn't change his mind. So with Hanlon's blessing — "Let the good times roll," he told Fassel — the coach went to bed.
What happened the next day amounted to Fassel's Douglas MacArthur's "I Shall Return!" moment. With all the fury and passion of a modern day patriot, Fassel riffed and ranted his way through a 25-minute playoff guarantee — the greatest ever issued in the bowels of Giants Stadium. "If you have the crosshairs or the lasers, you can put them directly on my chest!" Fassel said as his widened eyes panned over the cameras and notebooks in the Wednesday media room. "I'll take full responsibility! This is a poker game! I'm shoving my chips to the middle of the table! I'm raising the stakes here, and anybody who wants in, get in! Anybody who wants out, get out! I'm loving every bit of this! This team is going to the playoffs!"
Far from a polished declaration, the monologue amounted to a full- blown assault on the English language as Fassel mixed and matched met- aphors while adding the real news that he would closely oversee his assistant coaches' responsibilities. He announced lineup changes, too, putting veteran defensive starters such as Jessie Armstead, Jason Sehorn, Sean Williams, and Mike Barrow on special teams to shore up the flagging kick coverage units. "We're in a horse race and we're coming around the last corner. My whole life right now is getting this team across the finish line," Fassel said. "I'm taking total control over everything. I'm gonna be everywhere. I'm going to question everything that's going on around here. And we're only going to do what I say we're going to do. You got any questions about it, then bring it to me!"
Just moments before he had previously addressed his players in similar terms. "I told them I'm driving the train," he said. "All they need to do is listen and follow along. I plan on having a short fuse with anything else. I'm redefining things around here. I like to be in control. I'm gonna grab that right now and set the course. I'll set the course, and I'll set the expectations."
When he finished he went upstairs to visit with general manager Ernie Accorsi and then-vice president John Mara. "Well, I did it," he told Accorsi.
"I said, 'Oh, geez, what did he do?'" Accorsi said.
"I just guaranteed the playoffs," Fassel said.
Whether it was the words or the lineup changes or a renewed commitment from his players, the rant worked. The Giants won their last five regular season games and then beat the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings in the playoffs to advance to Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa, Florida, against the Baltimore Ravens.
Fassel showed he had his players' back that day. And in those final weeks, his players showed they had his back.
41–0
The issues surrounding the 2000 NFC championship game encounter with the Vikings revolved around four visiting players: Daunte Culpepper, Cris Carter, Randy Moss, and Robert Smith. How would the Giants prevent that potent group from running and passing them straight out of Giants Stadium? This was an offense that put up 397 points. The offense didn't set a record, but that unit was just two years removed from its NFL all-time high, 556-point season of 1998. The explosive potential was still there — even if the Vikings had fallen to fifth in the league in points scored.
General manager Ernie Accorsi was well aware of that and spent the practice week battling some terribly dark thoughts. "I'm thinking we're going to have to score 40 points to have a chance," Accorsi said. "All week long in my dreams, the Vikings scored 8,000 points. All I dreamt of was Randy Moss, Cris Carter, and Robert Smith running up and down the field."
He couldn't even look defensive coordinator John Fox in the eye, even though they were office neighbors. It wasn't just the natural paranoia that afflicts all members of a football team's hierarchy. Accorsi's teams had been to these games before, and he has known championship nightmares all too well. In his stint as the Browns' general manager from 1985 to 1992, he saw Cleveland lose three AFC Championship Games, two in horrific fashion. John Elway's legendary 98-yard drive in 1986 led to an overtime loss, and the next year, running back Earnest Byner fumbled on the Denver 3 to wreck a late fourth-quarter comeback. To think about the potency of Minnesota's offense causing the loss of a fourth conference championship was almost too much to bear and certainly too much to talk about with Fox.
He avoided him all week until the day before the game when Fox asked him directly about his aloofness. "I don't even want to think about our defense," Accorsi told the coordinator. To which Fox prophetically answered, "We'll be fine. We might even shut them out."
While Accorsi worried a hole in his stomach, Fassel gave the media what they were looking for. Of course, he said, the Giants would run, run, run to control the clock and keep Cunningham and his points machine off the field. Low-risk, conservative play would win this game. A Republican couldn't have said it better. But in reality Fassel and offensive coordinator Sean Payton had far more liberal plans in mind. "Everybody's asking how we're gonna keep Cunningham, Moss, and Carter off the field, and meanwhile we're planning on throwing the shit out of the ball," Fassel said.
And so they did. Kerry Collins had the best game of his career, going 28-of-39 for 381 yards and five touchdowns. Four of those came as he built a 34 — 0 first-half lead. Defensively, Jason Sehorn covered Moss so well that the moody, ultra-deep threat just plain quit.
Walking off the field at halftime, Fassel chatted with Fox. "Before the game I'd asked him how many points we'd need from the offense to win this thing, and he said probably 28, maybe 30," Fassel said. "Well, we're up 34–0. He says, 'Look, just run the ball. Chew the clock. This team is explosive, and they can come back on us very quickly.'
"I looked at him. Remember, we're up 34–0. So I said, 'Listen, if they score 34 points in a half against this defense, you're fired!"
Collins didn't stop throwing the ball until the fourth quarter when running back Joe Montgomery took over and helped the offense run off the final 12:53. Accorsi, whose championship game track record wouldn't allow him to relax, finally made his way to the field with 7:31 remaining. There he watched Montgomery pick up one first down after another to run out the clock.
He finally exhaled.
"Winning the Super Bowl is what you work for," said Accorsi, who would hand over the GM reins to Jerry Reese one year too early to enjoy that thrill. "Getting there is also an incredible experience. That would be my greatest thrill."
Losing Super Bowl XXXV
The Giants went to five Super Bowls between 1986 and 2012. Their only loss came in 2000 under Fassel. Despite the four Lombardi Trophies that gleam in the showcase of the Timex Performance Center's reception area, that single 34–7 blowout in Super Bowl XXXV to the Baltimore Ravens stings as profoundly years later as it did the night of January 28, 2001.
Accorsi had said before the game that losing a Super Bowl is the worst thing in sports because only the winner is remembered. He is living proof. "That game still irritates me," Accorsi said. "I never felt we had the intensity for that Super Bowl game. I always thought we were too happy after the 41–0 Vikings win. I know the players played hard, but I never felt good about our preparation. It was too light-hearted for me."
Accorsi also let it be known the following training camp that he was none too happy with Fassel's decision to rent out a movie theater and conduct a ring ceremony for winning the conference title. The object, Accorsi maintained, is to win the Super Bowl. Anything short of that is failure. "When you're involved in this game, there's one thing that becomes clear: you play for the ultimate goal," he said. "And the ultimate goal is not the NFC Championship Game."
Accorsi had worried about that game for two weeks since the day after the Giants vanquished the Vikings. So great on that day, Collins seemed nervous and tentative in the following practices. Those same deficiencies carried over to gameday in Tampa.
And the Ravens sensed it. "The Super Bowl was over in a series," recounted the Ravens' massive defensive tackle Tony Siragusa, whose hole-clogging allowed Ray Lewis and the rest of a ferocious front seven to sack Collins four times. "I watched Collins standing at the line, getting ready to call out the signals. He wasn't looking up the field or at his receivers or the defensive backs covering those receivers. He was looking at us, the guys who were coming to get him. I thought, man, this game is over."
Collins threw four interceptions that day and only completed 15-of-39 passes for 112 yards. "I stunk today. This is the most disappointing loss I've ever been involved with not only because we lost, but the way we lost," Collins said. "Anything I put up ended up in the wrong spot."
As bitter as that loss was for Accorsi, Collins, and even Fassel, it was even tougher to swallow for two players. Lomas Brown, the old left tackle, had waited 16 years to reach a Super Bowl. Brown would eventually get his ring — as a reserve with the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers — but at that point, he had no way of knowing if he'd ever return to the NFL's greatest show. "It hurts," Brown said. "It really, really hurts."
Just as pained but more philosophical was Brown's left-side mate, Glenn Parker. The old guard knew from Super Bowls, having played in four straight with Marv Levy's Buffalo Bills from 1990 to 1993. But he never experienced the thrill of winning one. "Let's face it," Parker said. "From when you're a kid growing up, second place is not good enough. But losing the Super Bowl will not define my career. Although you want to win, that's what it's all about. But that's what made those Buffalo teams what they were. We lost, but we kept on going." Unfortunately for Parker, his fifth Super Bowl was his last. He finished his career as a Giant after 2001.
As for Fassel he admitted to pain but was proud his team had exceeded all preseason expectations. They had after all been predicted to finish last in the NFC East. "This loss will take a while to go away," he said after the game. "But my feeling of pride and the way they've worked this year will not go away. We're going to be back in this game."
He was wrong about that. The Giants wouldn't reach another Super Bowl until 2007. Another coach and another quarterback would lead them there. "You don't get over some losses," Fassel said at a fan gathering in 2008.
When Losing Is Winning
Tom Coughlin's Giants had already gone through a lot in 2007 when they reached the regular-season finale against the 15–0 New England Patriots. Michael Strahan's bitter contract dispute with new GM Reese had turned what should have been a quiet training camp into a turbulent one. To make matters worse, just-retired running back Tiki Barber had taken his new job as an NBC football analyst to a vitriolic level, criticizing quarterback Eli Manning's leadership abilities during an on-air panel discussion. "Sometimes it was almost comical the way he would say things [during locker room speeches]," Barber told his national viewing audience. That didn't quite sit well with Manning. At the urging of his roommate and backup Tim Hasselbeck, Manning stunned his teammates when he stepped out of his laid-back public persona for the first time in his career and fired back. "I guess I could have questioned Tiki's leadership skills last year with calling out the coach and having articles about him retiring in the middle of the season and how he's lost his heart," he said. "As a quarterback you're reading that your running back has lost his heart to play the game, and it's about the 10 week. I can see that a little bit at times."
Once the regular season started, the defense gave up 80 points in the first two weeks but rebounded with a goal-line stand in Washington. However, there was even controversy surrounding that. During the week leading up to the game, linebacker Antonio Pierce, a team leader, had infamously interrupted reporters' questions with repeated blasts from an air horn.
Still riding on that defensive stand, the Giants had done well enough in an uneven season to clinch a playoff spot at 10–6. A circus catch in the end zone by Amani Toomer in Chicago and Ahmad Bradshaw's 151-yard rushing effort in Buffalo, which included his 88-yard touchdown run through the snowflakes, locked the Giants into the No. 5 seed. That made the outcome irrelevant against Tom Brady, his turbo-charged offense, and his Patriots team looking to make history as the NFL's first 16–0 squad in the regular season. And that was just as well because the Giants' injury situation was anything but advantageous. Bradshaw was hurt and unavailable.
The smart money said the usually conservative Coughlin would play this one safe. Get Manning out of there early. Let Brandon Jacobs play a quarter or a half, then sheath him in bubble wrap, tuck him on the sidelines, and keep him healthy for the next week's wild-card trip to Tampa Bay. Empty the bench to preserve key defensive starters such as Justin Tuck and Osi Umenyiora for the big stuff down the road. As it happened the smart money wasn't so smart. Coughlin told his team Wednesday that, "We're playing to win the game." He meant it.
Damned if they almost did. The Giants lost 38–35 but put a mighty scare into a Bill Belichick-coached squad that didn't just beat opponents — they pulverized them with an NFL-record 589 points.
Manning went 22-of-32 for 251 yards and four touchdowns, beginning a magical turnaround for the quarterback Reese called "skittish" after a horrendous performance against the Vikings just five games before. Jacobs played the whole game, running 15 times for 67 yards and catching five passes for 44 yards and a touchdown. Kickoff returner Domenik Hixon ran one back 74 yards for a touchdown.
Manning's touchdown throws to Kevin Boss and Plaxico Burress built a 28–16 lead with 9:12 left in the third quarter, and even though Brady (32-of-42, 356 yards, two touchdowns) would bring his team charging back, the Giants still held a 28–23 lead three minutes into the fourth quarter.
Brady, however, was Brady. He spotted Randy Moss alone deep on a busted coverage and hit the receiver for a 65-yard touchdown to pull ahead. Just under seven minutes later, Manning threw his only interception of the game, and Laurence Maroney scored from five yards out to put the Patriots up by 10.
Manning's touchdown pass to Burress with 1:04 remaining left the Giants just short. The Patriots had their slice of history. But the Giants gained something more valuable than a line in the record book. On a week where playoff-bound coaches habitually rested their stars and produced half-hearted efforts, Coughlin's group had hung with the most formidable team in history and nearly survived. The Eli who stumbled to a four-interception game against Minnesota and fumbled five times against the Bills entered the playoffs sky-high with confidence.
The overall effort also earned the praise of at least one Hall of Fame coach, John Madden. "It's one of the best things to happen in the NFL in the past 10 years," Madden said in a message he left on Coughlin's answering machine that night. "I believe there is only one way to go out and play the game, and that's to win the damned thing ... I'm a little emotional right now, but the NFL needed that, and you guys should be proud."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from If these Walls Could Talk by Jon Falk, Dan Ewald. Copyright © 2013 Ernie Palladino. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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