Bill Parcells

As great as he was a head coach, is it possible that the lasting legacy of Bill Parcells in the NFL is that he’s the greatest GM/personnel director/franchise builder of all-time?? The man has taken over five NFL franchises in his career (Giants, Pats, Jets, Cowboys, and Dolphins) and has turned all of them into winners. Five for five. That’s almost 1/6 of the league. Miami was 0-13 at this time a year ago. Now they are sitting at 8-5.

Hiring Bill Parcells to run your NFL team is just about the safest bet in sports. If you hire Bill Parcells, he is going to come in, evaluate your personnel, identify your needs, bring in players who fit those needs and his vision for a successful team, and then hire a top notch staff to coach them (including himself in the past). I had never even heard of Tony Sparano until he got hired by the Dolphins, and now he’s leading an 8-5 team that was the worst team in the NFL a year ago. Give Parcells a year or two, and he will have you in the playoffs.

One thing that Bill Parcells has always understood that his protégé, Charlie Weis, has never seem to figure out is that everything starts up front in the NFL. Parcells has always been a proponent of big, physical offensive and defensive lines, and that’s where he usually starts with his franchises. If you watched Tony Romo last year, he was never touched when he’d go back to pass. He can thank Parcells for that line. He immediately went to work doing the same thing in Miami with the Jake Long pick (who is looking like a future Pro Bowler). Maybe Charlie Weis will learn this lessons in the offseason.

Crazy thought, after Parcells retires from Miami, maybe the Irish could bring him to South Bend as the “football AD.” Not the business side guy or anything like that, but a GM for football who can come in, identify problems, and make the right hires to get the program back to a championship level. Not sure how much that would cost us or if he’d even be remotely interested, but maybe he’d like to try to rebuild a college franchise one time after all these stints in the NFL.