Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [24]
A month after Parcells made that comment, he and the Giants were on target for that exact scenario.
In a rematch at Philadelphia, the Giants suffered their first loss of the season, as elusive quarterback Randall Cunningham scrambled and passed the Eagles to a decisive 31-13 victory. A road loss to one of the league’s best—and a team that had swept New York in both games the previous two seasons—didn’t crush morale. Neither did a narrow 7-3 defeat the following week against San Francisco. After traveling cross-country to battle the reigning two-time Super Bowl champion 49ers, the Giants came up on the short end of a physical defensive melee. Apart from a two-minute stretch in the second period, the game was scoreless.
Consecutive losses raised questions, but at 10-2, with a three-game lead in the NFC Eastern Division, and a roster full of veterans—most of whom already owned Super Bowl rings from the 1986 season—panic never entered Parcells’ mind.
“There’s a lot of things unsettled right now,” he said a few days after returning from San Francisco. “Things will change a lot. A loss, or two or three, in the middle of the season, really, will not be how you’re judged. You’re judged not by the middle of the season but by the end.”
Judgment of the Giants’ end-of-the-season prospects continued to dim the following Sunday. In Week Fourteen, they returned to the Meadowlands for a game against the Vikings and what was a showdown of two teams headed in opposite directions.
Minnesota had lost six of their first seven games before an impressive resurgence. During a perfect November in which they crushed the 9-1 Chicago Bears by four touchdowns, the Vikings arrived in East Rutherford at 6-6. With Herschel Walker and a fantastic defensive line that included all-pro Chris Doleman, Henry Thomas, and undrafted rookie (yet future Hall of Famer) John Randle, the Vikings had remarkably climbed into the playoff picture.
With a two-game losing streak and the division title at stake, coach Parcells had plenty on his mind that week. He didn’t need a serious personal health crisis to drain both his physical and mental strength. But he got one. Near midnight on Saturday—a little more than twelve hours before kickoff—Parcells checked himself into Morristown Memorial Hospital in New Jersey. The pain from dislodged kidney stones had become unbearable. Although doctors insisted he stay longer, Parcells checked himself out at 9 a.m. the next morning and, equipped with a supply of Demerol, he rode to Giants Stadium, where he fell asleep on the trainer’s table.
“[Parcells said to me] I’ll go as long as I can,” team physician Dr. Allan Levy told reporters. “This is just about the greatest pain you can have, but he couldn’t take very much to kill the pain. He wanted to be able to think during the game.”
Assistant coaches ran the pregame activities and spoke to the team in the locker room. Ten minutes before game time, Parcells gingerly took his place on the sideline and watched, understandably without his usual fire and gyrations.
“He didn’t make any moves to show he was hurt,” said Ed “Whitey” Wagner, the team’s equipment manager, who routinely stood next to Parcells on the sideline, “but I knew it was like a knife sticking in him.”
Parcells’ pain only increased as he watched his team continue to wipe away all memories of a perfect 10-0 start. Four minutes into the action, Doleman sacked Phil Simms in the end zone for a safety, and by the middle of the second quarter, New York trailed 12-3. The Meadowlands crowd repeatedly booed, especially at the sight of Minnesota stuffing a Giants running back on a key fourth down and short. (The Vikings then drove seventy-six yards for the game’s first touchdown.) New York eventually crawled back into the game late in the second period, as a rushing touchdown narrowed the score to 12-10.
A third consecutive week