Simms Playing It Cool : Giants’ Quarterback Blocks Out Negatives and Concentrates on Task at Hand

There was a time when New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms was not so cool, when New York and all that goes with it offended him mightily.

Now look at him, all poise and patience. Nothing rattles him. Crises are his best friends.

Want proof? In the last year alone, Simms has seen the Giants go from defending Super Bowl champions to last place in the NFC’s Eastern Division. The only thing they won in 1987 was the title for most autobiographies in a single off-season.

But that’s not all. Simms has overcome injury. He has weathered the considerable storm of a player strike. He has ignored the temptation of demanding a new contract. He also has heard the various questions and comments concerning this year’s edition of the Giants. For instance:

--”Hey, Phil, your offensive line couldn’t block a tree stump.”

--”Hey, Phil, how about this drug thing with Lawrence Taylor?”

--”Hey, Phil, you go to Disneyland after last year’s 6-9 season, too?”

To which Simms responds by hardly responding at all. He acknowledges the problems and moves on. Simple as that.

“It’s like (Giant Coach Bill Parcells) told me once,” he said “ ‘When it’s all said and done, nobody’s going to care what the circumstances were. Just get it done.’ ”

Simms has done plenty. In the Giants’ 27-20 upset of the Washington Redskins in this season’s opener, Simms passed for 195 yards, becoming only the 43rd player in league history to accumulate more than 20,000 yards by air in his career. That’s a lot of third-and-8s.

The following week, he nearly pulled off an improbable win over the San Francisco 49ers, only to see Jerry Rice spoil those plans with a long touchdown catch in the closing moments of the 49ers’ 20-17 win.

And last Sunday, Simms helped engineer a difficult 12-10 win over the Dallas Cowboys at Irving, Tex.

“Right now, our talent isn’t at a level where we can go out and dominate anybody on defense,” Simms said.

So Simms makes do, which is typical. It is also what endears him to Parcells, a coach not easily swayed.

“He has matured to the point that although he’s very intense and competitive, very little bothers him in terms of things not going well, or he’s getting hit a lot, that kind of thing,” Parcells said. “He can somehow, mentally, fight through it.”

In that respect, Simms has few peers. Then again, he’s had lots of contacts with adversity.

Last year, when the Giants lost 6 of their first 7 games, or when the strike sent cracks of dissension through the defending champions, Simms did what he could to rescue the team.

Even when a sprained knee ligament sent him limping to the bench and out of the lineup for 3 weeks, Simms still managed to finish with career highs for quarterback rating (90.0, third-best in the National Football League) and completion percentage (57.8)--no small feat considering the Giants were effectively eliminated from a playoff spot by midseason.

Of course, you’d never know it by asking Simms. He brooded about the Giants’ disappointing record, dismissed many of his own accomplishments and then issued a warning to his teammates during training camp. Said Simms in July: “If we can’t get it done, or we can’t get the team going the way the coaches want it to, then there’s got to be changes made. And usually the first people they look at are the older players.”

That would include the Kentucky-born Simms, 32, a 10-year veteran.

Not to worry. Simms is safe. He is tough, durable and the player, say those familiar with the team, the Giants could least afford to lose. He is also a Giant keepsake of sorts. Of the players he began his career with, only George Martin and Harry Carson remain on the roster.

Still, he is in no hurry for a repeat of 1987, of another season of unrest and games that meant little or nothing at all.

“It wasn’t a very satisfying year at all,” he said. “It was really terrible. I mean, to be honest, I felt more pressure at the end of the last season than the year we were winning. I just thought that I had to prove to everybody that I could still play. I mean, this team was losing. . . . When something’s wrong, they usually look at the coach and the quarterback.”

Now they’re looking at a 2-1 record and thinking how close the Giants, who play host to the Rams Sunday, came to being 3-0. They’re also looking at Simms as he waits patiently for the Giant offense to revive itself. In the meantime, he takes his wallops and staggers up for more.

“He’s always been a guy that will stand in there and throw the ball, and I do think that puts him in the minority of the quarterbacks in the league,” Parcells said. “I think that’s his strongest attribute. He doesn’t worry about what’s going on around him (as) much as he worries about doing his job. His job is to get the team in the end zone and not to worry about who’s blocking whom.”

About that blocking. How would you like to be the quarterback of a team whose offensive line began the season with a starting tackle, Brad Benson, fresh from a battle with cancer and shoulder surgery?

Or a former No. 1 draft pick, William Roberts, who is responsible for Simms’ blind side and who, Parcells has said, is at a crossroads year?

Or a free-agent guard, Damian Johnson, who still has to convince the Giants that he can withstand the pressures of a 16-game regular season?

Or a rookie tackle, John Elliot, who was forced into the lineup when Benson suffered an ankle injury?

Simms has already been sacked 11 times, which isn’t encouraging. But there Simms sits, stuck to the pass pocket like a safety pin, completing passes and generally paying for every one. Wouldn’t it make sense then for Simms to, well, move ?

“That’s like trying to tell a pig to be pretty, you know?” he said. “I wish I really had that in me. If I really had the speed, believe me, I would get my . . . out of there. It’s just not in me.

“I have scrambled quite a bit this year, maybe more than in the past. But I don’t put pressure on the defense. I could run up the middle (with) nobody within 30 yards of me and I’d get 10 yards.”

Fine. Stay in the pocket. If nothing else in his career, Simms has proven it’s where he belongs.