Finding the Right Coach Is a Giant Quest

George Young flew west this week, his office said, in a brand new Quandary. Now what? Obstensibly, he was headed for another one of those East-West All-Star Games, but apparently with a stop-off in Denver.

The assistant coaches and scouts were going to be measuring the college players in Palo Alto, and showing their own resumes, as well. But Dan Reeves was in Denver.

Young’s job is to find a coach to take on a very hard job. Both are hard jobs -- moving out the old New York Giants who won’t be around the next time the team is a contender, and finding the coach who can make the evaluations and survive the crossfire that will follow. Two men have rejected Young’s interest.

The fans want Bill Parcells back. Of course. Fans make the comparison with Ray Handley, who didn’t work out. Fans think Parcells would make Lawrence Taylor and Phil Simms young and wonderful again.

Fans want a name they know. Fans know Reeves took the Broncos to the Super Bowl twice, but he isn’t the kind of hire Young was looking for until he found himself in this mess.

Young’s first choice would be a rising assistant, not a retread. “I want a new energy,” Young said when he was still courting Dave Wannstedt. “I want a young guy with energy.”

This job will demand energy and more. In contrast with the Cowboys’ situation, where the team had reached bottom, the Giants are still meodicre and clogged with icons of another era. Getting rid of old heroes can be a terrible minefield. “As soon as a coach moves out popular players because they can’t play anymore, he gets it from players,” Young said. “Players can’t accept. That’s what’s so difficult. Fans and players identify with heroes and don’t believe they change.

“In college, the names change every four years. In this league, the people change but the names stay the same.”

Young earned his credibility by taking an organization torn by family conflict, hiring good people and helping them do their job. Handley was his misjudgment, but then Parcells’ departure set that in motion.

That’s how they got to this predicament. Young believes football is a continuity business. Unlike the Chicago Bears, who had their one dominating season, the Giants were able to win one Super Bowl and were retooled enough to win another four years later.

When Parcells quit in May, 1991, after the second title, there wasn’t much time to search for another man to fit the system. “I picked the smartest guy on the staff who was young and enthusiastic, and kept as much continuity as I could,” Young said. That was Handley. “I thought he would grow into the job,” Young said.

The general manager refuses to be critical of the man he fired. There are lives and careers and families Young would prefer to protect. But it didn’t work. Handley’s conflict with the media was a smaller aspect, but it was an indicator of broader communication problems, and the difficulty of an aging team rejecting change.

First, the defense complained about the plan of defensive coordinator Al Groh. Then Rod Rust became the defensive coordinator, and the defense wasn’t comfortable with his plan. Young is critical of the defensive players who complained and then didn’t show up for the early camps to learn the defense. He is also critical of the veteran players who didn’t spring to Handley’s side.

Well, wouldn’t Parcells pull them back in line? Some players said they were uncomfortable with the way Parcells played favorites. When the Gients won, Parcells got credit for using Simms, Taylor, Maurice Carthon and Everson Walls as leaders, but some players were stung by the process. Young was stung by the way Parcells repeatedly said he was uncertain about returning; he had offers from Tampa Bay and Atlanta, and then he wanted out.

Recently Parcells was asked by Bob Costas whether he wanted to coach again. Parcells hedged. “If a guy says he doesn’t know, do you want to try to convince him?” Young said. “You’ve got to want to coach. A coach is a guy with fire in his belly.”

Between winning the second Super Bowl and Parcell’s resignation in May, Bill Belichick, that year’s boy wonder, got away. The whispering is that the Giants showed him the door. “He left on Feb. 5,” Young bristled. “He wasn’t told anything by us. A man has to take a head-coaching job when he can. He came to me during the Super Bowl week and said, ‘I don’t want you to think I’m hustling a job down here. I’m happy with the Giants. If I can be a head coach, I’ll take it but I’m getting ready for the Super Bowl.’ How did I know then what Bill Parcells was going to do? That was being dragged out and dragged out.”

That defaulted the job to Handley, who didn’t grow into it, and Young was forced to change. “As long as enough players believe they have a chance to win with the coach, you can stay with the coach,” Young said. “When you get to feel that astmosphere doesn’t exist, you have to make a change.”

As big as Young is, he feels the bites of his critics. “Because Handley didn’t work out, that means Ray Perkins wasn’t a good coach?” Young said. Perkins was the coach who reversed the decades of boredom. In 1980 the Giants were 4-12 after a promising 6-10 and Young extended Perkins’ remaining season by one more. “I still felt players believed they could win with him,” Young said. “His program was accepted, so I stayed with him. I think it all has to do with credibility.”

Now, Young’s credibility is at stake. Can he find a man who can make the transition this team needs? He has said he doesn’t want a former head coach. “I’ve watched people wear down from the pressure,” Young said. “You wind up with confrontations, whether it be with your coaches, your players, management, with the press; we’re all subject to that. It can be wearing.”

He says he thinks the game needs “(a good) staff, more than a head coach needs to be a walk-on-water guy.” The head coach develops treasured assistants. The head coach sets the environment, discipline and motivation.

The general manager has to find that guy. It’s Young’s puzzle.