With Foley at the Helm, Jets Are Cleared for Takeoff

Glenn Foley is the quarterback. Was before the last exhibition game, too--matter of fact, according to the coach. There is no quarterback controversy to be resolved, only a quarterback question to be answered.

“I’m not acknowledging there ever was [a controversy]; ask the people who fabricated it,” New York Jets Coach Bill Parcells maintained Tuesday with his incisive grin. From the outside, it may have looked like a controversy and it may have smelled like a controversy, but to Parcells it never tasted like a controversy. Vinny Testaverde started last week because a 35-year-old quarterback needs work, too.

Parcells likes Foley--direct as the logo and stripes the Jets wear on their retro uniform. Why does he like Foley, who has started five games in his four professional seasons, who has no complete-game victory on his performance chart? Well, he just does, and that’s important. No matter what the stopwatches and the computers say, Parcells still believes a football team travels on its stomach. A lot of his coaching is gut feeling.

To him Foley is something of what Phil Simms was and what Neil O’Donnell was not.

Foley will start tonight against the Giants, which is more about the fact that it’s the third of four exhibition games and less that they play the Giants. The third game is for getting the A-team ready and about the intensity of marginal players trying to make the team; the fourth is mostly about staying healthy. For the Jets, this is about clearing out the stink of their pasting by Baltimore last week, in which neither quarterback was a bright light, and beginning to find out if they fooled everybody by winning nine games last season. The Giants’ defense is a test.

Testaverde started last week, Parcells said, because the Jets will need him at some time, which is why the Jets picked up a veteran who the coach thinks has outgrown his early problem with interceptions. “He’s big and strong and has a wonderful arm,” Parcells said.

And what does he like about Foley? “Well,” Parcells said, “I like his attitude.”

Parcells has garbed the Jets in something like their Super Bowl uniforms because, he said, “when people see the Jets, that’s what they think of.” The image to be resurrected is of a quarterback who dared to “guarantee” victory. Of course, Joe Namath couldn’t guarantee anything, but he dared to dream.

What Parcells cleared out was O’Donnell’s constipated decision-making--his refusal to dream. He would look and look and look, perhaps waiting for the defense to become bored, and--oops!--too late. What Parcells has in his memory bank is the image of Foley coming off the bench with his bristling red stubble of a beard to start the second half against New England last season: Drop back and throw, drop back and throw. Zip, zip, zip. Fourteen consecutive completions, 17 of 23 for 200 yards and a touchdown in a 24-19 comeback win.

“I think he’s fairly heady,” Parcells said. “He’s got a little bit of cowboy in him. I like that. Not always. I think he wants to do well. It’s important to him that he do well. And I’m half-Irish. That’s what I like.

“He’s not pretty. He’s not classic. But picture Jim McMahon; he wasn’t classic. Billy Kilmer wasn’t classic. Fran Tarkenton wasn’t classic. Joe Kapp wasn’t classic. Think back.” He was counting from a list of quarterbacks who thrived not on the tight spiral, but on the toughness with which they ran the most complex job in sports. They are elite company.

“They got their team in the end zone,” Parcells said. “That’s important. Nothing else is.”

The game plan Parcells always wants has the run at its core. He brought Curtis Martin, of whom he is most fond, from New England to run for the Jets. “People are going to gang up against him and see what we can do outside,” Parcells said. “If we can deal with it, we’re all right.” Outside means Foley passing.

He can’t be anything without Wayne Chrebet and Keyshawn Johnson getting open and catching the ball. He can’t be anything without the line holding up for him, and at the moment Parcells is worried about Jumbo Elliott, limping at left tackle. But without the quarterback, nobody can be anything. How will Foley stand up to the demands of the job and the battering that goes with the job?

Tuesday he said he and Parcells had discussed the plans for the two quarterbacks and how it was “kind of understood” that the job was his. But then, he did say he was dismayed to learn Testaverde was last week’s starter. It was “a relief” to be told the job was still his.

“My big thing was being able to have time to work with the guys I’ll be playing with,” Foley said.

Perhaps Parcells was playing mind games. Parcells does that well. “I’m not sure being relaxed is good for him,” Parcells said. He likes that Foley was a good enough pitcher in college to have been drafted, likes that Foley is a good golfer, thinks Foley responds well to pressure.

The question is how Foley’s body will hold up. “Only when the season starts do you see that,” he said. “Do you play a whole game and get hit around and come back Wednesday eager to work.”