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*****
Sometimes sports figures say more than we think they say, in part because we’re so thoroughly lacking in context. Let me give you one small example. Among Yogi Berra’s Yogi-isms is this gem: “It gets late early out there.” People often think this is some charmingly misguided reference to daylight saving time, or city life, or perhaps a strategic reference to how, in baseball, you can find yourself trailing by a lot in the first few innings of a game and already wondering how many outs you’ve got left to mount a comeback.
None is correct. What happened was, late in his career, Berra, whom baseball remembers as a catcher, started playing more and more innings in the outfield, particularly left field. In October of 1963, his final year in the Bronx, he took notice of how quickly the shadows seemed to cross left field at Yankee Stadium. Summer had turned to fall, and it was affecting the game conditions. “It gets late early out there,” Yogi said. Great sentence, because it rang really true.
In that spirit, I doubt that Bill Parcells thought he was inventing a catchphrase the moment he first spoke it. As the lore goes, Parcells answered his phone one day in early 1984 just after concluding his rocky first season coaching the New York Giants. His team had gone 3-12-1. The caller (a reporter, I guess) was informing Parcells that the Giants were already sizing up a replacement for him, and wondered if the coach wanted to take this opportunity to make a case for himself.
“What can I say?” Parcells replied. “You are what your record says you are.”
Again, it’s a great line. If only it actually worked.
I’m sure that Parcells’ 1983 Giants were exactly what 3-12-1 said they were, because sometimes you’re so bad that just about any phrase will apply with tremendous accuracy. But “If you lose that much, you stink” just doesn’t have the same ring. “You are what your record says you are” has been infused over the decades with much, much more meaning, as though Parcells were imposing a deep wisdom upon his caller of legend that day in early ‘84. Let me just say: not likely.
Far more likely is that Parcells was figuratively throwing his hands in the air, perhaps not so subtly implying that he’d been handed a crap roster and had made the best of it that he could. Doesn’t matter now. “You are what your record says you are” is a kind of handy end-all to sports conversations, so it has endured and prospered. It sounds so definitive. You’d think it makes sense, because we keep score in games and use that score to determine winners and losers, both small and large. In reality, it’s rarely that obvious.
Roughly halfway through the NFL season, let’s apply Parcells’ logic to a few teams in the field. As you’ll see, sometimes it works, and sometimes it stinks.
Kansas City Chiefs (5-4). Under no circumstances are the Chiefs what their record says they are. Although it’s a little shocking to realize, the truth is that K.C. is nowhere near as good as 5-4 suggests. The team has wins over dregs like Philly, the Giants and the Washington Football Team (a collective 8-18). Facing a Green Bay roster thrown into chaos by Aaron Rodgers’ sudden absence, the Chiefs desperately struggled to a 13-7 victory — at home. Their losses, meanwhile, have gotten progressively worse: By 1 to the Ravens, 6 to the Chargers, 18 to the Bills, 24 to the Titans. They’ve been outscored overall, and with Patrick Mahomes, I don’t know, something’s just not right. He’s on the run a lot, that much is certain. The AFC West is mightily bunched up with teams as good as K.C., and the Chiefs are going to see a lot of them down the stretch. Parcells-o-meter: FALSE.
(By the way, “Parcells-o-meter” does not have catchphrase status in its future.)
San Francisco 49ers (3-5). It’s hard to let the 49ers off the hook for anything, and it’s impossible to do so in an NFC West in which — at the outset, at least — Seattle looked vulnerable and the Rams were theoretically going to be adjusting to their new quarterback. Niners coach Kyle Shanahan has botched a couple of key sequences, including his QB situation; the club seems to want Trey Lance to be ready when the rookie clearly is not, and Jimmy Garoppolo looks like a 30-year-old grinder (eight TD passes, five interceptions). The 49ers have seen heavy injuries, but they signed a bunch of players as starters in the off-season whose injury histories were well known to them. And look: They’re 0-4 at home. You cannot be winless at home and be anything other than the sub-mediocre team their record suggests. Parcells-o-meter: TRUE.
Tennessee Titans (7-2). The Titans are better than this. They’re better even than what 7-2 says. They’ve won five straight, including victories over the Bills, Chiefs, Colts and Rams. According to ESPN’s Football Power Index, they’ve played the toughest schedule in football so far. They just went into L.A. and absolutely handled Sean McVay’s team. They’re 4-1 on the road, they’ve outscored their opponents 255-211, and they’ve got the easiest schedule (on paper) for the remainder of this season. Don’t get me wrong, 7-2 is impressive. But 13-3 is going to look even more impressive. Parcells-o-meter: FALSE.
Arizona Cardinals (8-1). I can’t say I saw this coming. I’d love to believe that others also did not think the Kyler Murray-Kliff Kingsbury mind meld would be so thorough and fast-acting. In his third year in the NFL, Murray has simply clicked. A 72.7 completion percentage, 110.4 passer rating — his yardage per pass attempt is up, touchdowns by pass are up. He’s running less often, as he learns to set up defenses by working the pocket. The Cardinals beat the 49ers on the road last weekend without Murray or DeAndre Hopkins, which put them at 5-0 for the season away from home. That’s stunning. They’ve outscored their opponents 277-155. That’s ludicrous. The Cardinals are a fair bet to to 13-3 or 14-2. That’s new. Parcells-o-meter: TRUE.
Houston Texans (1-8). Let’s face it, these guys shouldn’t have the one win. They’ve lost eight straight. They’re averaging 14 points a game, for the love of Lombardi, and have scored in single digits five times. They played Miami last weekend, a battle of 1-7 scrubs, and got beat 17-9. And while they get the bye week right now to lick their wounds, they open up the back part of their schedule at…Tennessee. I know, I know: A 1-8 record really ought to fit the Parcells test, because it certainly suggests you’re a bad team. This is worse. The Texans are simply a lost franchise, from their hideous ownership on down. No professional athlete should be placed into a situation as lousy as this. Parcells-o-meter: FALSE. (I realize I’m being unfair. Life is unfair.)
Putting it all together, we have Bill Parcells’ famous catchphrase running at about .500. (I’m discounting the Texans’ rating because I dislike them so much that I cheated the system.) A .500 result suggests that the catchphrase, while quite famous, is in fact neither consistently true nor consistently false. Like almost everything else in sports, it depends. But “it depends” isn’t making it into the Hall of Fame of sports slogans, either.
Testing the Parcells Logic.
Good/ entertaining analysis of a great (and widely applicable) catchphrase…one that’s right up there with “Don’t worry about the horse being blind…just load the wagon!” Would
Iove to read your take on that one, some day.