Freezing cold takes, p.2
Freezing Cold Takes, page 2
Eventually, after several legal attempts by Belichick to extricate himself from his Jets contract had failed, Parcells and Kraft put their differences aside and struck a deal. The Patriots gave up a package of draft picks, including the Patriots’ first-round pick (No. 16 overall) in the 2000 Draft, to the Jets, solely for the right to sign Belichick. On January 27, 2000, New England introduced Bill Belichick as their new head coach.
“Parcells snookered Bob Kraft again… [I] wouldn’t hire Belichick to run a Burger King”
Immediately, questions arose about whether Belichick was worth the first-round pick the Patriots had surrendered. “I’m kind of a little surprised,” said ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski. “Giving up a No. 1, I think is a lot… I would think there were other qualified coaches out there so you don’t have to give up a No. 1, who should be a Pro Bowl player.” In the (Rochester, New York) Democrat and Chronicle, columnist Bob Matthews wrote, “I’d give up the no. 16 pick overall in the draft for Bill Parcells, but I wouldn’t give up the 61st pick for Bill Belichick.” Boston-based radio host Ted Sarandis was convinced that “Parcells snookered Bob Kraft again,” and that he “wouldn’t hire Belichick to run a Burger King.” The Boston Herald’s Karen Guregian, in a column to which she now refers as “one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever written,” enumerated NFL coaches she thought were worth first-round picks. Among them: Vince Lombardi, George Halas, Paul Brown, Bill Parcells, Joe Gibbs, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Tom Landry, and Bill Walsh. Belichick, she concluded, was not on their level. “Sorry folks. Bill Belichick does not fit the mold. He is not in that coaching stratosphere,” she proclaimed. Ian O’Connor, in a Journal News column, wrote that Belichick was “a man you wouldn’t want running your $2 hot dog stand,” and that he thought the Patriots would regret hiring him. “Soon enough,” O’Connor added, “the Patriots will discover that they did bad business. They hired a head coach with a losing record and personality to match.”
“Bill Parcells just cost the Jets a couple of championships, by scaring off the best coach in football”
Of course, hindsight shows us that in hiring Belichick, the Patriots made the best business decision in the history of the franchise—possibly the history of the league. “It’s turned out to be probably the greatest trade in NFL history,” Guregian said in 2020. While technically it wasn’t a trade, it is hard to argue with her sentiment. The 2021 season was Belichick’s 22nd in New England. During that time, the Patriots have amassed a 254–99 regular-season record, as well as a 30–12 playoff record. They have also won nine conference titles and six Super Bowls during his tenure with the team.
In a 2017 interview with the Boston Globe, O’Connor said he believes that Belichick is the greatest NFL coach of all time and admits his mistakes from 2000. “I didn’t think he had the human relations skills to lead an organization,” O’Connor said. With respect to his initial assessment of the hire, he feels his column after the Patriots hired Belichick is “probably the worst article I have ever written.” In a twist of fate, in 2018, he published a book titled Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Football Coach of All Time about Belichick’s rise to legendary coaching status. The irony is not lost on him. “I’m fascinated by how he became what he became. My penance.” Guregian has also come to terms with her ill-fated column. She now believes that “Belichick has probably jumped ahead” of all the great coaches she listed as worthy of a first-round pick.
Bondy formally admitted his mistake when, in Belichick’s fifth season, the Patriots were preparing for their third Super Bowl appearance. He wrote a column in the New York Daily News calling himself a “moron” and a “knucklehead” and wrote that if he were granted a do-over, he would pursue an angle that read something like “Bill Parcells just cost the Jets a couple of championships, by scaring off the best coach in football.” Bondy posited that Parcells still being on staff with Belichick was actually a valid and legitimate concern, writing that Parcells “did no favors with his post-coaching administrative career,” which was brief and unproductive. He continued: “Who wanted this guy Parcells hanging around, forever threatening by his mere existence to overshadow and undermine the next head coach? Certainly not Belichick.”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Bill Livingston, who covered Belichick when he was coach of the Browns, seemed to understand this from the beginning. “Parcells, who remains with the Jets as a ‘consultant,’ would get all the credit for victories and none of the blame for defeats,” he wrote in January 2000, right after Belichick resigned from the Jets. “Big Tuna would have been looking over [Belichick’s] shoulder, and it is unduly stressful laboring for a boss with a clue.”
Glauber said that his piece the day after Belichick’s 2000 Jets resignation press conference was one of the most conflicted he has ever written and, because he was so surprised, he didn’t know what to think. “It was one of the most abrupt, stunning, weird moments that I’ve ever had in covering sports for more than 40 years.”
Reflecting over 20 years later, Bondy believes his lack of knowledge of the NFL may have handicapped him a bit in covering this situation. “I would be the first one to admit I have never been an expert on American football,” he recalled in 2020. “During my long career, I was never [a full-time beat writer] in the NFL, so my bad take on this issue should come as no surprise.”
Perhaps Bondy’s most prescient point in his 2005 mea culpa piece, which many would probably argue still holds merit, is that the media, with all their opinions and access, are still heavily insulated from many of the major issues that affect the decision making of a franchise and its staff and that, as readers, we should take their opinions with a grain of salt. He wrote, “If there was any proof that the media know next to nothing about the layered vagaries and trade secrets of professional football, it was their nasty farewell to a future Hall of Fame coach.”
Although the words were the same size as the others on the page, they stood out like a defensive lineman standing next to a kicker. “Trade Dan Marino. Keep Scott Mitchell.” That was the lede of Greg Cote’s column in the November 1, 1993 edition of the Miami Herald. It is the only portion that anyone remembers. It now lives in infamy. Cote brainstormed an idea that was then considered unimaginable: The Miami Dolphins should consider trading their most iconic player. And as if that were not enough, he suggested that the team ship off the legendary quarterback in favor of a relatively unknown backup who had only played in two-and-a-half games.
Marino the beloved
Dan Marino is a South Florida sports hero. One of the greatest passers of his generation, he is the Miami Dolphins’ most famous and beloved player. Before the NBA’s Miami Heat drafted Dwyane Wade in 2003, Marino was the face of South Florida professional sports and, in 1993, he was at the peak of his reign.
After he threw for over 5,000 yards and led the Dolphins to a Super Bowl appearance in just his second season in 1984, Marino burst into NFL superstardom. With him, expectations skyrocketed. Fast-forward to 1993. Despite racking up impressive passing numbers, Marino had yet to take the Dolphins back to the promised land. At 32 years old, his proverbial clock was ticking down, and his chances for capturing the elusive title were dwindling.
Prior to the start of the 1993 season, the Dolphins were predicted by many to win their division and represent the AFC in the Super Bowl in Atlanta. That path seemed steady as the Dolphins won three out of their first four games. But on a cold October day in Cleveland, the road to Atlanta became severely obstructed.
Introducing Scott Mitchell
Dan Marino had rarely been hurt and hadn’t suffered any major injuries as a Dolphin player. Since becoming the Dolphins’ starting quarterback six games into his rookie season in 1983, Marino had only missed two games due to injury, and that was during that rookie season. But on Sunday, October 10, 1993 in Cleveland, in his 145th consecutive game for the Dolphins, Marino’s luck ran out. With Miami up 10–7 over the Browns in the second quarter, Marino ruptured his right Achilles tendon throwing a screen pass, ending his season in a flash.
Marino’s backup, Scott Mitchell, a 6-foot-6, 230-pound 25-year-old southpaw, had been drafted by the Dolphins in the fourth round of the 1990 NFL Draft out of the University of Utah and had served as Marino’s backup the previous three seasons. By 1993, Mitchell’s only substantive professional experience was one NFL regular-season pass in a game against Seattle in 1992 when Marino sat out a play after a hit to the head. Mitchell had also played the previous summer for the Orlando Thunder of the now-defunct World League of American Football. He came into the game in Cleveland having thrown only eight passes in his entire NFL career.
After throwing a disastrous 99-yard interception, returned for a touchdown on his first pass, Mitchell settled down and led the Dolphins on two touchdown drives in the second half. The Dolphins won 24–14. No one had thrown for two touchdowns in a single game for Miami since Don Strock accomplished the feat in 1983.
The Dolphins proceeded to win their next two games with Mitchell at the helm. His best performance was in his second start, a home game against Kansas City on Halloween where he led Miami to a 30–10 blowout win over Joe Montana and the Chiefs. Against the AFC’s fifth-ranked pass defense, Mitchell completed 22-of-33 passes for 344 yards, threw three touchdowns and zero interceptions, and was named AFC Offensive Player of the Week. After two-and-a-half games, he was 44-of-62 for 652 yards and had six touchdowns and one interception, all for an outstanding quarterback rating of 119.2. If he had had enough throws to qualify, such a rating would have been the highest in the league at the time.
“You see [Mitchell] drop back and think ‘that’s Marino.’ Except he’s lefthanded”
Mitchell’s performances were enough to raise eyebrows. Ahead of Miami’s upcoming game against the New York Jets, an article in the Asbury Park Press contained the headline MITCHELL LOOKING A LOT LIKE MARINO. Jets defensive end Marvin Washington was intrigued by Mitchell as well. “Sometimes you look at it on film,” Washington said, “you see him drop back and think ‘that’s Marino.’ Except he’s lefthanded.” Cote was perhaps the most impressed. The day after the Chiefs game, he wrote his now-infamous article, the one that would follow him throughout his career, which started: “Trade Dan Marino. Keep Scott Mitchell. There. That’s what the unspeakable looks like in print. It may be time to start thinking about it. Much too early to let the idea set in cement, obviously—but not to weigh the increasing possibility.”
In the piece, Cote lamented that Marino would be 33 years old in 1994 and would be coming off a serious injury. Additionally, he noted that Scott Mitchell would be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season. Moreover, a new salary cap was about to be implemented. To be able to pay more money to younger players, teams were unloading veterans with high salaries. With Mitchell playing so well, Cote figured that there was no way that the Dolphins would be able to keep both Mitchell, who would cost an estimated $3 million per year, and Marino, who was due around $5 million a year. So, in Cote’s eyes, why not think about going with a young potential star and unloading Marino while he still had value?
The article immediately gained traction in South Florida, and Cote was quickly maligned. “I instantly knew what I had written was a pretty explosive thing to write in the Miami market,” Cote recalled in 2020. That same day, in the afternoon, Cote was invited to be a guest on Sports Jam, a local sports TV program on Miami-based WPLG Channel 10, in front of a live audience at Don Shula’s All-Star Café in Miami and hosted by former Dolphins wide receiver and longtime Miami sports broadcaster Jimmy Cefalo. The interview with Cote was a remote with Cefalo at the restaurant and Cote standing in front of the Miami Herald building in downtown Miami. As a joke, Cote’s face was pixelated on TV so it could not be seen and his voice was disguised as if he were in the witness protection program. When he was introduced, he was mercilessly booed by the restaurant audience.
Prior to the internet and social media, a local sports column would rarely be seen outside its market. But Cote’s piece spread quickly and triggered a great debate throughout the country. Although most of the reactions to the article were hostile and negative, the idea was not completely shunned. “I think they should trade Marino. He’s been overrated for years,” said one fan on a phone-in hotline to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. “We have a future with Mitchell as a quarterback, and he is giving other members of the team a chance,” another added.
A few days later, Armando Salguero, another Miami Herald writer, played counterpoint to his colleague Cote’s piece and wrote that Cote’s suggestion to trade Marino was “blasphemy!” and such a consideration was “obscene.” Furthermore, Salguero pointed out, there was an issue about Marino’s trade value. How much could the Dolphins really get for a 32-year-old quarterback coming off a torn Achilles? One NFL GM told Salguero at the time, “I would not give up a first-rounder for him. And the Dolphins probably wouldn’t let him go for anything less than two first-rounders. It would be a tough sell in both directions.”
The buzz from the column seeped into the locker room. “It does make some sense,” Marino said about Cote’s suggestion. But Marino did express a hint of annoyance about the situation. “I’ve only been out two games, and here people have me traded.” The article never made it awkward for Cote to be around Marino, but he doubts Dan was too thrilled with him. “Privately, he probably thought I was an asshole… But he was always kind to me.” Mitchell’s agent, Tony Agnone, made sure to clear up any question that the article was not an actual controversy. “From a logical standpoint, you might make a case for it,” Agnone said at the time. “But from a realistic standpoint, it’s not going to happen. Scott has played two-and-a-half games, and Marino has played 11 years and is going to the Hall of Fame.” But Mitchell wasn’t surprised that there were people broaching the topic. “There was all kinds of discussion, not just in South Florida, but across the NFL and across the nation,” he said in 2020. “The Dolphins had been Dan Marino for so many years, and I don’t think people expected the backup that no one had heard of, to come in and play so well.”
According to former Dolphins wide receiver O. J. McDuffie, who was a rookie in 1993, trading Dan Marino was not on anyone’s radar in the Dolphins locker room. “No, no, no… not in a million years… We were just buying time until Danny got back. [He] was on fire at that point.”
Cote, and his column, continued to be the subject of much discussion throughout the course of the week. Later in the week, he told George Diaz of the Orlando Sentinel, “I’m wearing my bulletproof vest and surviving the firestorm down here.” In a follow-up column Cote wrote four days later, he explained that readers were flooding his message line, he had been receiving hate mail, and that local radio call-in shows were “engorged.” In addition to the Sports Jam hit, he appeared on TV and radio interviews across the country. The backlash, he believed, was predicated on one big misunderstanding. “I am not an animal!,” he wrote. Readers had misconstrued his message. He was not championing a “Dump Marino” campaign, he claimed. Instead, he was just putting it out there as something that people should consider. “All I’m saying, bottom line, is that this may become an issue the club must deal with and weigh strongly, so let’s talk about it.”
The following Sunday, the Jets handily beat the Dolphins 27–10 at Giants Stadium, which put the brakes on the Marino trade talk. “Thank God for one thing,” wrote Sun-Sentinel staff writer Charles Bricker a few days after. “Scott Mitchell’s soiree in New Jersey over the weekend will put an end to the trade Dan Marino drivel for at least a week.” After the game, Jets quarterback Boomer Esiason excoriated Cote’s suggestion to trade Marino. “Whoever wrote that better have his head examined,” Esiason said. “One of the main reasons we won is that the Dolphins didn’t have Dan Marino and they are a much different team without him.”
The week after the Dolphins’ loss to the Jets, Mitchell hurt his collarbone on the side of his throwing arm in a win over Philadelphia and was ruled out for at least a month. After a miracle win over the Cowboys on Thanksgiving, the Dolphins lost their final five games and missed the playoffs. Mitchell started the final two games of the season, but he wasn’t 100 percent. “I could barely pick my arm up,” he remembered.
“[Scott Mitchell] is hopefully the missing piece of the puzzle that will one day take the Detroit Lions to the Super Bowl” (1994–1998)
The Dolphins did not trade Dan Marino. Mitchell did become a free agent and turned his seven starts into a three-year, $11 million contract with the Detroit Lions. It included a $5 million signing bonus. In 2022, that kind of money is small potatoes for an in-demand free agent quarterback, but back in 1993, it was a small fortune. With that contract, however, came pressure. At the press conference introducing Mitchell to the Lions, head coach Wayne Fontes glowingly stated, “This guy is hopefully the missing piece of the puzzle that will one day take the Detroit Lions to the Super Bowl.”
