Giants' winning spirit of '86 still burns
Head coach Bill Parcells of the New York Giants raises his fist in victory as he is carried off the field after the win against the Denver Broncos during Super Bowl XXI on January 25, 1987 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. The Giants defeated the Broncos 39-20. Credit: Getty
When Phil McConkey joined his former teammates from the Giants' 1986 Super Bowl championship team this past weekend, he couldn't believe that it already has been 25 years since that magical season. Even if the outward signs of the aging process told him a quarter century had indeed passed, McConkey still felt the boyish enthusiasm.
"Twenty-five years? It could be 25 hours," said the 54-year-old former receiver, who caught a touchdown pass in the Giants' 39-20 win over the Broncos in Super Bowl XXI. "When you look around and you see the faces and the bodies, you don't see age. You don't see gray hair. You don't see pot bellies. You see warriors."
All but two of the team's 53 players convened for the gathering, which was put together by former team captain Harry Carson, the Hall of Fame linebacker. The positive feelings were so overwhelming for players such as McConkey that he felt as if maybe, just maybe . . . "For a flicker of a moment, you think, 'We can do this again,' " he said yesterday morning at a breakfast honoring the team. "The spirit in that room is still there, and you wonder how did it happen. Why did we become champions of the world? It's because of the spirit on that team."
Having covered that team as a beat reporter for the Gannett Westchester Rockland Newspapers, I can attest to that spirit. It was there from the first day of training camp until the final moments of the Super Bowl, when Phil Simms put the finishing touches on a record 22-for-25 performance to give the Giants their first Super Bowl title and deliver the franchise from nearly three decades of mostly desultory results.
There were great players in Simms, Lawrence Taylor, Carson, Joe Morris, Mark Bavaro, Carl Banks and Leonard Marshall. And self-made players in Jim Burt, Perry Williams, Brad Benson and McConkey. There was a great coach in Bill Parcells. And a magnificent staff of assistants highlighted by a little-known defensive coordinator named Bill Belichick.
But as much as anything, there was a sense of camaraderie that was just as essential as all that talent. With the hard-driving Parcells molding his team into a unit that compares with the NFL's greatest teams, it was a palpable sense of purpose that helped turn them into champions and deliver some of the most memorable moments in franchise history.
"It's like what Bill Parcells said in the locker room when the game was over, he said, 'Look, you will carry this for the rest of your life,' " said Simms, now a successful NFL commentator with CBS. "It is so true. It is amazing, to win a Super Bowl, that bond is incredible and as time goes on, it only gets stronger."
Parcells, who retired from coaching after the 2006 season, said this was the most special group he'd ever coached. And not just because of the football part. "One of the most gratifying things about this team, besides what it accomplished on the field, whenever any one of them seems to be in some form of distress, and later in life, all the others went to assist him," the 69-year-old Parcells said.A magnificent team in every sense. An absolute privilege to cover. And great to see that flicker of a moment that McConkey talked about.
