Duane Charles, also known as “Bill” Parcells, or the “The Big Tuna” among NFL followers, is a retired American football coach.
He spent 19 seasons coaching in the National Football League. His first head coach gig was with the New York Giants between 1983 and 1990, bagging two Super Bowl titles.
He then took a brief break before joining the New England Patriots as a coach from 1993 to 1996, leading them to the Super Bowl again.
Following his departure from the Patriots, he coached the New York Jets for two seasons, from 1997 to 1999, during which time they won their 1st division championship in nearly three decades.
After another retirement, he returned to coaching the Dallas Cowboys from 2003 to 2006, during which time they reached the playoffs twice. Finally, he retired from coaching in 2007.
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Fout teams coached straight into the playoffs
Parcells is really the only coach in NFL history to take four different teams into the playoffs and 3 of them to a conference title game.
He was dubbed “the guy who turned teams around.” Literally breathing new life into dead franchises. During the league’s regular season, he went 172-130-1, and in the playoff games, he was 11-8.
He received the coach of the year title twice, in 1984 and 1986, and entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013. With his accomplishments in the NFL, it’s only reasonable that his fans would wonder what he’s doing now. Well, gear on, this is a look at Coach Parcells’ life after retiring from coaching in the NFL.
You can watch the video below to understand what a coach he really is:
Bill Parcells` life after retiring from coaching
After his final coaching stint, Parcells worked for the Miami Dolphins as Vice President of Football Operations from 2008 to 2010.
He began his Executive Vice President of Football Operations job by firing the general manager, head coach, and a few assistant coaches who’d led the team to a 1-15 finish in the previous season.
He then rehabbed the team with Jeff Ireland as its general manager, Tony Sparano as the head coach, and went to sign a bunch of players.
The Dolphins went 11-5 that season, winning the AFC East title and making the playoffs for the first time in 8 years, cementing Parcells reputation as the comeback kid.
Retiring from the Dolphins
In 2010, Parcells retired from the Dolphins to pursue a career in sports broadcasting, which he did on a part-time basis in between management and coaching gigs, including as a courtesy advisor for the Cleveland Browns franchise in 2014.
It was rumored that the team’s owner wanted Parcells to take over as coach and help the franchise regain its credibility after a string of disappointing moves.
The issue was that Parcells had hit 72 years at the time and clearly retired from football. In an interview, he stated that he only gave them his opinion on why some businesses succeed while others fail. He endorsed John Dorsey to take over ownership of the team three years later.
Hall of Fame in 2013
In 2013, he was put into the Hall of Fame for Pro Football. He’s also published two memoirs, the first one in 2000, titled: The Final Season: My Last Year as NFL Head Coach, with the help of Will McDonough; and Parcells: A Football Life, with the help of Nunyo Demasio in 2014.
Many of Parcells’ former assistants are now head coaches at the college or NFL level. These include Bill Belichick, who has won 6 Super Bowl titles with the New England Patriots, Tom Coughlin of the New York Giants, Sean Payton of the New Orleans Saints, Tony Sparano of the Miami Dolphins, and Todd Haley of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Family time between Saratoga Springs and Florida
Parcells, now 80, splits his time between his homes in Saratoga Springs and Florida. He’s owned the Saratoga Springs home since the mid-2000s. In 2021, he won a case against a landscaper suing him for nuisance and negligence under common law after he fell while trimming a tree in the Saratoga Springs home.
This year, he visited his former team, the New York Mets, in Florida before their spring training matchup against the Miami Marlins.
Of course, as one of the most revered coaches in the NFL, this visit quickly made into the news, including photos of him meeting with the Giant’s manager Buck Showalter and the rest of the team. Let’s hope he gave them some sound advice because they could really use some next season.
