Bill Parcells spent a good part of his Giants coaching career shattering the Super Bowl dreams of the Eagles and the city of Philadelphia.
Carson Wentz suffering that torn ACL last Sunday ripped the heart out of Eagles fans who could reach out and touch the franchise’s first Super Bowl championship.
All these years later, as the Nick Foles Eagles arrive at MetLife Stadium to make mincemeat of the 2-11 Giants, a message of hope for his old adversary from Parcells:
You can still win a championship with Foles.
He knows.
Because he won one 27 years ago with Jeff Hostetler when Phil Simms was lost in December to a foot injury.
“There’s ways to win all these games,” Parcells told The Post. “Your job is to figure it out. Just because they lost Wentz that doesn’t mean they’re gonna lose.
“Everybody says, ‘Well everybody else has to step up.’ No. Everybody else has to play championship football. Just like you would have had to do if Wentz was there.
“I felt like if the New York Giants played championship football with Jeff Hostetler, we would win.”
Hostetler had thrown just 17 passes as a Giant from 1984-89. But Parcells told his 1990 Giants that Hostetler would not be the one who sends them home.
“Here’s what was happening: The media had already caught on to the fact that a team has never won a Super Bowl with their backup quarterback,” Parcells said. “I wanted to eliminate that thought.”
Parcells and offensive coordinator Ron Erhardt tweaked the game plan to incorporate Hostetler’s mobility.
“First of all, I had a knowledge base on Jeff, he’d been with us quite a few years,” Parcells said. “I kind of thought I knew what he was capable of doing. There were some bootlegs, there were a couple of more sprint passes — things that utilized his athletic ability a little bit more.
“Coincidentally, one of those plays became a critical play in the San Francisco [NFC] Championship game, ’cause we hit a sprintout there [for 13 yards] to Stephen Baker to get into field-goal range at the end of the game. So that was one of the things that we probably wouldn’t have done with Phil that we did with Jeff that allowed us to get in position to win that game.”
Doug Pederson is not Parcells, and Jim Schwartz is not Bill Belichick, and who knows if Foles can be Hostetler with the stakes so high.
“The worst thing you can do is give your coaches or your players an excuse for losing,” Parcells said. “I really believed it. I wasn’t telling ’em something that I didn’t believe. I thought we could win.”
The Hostetler Giants beat the Cardinals and Patriots on the road and earned a first-round bye.
“I told my players, ‘They’re not cancelling these games boys. We’re playing. Let’s go,’ ” Parcells recalled.
The Giants bludgeoned the Bears, 31-3, in the divisional round at Giants Stadium.
“I wish I could let you see footage of the Bears game in New York,” Parcells said. “About the last seven or eight minutes of the game, we just ran the clock out, with [Maurice] Carthon carrying the ball,” Parcells said. “Now he wasn’t even our running back.”
No one gave the Giants a chance on the road against the Joe Montana 49ers. No one except Parcells and the Giants.
“A team teaches itself what it is every year,” Parcells said. “That team we had there was mentally very strong. If we could get a lead, we were hard to beat, because we had good defense. They would not crack mentally. They would slug it out with you for as long as it took.
“And we could, in most cases, control the game, because we had a powerful tandem on our left side of Mark Bavaro and Jumbo Elliott. If we needed yards, we could always go over there — William Roberts, Jumbo Elliott and Mark Bavaro, now that’s a pretty good big, powerful group of guys.
“I remember telling those offensive linemen, “I said, ‘Jumbo, you better get your stamina up ’cause once we start coming over there, if it’s working, we’re not gonna stop.’ ”
Hostetler years ago remembered how Parcells buoyed him.
“I think the most important thing, and Bill Parcells used to say this all the time, is `play within yourself,’ ” Hostetler was quoted as saying once. “ ‘You know what you can do. You know what your strong points and weak points are. Play to your strong points, and don’t try and go out and win the game yourself.’ ”
Hostetler’s teammates had unwavering faith in him.
“There was not a person in the locker room that had any doubt that he could win for us,” Carl Banks told The Post.
Simms (15 touchdowns, four interceptions that season) was the battlefield commander but was certainly not having the MVP season that Wentz was having.
“I don’t think there was any apprehension that Jeff Hostetler couldn’t have done as good a job as Phil,” Mark Bavaro told The Post. “He knew he could do it, we knew he could do it, and he did it.”
Foles has thrown 14 passes this season. But he threw 27 TDs against two INTs as Chip Kelly’s quarterback in 2013 before losing to the Saints in the wild-card game.
“I don’t see why losing Carson Wentz, though he adds another dimension, I don’t see why they shouldn’t expect to be playing in February,” Banks said. “I don’t see what I see on coaches’ tape, I see probably the most complete team in the NFL right now.”
The 2017 Eagles are eying the No. 1 seed in the NFC and first-round bye.
“You only have to win two games after that to get in, right?” Parcells said.
Right.
He just wishes he could be talking about the Giants this way.
“Listen,” Parcells said, “you know I’m a Giant, right?”
Right. Hall of Fame right.