Bill Parcells: 49ers Engaged in Funny Business During 1980s Playoffs

Part of the Patriotgate scandal -- a part that never went anywhere -- was the accusation leveled by representatives of the Detroit Lions, Cincinnati Bengals and Jacksonville Jaguars that the communications devices they used to communicate from the press box to the quarterbacks' helmets malfunctioned when they played the Patriots at Gillette Stadium.

During a discussion of Patriotgate on ESPN tonight, Bill Parcells said that when he was coach of the Giants, the 49ers used a different tactic to achieve the same result of denying the opposition the opportunity to use headsets to communicate between the press box and the sidelines.

According to Parcells, the 49ers claimed in two different playoff games that their headsets had gone out during their first offensive series. The 49ers and coach Bill Walsh were famous for scripting the first series of every game, so headsets really wouldn't have been helpful to the 49ers during their first series -- quarterback Joe Montana and the entire offense knew exactly which plays to run whether they could hear their coaches' instructions or not.



But claiming their headsets had malfunctioned would give the 49ers a competitive advantage because of the rule that if one team's headsets malfunction, the other team has to stop using its headsets. So, according to Parcells, Walsh could tell the referee that the 49ers' headsets weren't working at the beginning of the game. Then the referee would order Parcells and his staff to take off their headsets, too, and that would give the 49ers an advantage. Then, later in the game, once the 49ers had used all their scripted plays, Walsh would tell the referee the 49ers had gotten their headsets fixed.

Parcells didn't specify which games the 49ers did this in, but he seemed to be referring to the Giants-49ers playoff games after the 1985 and 1986 seasons. The Giants won both of those games, so Parcells wasn't suggesting that any of the 49ers' titles were tainted.

And Parcells also seemed to be mostly taking a lighthearted view of the whole thing -- he seemed to think it was just good old-fashioned gamesmanship. But I don't know. It seems to me that that's a pretty serious violation of the rules.

It also seems to me that Parcells is saying this at the wrong time. Parcells has had more than 20 years to make an issue of this. To suggest after Walsh's death -- after Walsh can no longer defend himself -- that Walsh was a cheater strikes me as wrong.