Cyclone Hart Strikes Again

[InmanRoshi]

What has Parcells troubled — what has him waking up choking on his bile — isn’t what you might expect. It’s not concern that the Commanders’ coaching staff could spring something on the Cowboys for which they are entirely unprepared. And it’s not his team’s raw ability. It’s a thing that’s harder to put into words, and impervious to strategy. Even as he is trying to study his next opponent, he can’t shake what happened on Sunday. How his team, the moment the Jaguars pushed back, collapsed. How, the moment the players felt the pressure, they began to commit penalties and the sort of small but critical mental errors that only a coach watching video can perceive. In their performance he smells the sort of failure he defines himself against.

At the back of Parcells’s personal binder there are a few loose, well-thumbed sheets that defy categorization: a copy of a speech by Douglas MacArthur; a passage from a book about coaches, which argues that a coach excels by purifying his particular vision rather than emulating a type. Among the papers is an anecdote Parcells brings up often in conversation, about a boxing match that took place nearly 30 years ago between the middleweights Vito Antuofermo and Cyclone Hart. Parcells loves boxing; his idea of a perfect day in the off-season is to spend it inside some ratty boxing gym in North Jersey. “It’s a laboratory,” he says. “You get a real feel for human behavior under the strongest duress — under the threat of physical harm.” In this laboratory he has identified a phenomenon he calls the game quitter. Game quitters, he says, seem “as if they are trying to win, but really they’ve given up. They’ve just chosen a way out that’s not apparent to the naked eye. They are more concerned with public opinion than the end result.”

Parcells didn’t see the Hart-Antuofermo fight in person but was told about it, years ago, by a friend and boxing trainer, Teddy Atlas. It stuck in his mind and now strikes him as relevant. Seated, at first, he begins to read aloud from the pages: how in this fight 29 years ago Hart was a well-known big puncher heavily favored against the unknown Vito Antuofermo, how Hart knocked Antuofermo all over the ring, how Antuofermo had no apparent physical gifts except “he bled well.” “But,” Parcells reads, “he had other attributes you couldn’t see.” Antuofermo absorbed the punishment dealt out by his natural superior, and he did it so well that Hart became discouraged. In the fifth round, Hart began to tire, not physically but mentally. Seizing on the moment, Antuofermo attacked and delivered a series of quick blows that knocked Hart down, ending the fight.

The Commanders video is still frozen on the screen behind Parcells. He is no longer sitting but is now on his feet. “This is the interesting part,” he says, then reads:

“When the fighters went back to their makeshift locker rooms, only a thin curtain was between them. Hart’s room was quiet, but on the other side he could hear Antuofermo’s cornermen talking about who would take the fighter to the hospital. Finally he heard Antuofermo say, ‘Every time he hit me with that left hook to the body, I was sure I was going to quit. After the second round, I thought if he hit me there again, I’d quit. I thought the same thing after the fourth round. Then he didn’t hit me no more.’

“At that moment, Hart began to weep. It was really soft at first. Then harder. He was crying because for the first time he understood that Antuofermo had felt the same way he had and worse. The only thing that separated the guy talking from the guy crying was what they had done. The coward and the hero feel the same emotions. They’re both human.”

When Parcells finishes, he says: “This is the story of our last game. We were Cyclone Hart.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/s...90&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

 

[superpunk]

When I read it, I thought it was one of the most interesting, thought-provoking pieces of journalism I'd ever read. Much better than the Dallas hacks. Now, it reads like a manual on understanding why this team folds like a tent all the time.

How do you overcome something like that? How did it even get started?

I thought about finding this article this morning. Glad you did, IR.

 

[RCowboyFan]

When I read it, I thought it was one of the most interesting, thought-provoking pieces of journalism I'd ever read. Much better than the Dallas hacks. Now, it reads like a manual on understanding why this team folds like a tent all the time.

How do you overcome something like that? How did it even get started?

I thought about finding this article this morning. Glad you did, IR.

When you have handful of players who have questionable character or who are playing for a paycheck.

Ala, Patrick Crayton for example, at least it seemed that way. You only need 2-3 starters with that mindset, for a team to fail. A team is good only when its individual parts are also good.

As much as we hate to admit it, as much as NE has full of dirty players, at least some of them, they all never get pushed around. And never quit.

Cowboys had that when Irvin, Emmit and Aikman were playing. Now they don't, at least not yet anyway.

 

[Chocolate Lab]

Yawn.

Parcells was a worrier. He worried about everything, from injuries to too small a team to his QB being a celebrity. That doesn't mean the team is full of quitters. I don't believe that.

And besides, he's the one who assembled this team, as we were told a billion times when things were rosy, and he's the one who himself quit on this team only to take another job less than a year later.

 

[SultanOfSix]

Yawn.

Parcells was a worrier. He worried about everything, from injuries to too small a team to his QB being a celebrity. That doesn't mean the team is full of quitters. I don't believe that.

And besides, he's the one who assembled this team, as we were told a billion times when things were rosy, and he's the one who himself quit on this team only to take another job less than a year later.

Exactly. He quits all the time.

 

[CoCo]

You don't go 13-3 by folding like a tent whenever things get tough.

What happened to this team yesterday, IMO, is the same ailment that struck them after the Packers game and lingered all December.

I honestly don't know what it was or necessarily how you cure it but we didn't fail out of the blue yesterday, we just played like we had all month.

I actually still think the character of this team remains one of its strengths despite our crash and burn. Its a very painful lesson, but one I feel very confident we can bounce back from with nothing more than another quality offseason.

Doesn't mean no changes are in order, just that I don't think radical ones are.

 

[superpunk]

You don't go 13-3 by folding like a tent whenever things get tough.

Of course not. And they fooled me into thinking I was wrong about them...until December came again, and it was the same old Dallas Cowboys.

Maybe they didn't fold whenever things got tough - they overcame some big time adversity during the year. But they folded the second it really mattered - maybe that's a better way of putting it.

The frustrating thing is that there doesn't seem to be any explanation or solution. Kind of like a shooter who can't get his jumper to fall, or a golfer with the yips. There's nothing that can be done.

 

[InmanRoshi]

When I read it, I thought it was one of the most interesting, thought-provoking pieces of journalism I'd ever read. Much better than the Dallas hacks. Now, it reads like a manual on understanding why this team folds like a tent all the time.

How do you overcome something like that? How did it even get started?

If you find out the answers, you could make a lot of money. A no-brainer first ballot HOF head coach couldn't figure it out. Nor a guy with a degree from Princeton. Or a guy who has been coaching in the league 30 years. I saw Cyclone Hart all over our OL yesterday. They dominated for 3+ quarters and then it just turned into a complete cluster F when the chips were down. And we have some longtime culprits of mentally untough play with that group ... Flozell and Gurode. And when you see Romo barking at his OL, which we've just never seen before, you could see that stunned look in his face like "W.T.F. is going on? These aren't the guys I've played all year with.'

 

[ddh33]

Not everyone on this team quit yesterday. There were a few I might agree with. A couple of guys just folded. But not all of them. Those guys who were battling are the ones I hurt the most for.

 

[Maikeru-sama]

Yawn.

Parcells was a worrier. He worried about everything, from injuries to too small a team to his QB being a celebrity. That doesn't mean the team is full of quitters. I don't believe that.

And besides, he's the one who assembled this team, as we were told a billion times when things were rosy, and he's the one who himself quit on this team only to take another job less than a year later.

I don't believe this team quit, I personally think that the Giants wanted it a little bit more than we did.

You can call it a lack of concentration or some other argument, but we left alot of plays on the field and we certainly shot ourselves in the foot with false starts and personal fouls.

Personally, I don't think this team really felt the Giants were a threat and could actually beat the, as we beat them by double digits each time this season.

 

[CoCo]

The frustrating thing is that there doesn't seem to be any explanation or solution. Kind of like a shooter who can't get his jumper to fall, or a golfer with the yips. There's nothing that can be done.

Which is exactly why I think this team should and will most likely have a business as usual offseason. Shore up your weak spots with draft and FA's. The weaknesses aren't glaring but there is room for improvement.

But I personally think questioning the heart or character of this team is a mistake and largely a wild goose chase.

Perseverance, not panic, is what will serve us best IMO.

 

[CoCo]

Personally, I don't think this team really felt the Giants were a threat and could actually beat the, as we beat them by double digits each time this season.

I think you're right. Witten was quoted on FOX pregame as "wanting to score early and put this game away".

I don't think he was an idiot for thinking that but I do think it confirms that Dallas clearly believed they were the superior team, as I did.

But I wonder if too many thought the 13-3 HFA that they had worked so hard for and the two regular season wins somehow gave them an insurmountable advantage.

 

[Chocolate Lab]

Which is exactly why I think this team should and will most likely have a business as usual offseason. Shore up your weak spots with draft and FA's. The weaknesses aren't glaring but there is room for improvement.

But I personally think questioning the heart or character of this team is a mistake and largely a wild goose chase.

Perseverance, not panic, is what will serve us best IMO.

Coco, your levelheaded thinking won't be popular around here.

(You are absolutely correct, of course.)

 

[superpunk]

Which is exactly why I think this team should and will most likely have a business as usual offseason. Shore up your weak spots with draft and FA's. The weaknesses aren't glaring but there is room for improvement.

But I personally think questioning the heart or character of this team is a mistake and largely a wild goose chase.

Perseverance, not panic, is what will serve us best IMO.

I'm all about perseverance.

But this thread isn't about blowing the team up, firing Wade Phillips, or cutting Roy, Tony, Jessica, and Rowdy. It's about the mentality of this team that makes them crap the bed every December for more than the past decade. That has to stop somehow - and I don't think it's going to stop just because we hope it will.

 

[InmanRoshi]

Coco, your levelheaded thinking won't be popular around here.

(You are absolutely correct, of course.)

Yeah, some of us chicken littles could see this coming in December and we got promptly scolded for our irrational pessimism. Being "levelheaded" isn't really a desired label for me when it seems to go hand in hand goes hand in hand with blindness.

 

[CoCo]

Coco, your levelheaded thinking won't be popular around here.

(You are absolutely correct, of course.)

We're all hurting. Excruciatingly so. So knee jerk reactions are to be expected.

 

[Chocolate Lab]

Yeah, some of us chicken littles could see this coming in December and we got promptly scolded for our irrational pessimism. Being "levelheaded" isn't really a desired label for me when it seems to go hand in hand goes hand in hand with blindness.

So what about Coco's post did you think was blind? Or just disagree with?

 

[SultanOfSix]

Sorry, but the folding mentality of December didn't apply this year as in years past. Not playing great in the month isn't "folding" when you already have home field advantage sealed up with two games to play.

 

[CoCo]

Yeah, some of us chicken littles could see this coming in December and we got promptly scolded for our irrational pessimism. Being "levelheaded" isn't really a desired label for me when it seems to go hand in hand goes hand in hand with blindness.

I don't disagree. Blindness isn't good in any combination.

And I also agree that yesterday's outcome is not a shocker given how we played the last month. Just stated as such in a different thread.

I just don't think the solution for us breaking out of or preventing future "slumps" requires radical surgery. At the same time I have admitted I don't have the definitive answer. So I'm left thinking we need to just have a productive offseason without over analyzing players hearts.

PS - I might make an exception on Roy Williams even though I certainly am not blaming this loss on him.

 

[yimyammer]

Someone that sounded like Cyclone to me before and after the game was Marcus Spears.

I can't find an audio or video of the tape of the interview but before the game, Spears said something to the effect:

"Man, I hate playing division rivals and I hate that we have to play a division rival 3 times in one year"

I remember thinking, WTH? You sound defeated before the game has even started.

Then in the post game, Brad Sham asks him this question:

"I said at the beginning of the broadcast that I didn't know who would win, but if your team didn't win, everyone in the locker room would be surprised. So what are your emotions after the game?"

Marcus Spears:

"Brad, you know, it's really not a shock because , um, you go in and you know it's a possibility to lose......"

Maybe, I am being too critical, but come on man, you were beat before the game even started. If that attitude is prevelant in the locker room, then no wonder we lost.

Source of post game interview:

http://www.dallascowboys.com/multimedia_center.cfm