As the lead analyst for the CBS telecast of Super Bowl XLI on Sunday, PHIL SIMMS brings a Super Bowl MVP QB’s perspective to the game. Twenty years ago, he completed 22 of 25 passes for 268 yards and three touchdowns (for a postseason record 150.9 rating) in leading the Giants over the Broncos in Super Bowl XXI. A relative unknown when he was drafted by the Giants out of Morehead State in ‘79, Simms played 14 seasons for the Giants and set virtually all of the franchise's passing records. Upon his retirement in ‘94, Simms went to ESPN as an analyst before joining NBC. He moved to CBS in ‘98. Simms spoke with SportsBusiness Journal New York bureau chief Jerry Kavanagh on the eve of the conference championship games.
| Date & Place of Birth: 11-3-55 in Springfield, Kentucky. |
| Education: Morehead State. |
| Favorite vacation spot: Believe it or not, as white as I am -- and I do have some really white skin -- I like to go to warm-weather beaches. I’m always under the umbrella, but I love to swim in the ocean. It’s outdoors and it’s active. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve turned into a big reader. I love relaxing that way. After a season, even though it’s announcing, it’s the travel and a lot of other issues that really get you. So, it’s a great break when we finally do it at the end of the year. |
| Favorite piece of music: I like everything from rock-and-roll to classical to country. I even listen to a little rap. I’ve got kids and I hear it and I say, “Hey, that’s pretty good.” |
| Favorite authors: JOHN GRISHAM and HARLAN COBEN. When they put a new book out, I’m standing in that airport bookstore and I’m buying it. And I get ’em within the first couple of days that they’re out. |
| Favorite movie: “The Godfather.” |
| Favorite athletes: I love the Yankees, like the Mets. When PAT RILEY coached the Knicks, I loved how hard they worked day in and day out. I couldn’t get over their work ethic. I remember thinking, “Gosh, if we could do that, we could win a championship.” I like to watch TIGER WOODS and PHIL MICKELSON. |
| Pet peeve: I try to exercise, try to take care of myself, but I’m weak and I seem to break down all the time. I eat perfect for two days and then all of a sudden I eat something big and fried and then the big dessert. When I fall off the wagon, I fall hard. |
| Any regrets: Sure. I wish I had listened to my father more. I wish I had worked harder in school. I think anybody who’s an athlete always wishes he could go back and handle a situation a little better. But who can’t do that! I don’t dwell on it, though. |
| Any collections: No. I have so little memorabilia from my career it’s unbelievable. |
| Best football movie: “North Dallas Forty.” |
| Worst football movie: “Any Given Sunday.” |
| Smartest players: PHIL MCCONKEY, MAURICE CARTHON, O.J. ANDERSON and DAVE MEGGETT. |
Greatest competitor: There’s no doubt: LAWRENCE TAYLOR. Not only on the field, but everything he did. Sometimes you wanted to look at him and go, “Turn it off, Lawrence.” Because everything, no matter what it was, he was going to compete at it. He enjoyed it, and it was fun watching him do it.
Most colorful trash talker: Lawrence was way up there. CHARLES HALEY was great at it. But as time went on, trash talking became less part of the game. When I first got in the league, it was out of control. |
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| CBS’ Phil Simms |
Q: In “The Final Season,” BILL PARCELLS wrote: “The thing I loved about Phil Simms ... is that he never made an excuse. If something went wrong, he took it on his own shoulders. Phil was tough. Phil was fiery. And his teammates respected him for that.”
Simms: Those were kind words he said about me. I was raised by coaches in football, including coach Parcells and his staff, who said you have to stand up and take the blame. And as quarterback, you do that. You deflect it from your teammates. It’s just part of the job. At every level I played at, I had a coach very similar to Bill Parcells. So, when he took over the Giants, it wasn’t a tough transition for me.
Q: You said that he had the greatest influence on you as a player.
Simms: Yes. You know, too, the age I was at and playing more years for him than anybody else, I learned a lot of life lessons, but I also learned most of my football and how I look at it. I learned all that through Bill.
Q: In your book, “Sunday Morning Quarterback,” you describe some of the mind games he played. Parcells once told you, “Hey, Simms, I don’t need a cruise director. I need a battleship commander.”
Simms: Yeah, he’s got a lot of sayings. “I need me a quarterback; I don’t need a celebrity.” He had guidelines he expected his quarterback to live under. I believed him when I was playing, but as I’ve gotten older, I look back and I believe in him more now than I probably did then.
Q: You hear similar sentiments about BOBBY KNIGHT and other tough coaches from former players.
Simms: I remember the year after coach Parcells left, a bunch of us were sitting around in the weight room. We started talking about him and saying nothing but good things about all that he taught us. Finally, one guy -- it could have been me -- said, “Yeah, he did a lot of wonderful things, but let’s don’t ever tell him.” We couldn’t let him know that he was right in everything.
Q: You write that “the word ‘great’ is thrown out there way too often by media, fans, coaches, players, everybody.” Who’s the greatest player you’ve ever seen?
Simms: JIM BROWN. He was the guy. He was the first football star that I really paid attention to.
Q: Was your transition from the field to the booth a smooth one?
Simms: Absolutely not! Who goes into a new job they’ve never done before and really feels, “Oh, I’ve got it. I can do this.” It took a while. Many times I thought, “I’ve got to get out of this. I’ve got to go back and play or coach.” But maybe it was how I felt sometimes as a player. I hung in there. I learned, just like being a player, how to do it better.
Q: What’s the key?
Simms: It’s learning how to talk football in very simple terms so people at home can understand it. And I really enjoy what I do. I like talking about it. I love hanging around and watching practices and talking to the players and coaches. Now, of course, it’s a huge part of my life.
Q: A lot of preparation?
Simms: The preparation is probably overstated. I think my preparation, more than anything, is just that I’m nosy. I want to see. I want to watch. I want to form my own opinions. I used to hear things [from a broadcast] and think, “That’s not true.” My job, as I look at it, is to try to know the truth and tell the truth, because coaches and players don’t want someone just throwing things out there that are not true. It’s a disservice to them.
Q: You said, “TV absolutely can lie. The numbers in football lie ... statistics cannot tell the complete story.” What’s the biggest lie in football?
Simms: Oh, boy. There are a lot of them. A guy will make a lot of tackles and you say, “Wow, he had a tremendous game!” And then you watch the tape and realize he was getting blocked down the field and the runner was eight yards down the field before he was tackled. And quarterback stats can be as misleading as anything in sports. I’ve seen quarterbacks go 18-of-25 where they were awful. They missed big plays, didn’t take chances, didn’t make good decisions. But on TV it will be reported that his QB rating was high.
But running backs’ stats are easily very true. There’s nothing that comes cheap when it comes to running the football in the NFL.
Q: What’s the biggest misperception fans have about the game?
Simms: That all the players are big and stupid. And I think fans generally think the players are not nice people. But the game is so team-oriented, you have to work with so many guys, and it’s hard. You’ve got to be smart to play it because you have to think, adjust, you’ve got to learn vast amounts of information every week. The days of the moody and the not very smart player are gone.
Q: If you had been available, BILL WALSH was going to draft you in the second round (with his first pick) in 1979. After the Giants picked you, Walsh took JOE MONTANA in the third round. Do you ever wonder how your career might have turned out with Walsh?
Simms: Yeah, but not to the extent that I think, “Wow, that could have been me doing all that Joe did.” It worked out pretty well for me, so I’m not complaining. Think about it. As great as Joe’s career was, there were a few instances -- the catch by DWIGHT CLARK and some other plays -- where it was close that some of those wonderful moments in Super Bowls might not have even happened. To think that they were going to happen for me. ... I don’t really think about it. Bill Walsh had unique concepts and he was a different personality for pro football, so I think I really would have enjoyed getting a little taste of that.
Q: His West Coast offense was innovative.
Simms: Yeah, it was different. Lawrence Taylor changed pro football with his pass-rushing ability as a linebacker. And Bill Walsh changed pro football, too, with his offense, his thinking. A lot of copycat coaches have come from his thinking and teachings.
Q: Who are the innovators in the game today?
Simms: I don’t know right now if you can do anything that’s going to be new or innovative in the NFL. It’s so wide open, so free-thinking. On both sides of the ball, teams have spread it from sideline to sideline, so there’s nowhere else to go. I would say in the last ten years, that the biggest change in pro football is we have a lot of really talented head coaches and assistants who are willing to teach and run on the edge. The edge of “Let’s be great and not be out of control but very close to it.”
Q: Who’s the best counter-puncher in the NFL: the best at counter strategy?
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Simms Mentions Shanahan As One
Of NFL’s Best At Counter Strategy |
Simms: I think anybody who has prolonged success has to have that quality in him, that he’s not afraid to change. MIKE SHANAHAN and BILL BELICHICK are two of the first that come to mind. And what the Colts are doing is innovative. They’ve basically built the franchise by saying, “Hey, our quarterback’s going to control it all.” And he does. It’s worked extremely successfully. People say, “Well, they haven’t won a Super Bowl.” I don’t know if I judge success just by how many Super Bowls you win. The Colts have had a tremendous team for a long period of time. Sometimes to win the Super Bowl, you need almost miraculous breaks. If you name me a championship team, I can almost come up with a miraculous break they got during the postseason run that kept their team alive.
Q: The Patriots.
Simms: TOM BRADY. Before his first Super Bowl. Oakland Raiders. Playoff game in the snow in New England. Sack. Recovered by the Raiders. Game over. Wait! It’s not ruled a fumble. It’s the “tuck” rule. And the legend of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick begins.
Q: Even the Patriots/Chargers playoff game this year with TROY BROWN stripping the ball after it was intercepted.
Simms: You get those every year. The Steelers last year. How about that? If [BEN] ROETHLISBERGER misses the tackle, the Steelers do not go to the Super Bowl, BILL COWHER is probably still coaching and I don’t know how we’d be thinking of Roethlisberger.
Q: You quote Redskins coach JOE GIBBS on JOE THEISMANN’s enthusiasm for playing. Much has been made of ELI MANNING’s perceived lack of fire. Does a quarterback have to show passion?
Simms: No. You do what you do and you are what you are. For Eli Manning to go on the field and jump around and yell at guys, well, that’s not who he is. I played against Joe Montana for about 15 years. You know what? I don’t ever remember seeing him talk to players on the field, or clap his hands and pump them up. He just methodically went about his job, and there are many quarterbacks who do it exactly that way. When it works, they’re the corps leader; when it doesn’t work, “Oh, he’s not fiery enough. He’s got to show more emotion and get us going.” And then if you are a fiery guy and you lose, “Well, he’s too emotional. He’s getting the players upset.” That’s what I think about all that talk.
Q: You write, “Give [the ball] to the people who can make plays. It’s that simple.” Yet you read about coaches who seem to spend almost 24 hours a day on the job, sleeping in their offices and rising before dawn to prepare for the next week’s game. What’s going on?
Simms: It used to be the coaches themselves broke the film down and the equipment was not state-of-the-art. Now they just turn the computer on. All that work is done for them. They no longer have to spend hours just acquiring the information before they start deciding what they’re going to do. Instead of working 100-hour weeks, they’ve knocked it down to about 90 (laughing).
Q: You have said that less conservative play-calling today is a reflection of our changing society. Does this mean we can view football as a guide to political or social climate?
Simms: You know, I always believe a lot of that stuff goes hand-in-hand. The world now in all areas is filled with more risk-takers and daring people and creativity. That absolutely translates into sports. Football is a game where there are many pieces to the puzzle: 11 guys on each side, and you can do endless formations and strategies, and somebody has to counter that. So, yeah, I believe that.
It’s the confidence that players and coaches have that borders on arrogance nowadays. We saw a great example of that in the [BCS] National Championship game. Florida came out and ran an offense that was different and extremely innovative and definitely outside the box, and it helped them win a national championship.
Q: Does the game need any changes? If you were commissioner, what would you implement?
Simms: There are a few rules. Roughing the quarterback should be five and 15 [yards], just like roughing and running into the kicker. That is a game-changing play right now, so I’d like to see it modified somewhat just so it wouldn’t have such a dramatic effect on the outcome of games. That would be one. Not many more. If you look at the NFL, look at all the changes they have made over the years. They constantly change the rules to keep it an exciting game that looks good on TV and keeps fans excited.
Q: What’s been the best new idea in the NFL?
Simms: This past year, when they allowed quarterbacks to fix the footballs where they’re able to handle them a little better. That’s only the most important object to the game. And now we don’t have a PEYTON MANNING dropping back and the ball slipping out of his hand.
Q: How are they fixing the footballs?
Simms: Quarterbacks are allowed to get the footballs and wipe the newness off them, break them in a bit -- just a little -- and make them easier to handle. Because they’re hard, very big and slick. I don’t know how many years it took them, but they finally got it done.
Q: Are you a fantasy football player?
Simms: I’m not. I don’t know how anybody finds the time.
Q: If you were an NFL GM, who would you build your team around?
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Manning One Player Simms
Would Build Team Around |
Simms: Peyton Manning or Tom Brady.
Q: What’s the biggest challenge facing the NFL?
Simms: I don’t know if there’s a huge challenge. The protection of players, trying to keep the game safe, trying always to think about ways to cut down injuries. I think now that’s always at the forefront of what [the league] is doing. And also they’ve got to come up with a better plan to help football players when it’s over. But that’s getting better too. As generations of guys come through the NFL, their life after football and their health will be better. Now that I’m over 50, I understand. I’m fortunate that I don’t really have any injuries, but I know a lot of players who do, so we need to always keep an eye on them.
Q: You write, “What I always tell myself is, ‘Thank God this broadcasting thing came along, because I might have been coaching.’” No interest in coaching?
Simms: No, because I’m too old now and too far behind. The lifestyle is so hard. Playing as long as I did, that was enough. The war is over. Try to move on and enjoy something that’s just a little easier.
Q: Any political aspirations?
Simms: No. Like I said, I didn’t pay enough attention in school, so political life is out.
