Five hours before the biggest game of his life, Phil Simms didn’t want to sit around the hotel.
So, he and three of his offensive linemen got in a taxi and had the driver take them to the Rose Bowl. When they got there, they lit a cigarette — a Kool, Simms thinks — and passed it around.
Simms doesn’t smoke. Never has. But …
“It was our tradition,” he said. “That was our thing. One cigarette pleased all four of us.”
A few hours later, Simms completed 22 of 25 passes, and the Giants beat the Denver Broncos 39-20 in Super Bowl XXI, an incredible end to the 1986-87 season.
Simms told the story Thursday during a keynote sit-down at the SAX Symposium at MetLife Stadium with Ryan Harris, a former NFL offensive lineman who is part of SAX’s athletes and artists team.
And as much as he’d like to credit the pregame smoke for the win, Simms said the triumph was months in the making.
Simms said the Giants were on fire for the last seven or eight weeks of that season and practiced great that week in Pasadena. He’d also done his homework on how not to play in a Super Bowl.
“I read many articles where quarterbacks would say they were so nervous during the game they couldn’t settle down until late in the second quarter,” he said. “And I remember going, if I ever get in that damn thing, I sure as hell am not going to waste a quarter and a half.”
He didn’t.
“And the cigarette really helped,” he joked.
Here are nine other things Simms shared about life with the Giants — and life after:
- Bill Parcells never let up
Simms played for Parcells for eight years. He said the coach’s best trait was consistency.
“His greatest thing that he had — he never got tired of being the tough guy,” Simms said. “He never came out and go, ‘Hey, you know, you’re doing great.’”
One morning, Simms walked into the locker room at about 7 a.m. and found Parcells at a table.
“He goes, how many passes did you complete in practice yesterday? And I said, ‘I don’t know,” Simms said. “And he goes, I’ll tell you how many, Simms. Not very many.”
Parcells told him he’d been up all night, tossing and turning, because his quarterback couldn’t complete a pass. Practice wasn’t until 3 p.m.
“So, I got to live with that the whole day,” Simms said.
Another day, Parcells tore into the offensive line during practice. Simms stood behind him, egging him on. Then Parcells turned around and said it was Simms’ fault.
“And I said, sure, of course, it’s my fault. It’s always my damn fault. It’s never yours, Coach,” Simms said.
Looking back, Simms said Parcells was right.
“It was my job to try to always be in charge of the offensive line, and I let it slip a little,” he said.
- The Lawrence Taylor golf story
Simms said he and Taylor are great friends and that LT will get at least one whole chapter if he ever writes a book. He then offered one of the few stories he said he could tell in public.
It was an early summer morning; the phone rang at 5 a.m. It was Taylor, driving up the Parkway, and he wanted to play golf that day. He needed clubs, shoes, a shirt, a hat, balls and a course.
By 5:40, Taylor was in Simms’ front yard picking through his gear. Simms called the pro at a nearby club, who said the first group off at 6:45 was a threesome.
Taylor ended up playing all day.
“All I can say is I never saw the shoes. … I never saw my clubs. Nothing ever again,” Simms said.
When he asked for them back, Taylor had an answer.
“He goes, ‘Oh man, they’re no good. You don’t need them,’” Simms said.
- One of his best games came when he could barely walk
Before a home game against the Arizona Cardinals, coach Dan Reeves let the Giants sleep in their own beds. Simms said it was the only time that happened.
He woke up, sat on the edge of the bed, and his wife saw a sac of blood on his back the size of a football. Then he stood up and the room started spinning.
He thought he might not be able to play. His wife disagreed.
“She goes, ‘You’re gonna play,’ and I mean, she meant it,” Simms said.
Trainers worked on him. Simms said he played one of the best games of his career (more than 300 yards passing and 3 TDs) in a drizzle that day.
“It’s amazing I didn’t hear the crowd once that day,” he said. “Sometimes that’s when you do your best.”
Then there’s this: His wife wasn’t there to see it. She went to their son Christopher’s seventh- and eighth-grade championship game instead.
“But we both won,” Simms said.
- NFL life isn’t what it looks like on TV
Simms said he likes talking with fans to give them a feel for what the league is really like.
“It looks great on Sundays, but trust me, Monday through Saturday, it’s hell,” he said.
- Players in his day weren’t set for life
Simms said today’s NFL players make enough money to save, invest and make life easier after football. His generation didn’t.
“We didn’t make enough money to sit there and go, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m set for life,’” he said. “The day the Giants cut me, I immediately went out and looked for a job, because I got to get some income.”
The money has moved down to the high school level, too. Simms said at a North Jersey high school game, someone told him a player was getting $75,000 a game from Texas A&M.
A good friend of his left a general manager job in the NFL to work in the NIL and player-evaluation world.
“I said, ‘Well, I hate to ask, but I’m going to anyway. So, how much money are they paying you?’” Simms said. “He told me, and I went, OK, good. I should go in that business.”
- In the broadcast booth, he tried to tell the truth
Simms called broadcasting a chance to relate to fans.
“I loved it. I loved the preparation for it,” he said. “The only thing I didn’t like about the job was the travel.”
He said his rule was simple. If he said it on the air, he knew it was true. He still gets angry at commentators who mislead fans about players who have wives and kids at home.
“Not to say I was perfect; but at least try to respect the players and the coaches, and know what really is important, why they’re winning and losing,” he said.
He has little use for analysts who lean on numbers.
“When they go to stats, that tells you they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” he said.
- His Halloween mistake
One Halloween, Simms said, he had about 50 Madden video games on hand and started handing them out to trick-or-treaters. Word spread fast.
“All of a sudden, I got this many people at the door,” he said.
Kids kept coming back for more, even the next year.
“Aren’t you giving out the Madden game, Mr. Simms?” he recalled them asking. “No. You know these things sell for like $75 a piece.”
He said he’s never done it since.
The crowds still come. More than 300 kids showed up at the Simms house last Halloween.
These days, kids get a bucket of small candy and a table of full-size candy bars, and they pick one.
- He regrets not being more involved with his sons
Harris, who played with one of Simms’ sons, asked how he managed to be a world-class father and a world-class athlete.
“Well, I wasn’t a world-class father; that’s what bothers me to this day,” Simms said. “I have two sons that play in the NFL, and I was the father that did not get involved.”
He said a quarterback’s path is complicated, with politics and many other things, and a parent needs to be there for it. He let Christopher go to the University of Texas.
“We’re in New Jersey, and you’re going to friggin’ Texas,” Simms said. “And you know, I still regret it like it was yesterday.”
- There’s no secret to success, only hard work
Harris asked Simms several times about leadership and handling pressure. Simms kept coming back to the same answer.
“There’s no pressure; just work through it,” he said.
And maybe, just maybe, start the day with a quick smoke.
