EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Former New York Giants head coach and Super Bowl-winning assistant Ray Handley died last week. He was 81.
The Giants announced Monday that Handley’s death was confirmed by his nephew, Rob Handley.
Handley’s career with the Giants began in 1984, when he was hired as an offensive backfield coach under Bill Parcells. Handley won a pair of Super Bowls as an assistant in New York before being named head coach when Parcells surprisingly retired for the first time following Super Bowl XXV.
Handley’s head-coaching record was 14-18 during a contentious two-year tenure that included battles with the media and eventually losing fan support. He was replaced after the 1992 season by Dan Reeves.
Despite being just 48 years old, Handley would never coach again in the NFL. He lost touch with the Giants organization and was never heard from much over the years. When reached by Newsday for a “Where are they Now” feature more than a decade later, Handley’s only public comments were brief.
“No, I’m not the least bit interested. Thank you very much,” he said, before hanging up the phone.
Handley landed in New York in large part because of his relationship with Parcells. The two had worked together on the same staff in West Point for Army in the late 1960s and reunited when Parcells was the head coach at Air Force in 1978.
Handley then worked at his alma mater Stanford as a linebackers coach from 1979-83 before Parcells persuaded him to join the Giants. Parcells later talked Handley out of quitting coaching and attending law school right before he became the team’s head coach in 1991.
After earning the respect of the Giants organization in his seven years as an assistant, Handley was chosen by general manager George Young to be the head coach. It was a shotgun marriage with Parcells stepping aside so late in the process, defensive coordinator Bill Belichick having already landed in Cleveland and wide receivers coach Tom Coughlin committed to be the head coach at Boston College.
That left Handley in charge of a veteran group that was aging. He chose Jeff Hostetler over Phil Simms as the team’s quarterback after a training camp battle that first summer and won his first game as head coach in a Monday night rematch of the NFC Championship game against the San Francisco 49ers.
But ultimately it didn’t work out. The decision to bench Simms seemed to linger with some of the veterans, and the losing quickly brought unwanted attention to the head coach.
“We were out of luck between Belichick and Coughlin. Ray Handley was one of Bill’s right-hand guys and was the brightest coach that we had,” Giants owner John Mara said years later. “George always put a lot of emphasis on IQ and Ray was a Stanford guy with a high IQ, but he was taking over a veteran team that had been used to winning and just didn’t respond very well to him.”
As a player, Handley played three years as a running back at Stanford from 1963-65, compiling 1,768 yards and 11 touchdowns. He began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Stanford in 1967.
