Bill Parcells makes surprise admission about his Patriots breakup

Bill Parcells revealed a surprisingly different perspective on his decades-long feud with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, saying Saturday at his team Hall of Fame ceremony that he wishes he “would have done things a little differently.”

“We sometimes reflect on things, and you wish you would have done things a little differently,” Parcells, 84, said, according to ESPN.

Parcells, who went on to coach the Jets and Cowboys after his split with the Patriots, wanted personnel control in New England, but Kraft didn’t accommodate that request — and it led to their ugly divorce after losing to the Packers in the February 1997 Super Bowl.

“Over the years, we’ve both mellowed,” Kraft, 84, said at the Hall of Fame ceremony Saturday, when both Parcells and Julian Edelman received their red jackets. “We’ve shared laughs, swapped stories and reflected on the foundation we built together. I want to say, ‘Thank you, Bill. Thank you for the fire. Thank you for the fight. Thank you for the foundation. And thank you for the many contributions you made to this franchise.’”

As recently as 2024, it appeared that the relationship was still strained, with the Patriots’ “Dynasty” documentary on Apple TV+ covering it.

Parcells said in the show that he and Kraft weren’t aligned “in the best interest of building a team” and that the people tasked with roster-building decisions were “incompetent.”

He’d won a pair of Super Bowl titles with the Giants before arriving in Foxborough, establishing the foundation of what helped him become one of the most renowned coaches of all time.

One year after he became the Patriots’ head coach, Kraft purchased the team.

But the fact that Parcells was included in the Patriots’ latest Hall of Fame class became a promising sign of their feud ending after he’d been a finalist for the honor in 2011, 2012, 2014, 2020 and 2023.

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Parcells was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013.

“He had been a finalist for five years, and while both of us are alive … I thought it would be great given what he’s done for the team,” Kraft told The Boston Globe in April after the announcement.

The ceremony occurred the day before the current iteration of the Patriots hosted the Steelers at Gillette Stadium, looking to secure their second win of the young season.