1925 | The New York Giants Podcast | Episode 16 with Carl Banks

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, guys. Sorry I was a little late. I was stranded in Vegas for most of the night last night and got in later this afternoon and was just trying to get caught up on my day. So, I apologize for being a few minutes late.

No, I don't gamble. I was at a licensing trade show. And you know, I was only there for 24 hours and thinking, 'Hey, I'm going to just jump back on this Delta flight.' And I guess all the weather across the East Coast had everything delayed and a 9:30 flight turned into a 3:30 a.m. flight. So, it was a little crazy.

No, I'm on a plane a lot. So, I'm not terrified at all.

Well, I think they felt he did a good enough job or they feel that he has acquired the right amount of talent to move the team in the right direction. You know, the thing is with general managers, and it obviously doesn't matter what we think. They felt that he deserved it. So, I'm happy for Joe. I happen to like him. I think he's super smart. But, the thing with general managers, none of them bat a thousand. It's the ones that stick out, right? That really make you question whether or not they are deserving of a job, right? You got the Saquon situation and a few other players that go and, you know, as fans, you look at those things, but the sausage making, if you will, you don't really dig into. You know, he inherited... and this is not a defense of his contract or not. That was done and I didn't make that decision nor did anyone else. But, you know, he inherited a really bad salary cap situation that he had to get the Giants in fiscal shape. That had to happen before they could even think about talent, right? And then, the free agents that they were getting during that period were, you know, like C-level free agents. Just somebody that could duct tape and some stuff and see if they could get through with it, get by with it. And it just did not look good. The optics weren't great for fans who are dying for something better. And I think over the last 3 years, if you had to judge where this team is roster-wise, you can feel pretty decent about it. Coach didn't work out, Brian Daboll didn't work out, and that's on his record as well. Now, did Brian Daboll have something to do with that? Sure, I think if Brian Daboll would have fired his defensive coordinator, he'd probably still be the coach here. But, as it turns out, they got a winning coach here, a championship coach now, and a roster that they're adding to, and the draft choices they've hit on. So, I think they are in decent shape. Again, you can point to a guy like Evan Neal and say, 'Well, he hasn't panned out.' Yeah, it happens. What did you replace him with is what normally fans want to look at, right? Evan sat the bench, he didn't play a game last year, and the offensive line was top 10. So, are we still complaining about him? You understand what I'm saying? Yeah, you want him to be a player, but it's not an exact science picking players. You can go to every single team, including the Philadelphia Eagles. They just cover their misses with really big hits. And this is where the Giants are trying to be. Let some of these big hits happen, and we won't worry about the guys that we had to let go, or the guys that we didn't extend to a fifth-year contract. It doesn't matter. Grades don't matter when your team is winning, right? But, when your team is losing, everything gets magnified.

Dexter didn't want to be a Giant anymore. And, you know, for me, Dexter is still one of my favorite... He's a great person, number one, but still one of my favorite Giants of all time. He didn't have a great year, but the Giants moved on, he moved on. I actually just did a pod earlier with Solomon Wilcots about because he runs the Believe Bengals podcast, and we were able to catch up. But it's one of these deals where they wanted him to be a part of what they were doing. Dexter was, for I can't put words in his mouth, but probably fatigued with the situation of always losing, and so he got a fresh start, and you didn't let a guy go that didn't want to go. They got a 10th pick for him, and they got a very bright future.

And so, you can't complain about that. Look, Dexter is not a dog in me in the bad sense. He's had more good years than he's had bad years. He's been great some years, all pro great. Right? And he's disruptive. And so, hopefully his situation in Cincinnati with B.J. Hill, they do some good things, but he's a Bengal now. I don't really care that much about it to watch and see if he fails or succeeds. But I wish him the best, and you focus on the guys they got. They got some good guys, they got free agents. They got a guy that I'm looking forward to seeing. He's got some developing to do, but as a rotational player, Bobby Jameson Travis is a guy when I looked at his film, I renamed him instead of BJT, it's BTJ, Bobby Traffic Jam. He caused a lot of pileups at Auburn. So, and I told him at the Giants Town Hall, I'm like, 'Your new name is BTJ, Bobby Traffic Jam.' And he started laughing. I'm like, 'Don't make me eat those words.'

Well, you grew up in a blue-collar town, very close-knit, population of just under 100,000 people at that time. We put probably per capita more pros in the NBA and NFL than any other city its size. And listen, we were no stranger to hard work. So, my value system was all about hard work, doing little things, and knowing that you got support. My parents were very supportive. I started playing football out of curiosity at about age nine and loved it and just kept going. And basketball was my first love. But Magic Johnson screwed it up because you had to be 6'9" and a point guard and I was 6'4" and a half, 6'5" and I was a power forward. But you know, we were just a really close-knit community. We all worked hard. I spent most of my high school and college years working in a cemetery in Flint, at Graceland Cemetery, digging graves in my off-season. So, you learn some values. You work alongside people that were given a second chance in life, parolees and ex-prisoners, and so they were very supportive and just kind of gave me a lot of guidance on the dos and don'ts of life. So, it was a very healthy formative years for me.

Yeah. So, Rosie Haywood was my first coach in elementary school. And he taught us a lot. I learned how to tackle when I was like 9 years old. We used to do these drills of just keeping our head up, and not lowering our head to tackle. It was always safety first, but he made the game fun. Everybody got a chance to play every position. And then when I got to high school, I think Moses Lacey was the most impactful human in terms of my sports life. He showed me what conditioning was all about, what discipline was all about, and the beautiful part about that, he was our basketball coach, he was our assistant football coach, he was our assistant track coach, and he was an assistant wrestling coach. So, we were never one sport. I would say most of the kids from Flint, Michigan were never one sport athletes. We were all just really great athletes, we ran track, we did all the other things and I think that also helped us in our versatility in sport that we chose to play and go to the next level.

Thank you, Joseph. Yeah, well, now you got to catch me on the podcast. No fan no more for me. That's right. But our Believe podcast, Bob and I do it during the season, we do twice a week. Recap Sunday and then later on in the week like Friday, we do more. So, you guys make sure you subscribe to that. It's a lot of informative stuff.

Like I said, Moses Lacey was as tough as they come. We learned a lot about winning, not accepting losing. I didn't play linebacker in high school. I didn't play tight end in high school. I played offensive tackle and defensive tackle. And so, how I became a linebacker in college was purely off of college coaches watching me play basketball and projecting whether or not I would be a linebacker or a tight end. And when I got to Michigan State, I was highly recruited. And Magic Johnson's the reason I went to Michigan State and that was the only reason because they were coming off of probation and a coaching change, but I went because Magic said it would be the best experience of my life and I would have a chance to really create a legacy. So, playing football at Beecher High School, just playing sports at Beecher High School, you learn some great values. Our value system was really high in terms of respecting the sport, respecting what it required to be good, to be a part of a team, right? Accountability was a big thing in high school for us. Parents did not get involved. They trusted our coach. And our coach had no problem coming to the house, telling the parent if your son was late for practice, didn't show up for practice, or not working hard. So, the interaction with our coach was great. And helicopter parents was like, 'Hey, you do what the coach says, or else I'm pulling you off the team.' And so, we didn't have to deal with a lot of things that some of these kids have to deal with now because the realities of whether or not you're good enough to be playing more or not, it's plain as day. You come in and you work and you earn your spot and if you're good enough to be a starter, you're going to play. If not, you're going to support and be ready to play when your number is called. And so, we state champions in track, basketball. I never won a state champion, but we were finalists twice. And so, it's good stuff. I was an all-state shot putter. So, we were good, but it was like I said, my formative years, I had some great people in my life to really help me. And then when I went to Michigan State, and we lost a lot and I hated losing. And that was just based on my upbringing. So I never accepted losing and then George Perles took over my junior year at Michigan State and he had just come from the Pittsburgh Steelers, so the standard was high of what his expectations were. I was ready to meet those standards, because of just the way I was raised in sport.

I don't think I ever had that moment. See, we have to kind of calibrate how we looked at exposure in the '80s versus where we are now. There was basically one publication called Streets and Smith. It came out twice a year, once in the summer and once at the end of the year. So, when you're playing and you know you're a pretty good player in the Big Ten. I was all Big Ten three years in a row, first non-kicker to do it in Michigan State history. But, you pick up a Streets and Smith in the summertime, you're not listed going into your junior year. And then you look at it at the end of the year, you're not even honorable mention and you see all these big name linebackers from the Pac-10, Big 12, and SEC, you don't know. And we were losing at Michigan State. And then my senior year, finished the year and I wasn't all-American, but I didn't get invited to any of the major bowl games, right? Senior Bowl, East-West Shrine, all of those games I wasn't invited to. And so, my coach George Perles told me... Oh, well, let me backtrack a little bit. Going into my senior year, that spring, George Perles brought Jack Ham into work with me to refine my skill set. That's probably when I felt like coach thinks I could be at a different level. And Jack Ham, I owe a lot of what I do from a fundamental standpoint to him teaching me how to play the position with great leverage. So, I finished that year and I still was not invited to any of that stuff. And so, George told me that he knows I'm a pro-level linebacker. And he says, but I want to get you some exposure. There's this bowl game that's coached by all NFL coaches. It was called the Blue-Gray Game in Birmingham, Alabama played on Christmas Day. And he said, 'You go to that game, I guarantee you by the time you get to this office on Monday morning, you will be invited to the combine, you will be invited to the Senior Bowl, and all these other places.' And so, I went there and all the pro coaches coached that game. And when I got back, sure enough, I had a combine invitation, both combines at the time. Senior Bowl, and the Hula Bowl. So, it was just a matter of exposure at a different level. And then, obviously, I felt like, 'Okay, I could be a pro.' And then, when I got to the combine, I got a chance to see all the guys that were listed in those magazines, and I was like, 'There's nothing special about some of these guys.' They were hyped because they had TV coverage and all the other stuff. At that time, the Pac-12 was big and wherever Arizona was at that time, Arizona and Florida and all of those guys, Auburn, Clemson, the power conferences. All those guys were big names, right? But they were on TV, but I'm looking and some of them were faster than me, some of them weren't as strong as I was, some of them were stronger than I was, but not as fast. And Dallas Cowboys had their own unique testing system at the combine, and Gil Brandt ran this... Do you guys know the game Simon? It's like a memory recall where it's like a disc and all these lights and you have to remember all the sequences. They had their version of it. And they took me through it and I aced it. And later on after I had become a pro, Gil said that no one had ever done that with the exception of me. And they wanted to draft me. But you know, I still knew I could be a pro. But if I told you I knew I was going to be the third overall pick in the '84 draft, I would be lying. But that's how it worked out and then when I got to the Giants, they had four all-pro linebackers and the question was where was I going to play and what was I going to do to get on the field and I was no stranger to hard work. So, special teams and all the other things I was going to be good at. And when my opportunity came to play, I was going to prove it. So, I end up starting by the second part of the year and I think my first start was against the Rams and I made a big play the first play of the game against Eric Dickerson. And the rest is what it is, you know?

No, it wasn't. It wasn't. Lawrence was indifferent. Harry was the guy who said to me point-blank, 'What the hell are you going to do to get on the field?' And then, it wasn't welcoming, but I get it. I had to earn it. And I could see why my first practice when the veterans were there in mini camp, Lawrence Taylor moved faster than I ever moved in a game. His practice speed was just incredible. So, I knew, in order to merge on the autobahn, I was going to have to get going. So, I did it. But I don't think anybody was overtly rude to me, but they weren't exactly welcoming until they knew what I could do.

Bill was interesting. You see all of these draft phone calls on TV on draft day, and everybody is like really super excited, and the general manager and the head coach are talking, and they're yucking it up with you. My phone call with Bill Parcells on draft day was all of 10 seconds. He says, 'Congratulations. I didn't draft you to sit you on the bench. Somebody will be in touch with you.' But the thing is, Bill was tough, but it was a crossroads season for him. So, my draft class was the beginning of, or the makings of our championship runs and all of our success because he was going to get fired. He told us in training camp that he was going to be cutting some players that he didn't think we can move forward with and some of those guys were going to be popular. And he wanted us to know that he was going to give us everything he got and the only thing he wanted was us to give him everything we have and that was kind of the whole Parcells thing. And we end up going to the playoffs, a wild card against San Francisco. We lost that. The next year we're in the NFC Championship game in '85 against the Bears. Following year we're in the Super Bowl. So, Bill was tough. He was fair but he was tough. He coached like he wanted to be a great coach in this league and had a staff that all did the same thing. They were very demanding. They were fair. They were non-compromising on things that were important to winning. And it kind of shaped the way Giants football is supposed to be viewed and played to this day.

Yeah, he's... you know, if you strike up a conversation with him and this is the hack in terms of striking up conversation with Parcells, talk about any other sport than football and then work your way back to football. He's a big basketball fan. Loves talking about his horses obviously, but he's a big basketball and baseball fan. So if you start talking baseball or basketball with him, he may not shut up.

I think he didn't... Well, let me just put it a different way. Bill valued smart players. So we all had to know every position on defense. We had to know what every guy did on every single play. We were tested on it, right? So we were as mentally tough as we were physical. Situational football we were the best at it. I had a conversation and I saw some highlights and I didn't realize how good of a goal line team we were. But it kind of stands to reason why we were because we practiced it just like we practiced our regular infield defense. Like every adjustment and everything that could happen we drilled it. And Bill was a guy who was attention to detail, but he was also inquisitive. So during the course of the game you see most of these highlights, he's always got the whiteboard because he is the guy who wants to know what happened and how it happened. And the way his defenses are set up he can fix it if he knows what went wrong. If one guy had a problem, he could ask two other questions, and he could say what adjustment would be. But, if a guy was having a problem and he lied about it, he could ask two other guys, and he could look at the guy and say, 'You're lying, but we can help you if you just tell us what happened to you.' And so, that was part of our accountability to each other on our defense, also. And he was very creative. Obviously, you've seen some of our game plans, and so we could get after it, but he had smart players who he could do those things with. And obviously, our linebacking crew were super athletic. All former basketball players. That's probably why we were so good. Even our backups. Like, guy like Andy Hedden was a hell of a basketball player, and Byron Hunt. But, yeah. I mean, we were able to do so much.

Probably Andy Hedden. Yeah. Probably Andy Hedden. He was a hell of a basketball player. Hell of a basketball player.

I don't know if there was a counterbalance to Lawrence. He's just so great, he could just make plays, but for me, it was more of being great at what my responsibilities were, whatever those were. Right? I wasn't the guy who would opine for pass rush opportunities. I enjoyed playing coverage as much as I did rushing the passer. I enjoyed playing the run, dominating at that level as much as I did rushing the passer. So, I wanted to be great at my core competency, right? And so if it made Lawrence better at what he did, great, because I know everything he did made all of us better at what we did. And so...

I just think that we all had great opportunities to do things, right? And like I said, we were all required to know everybody's position, including interior line. You know, I mean, there were many times where you'd see Pepper lined up over the center, and he basically had to play nose guard, but he was standing up, but he also knew all the blocking schemes. He knew the running back formations. He knew what to anticipate from certain formations, so he could line up there and be very effective. Same with me. We had to do it. Like if you had to go out in a prevent defense situation and play cornerback because Bill wanted a longer, rangier guy out there, you go line up on a wide receiver, you jam, and you drop, and you play cornerback. That's what we did.

Wow. I don't think anybody got in our head. If anybody got in our head, it was Randall Cunningham. But it wasn't psyching us out. He was just the ultimate challenge. Because you just couldn't game plan for him. It was whatever you were going to get on a play-to-play basis. The toughest guy I ever played against outside of Mark Bavaro in practice was probably Donnie Warren with the Washington Redskins.

Apparently it was, but you know, for Mark and I, it was child abuse. But they'd start a drill and they put me and Mark in there and we end up running the whole drill the whole period. Like it's like, okay, you know, put two guys in there and then, all right, Bavaro-Banks. And then it's just, you know, Mark and I would never prescript anything and we just wanted to make each other better and then after the drill was over with, we have a conversation about what he could have done better or what I could have done better. But like it literally, we would be two reps into our one-on-one drill or nine-on-seven drill. And Parcells would be like, okay, Banks, Bavaro. And then, you know, they'd both the tight end coach Mike Pope and Al Groh, my linebacker coach and Belichick, they're there coaching and they're like, run it again, run it again. And it's just, it was stuff of legend for the people who were watching because the practice, you know, just stopped and they just watched us go. Mark and I talk about it all the time, but it, you know, it made us all better.

Yeah, yeah, it's actually when we are broadcasting, there's these two people that sit right next to each other for years and they had a Banks-Bavaro jersey on. I used to always take a picture of it every week and send it to Mark via text message.

Yeah, let me just say better, let me phrase it differently. It made us the best at our positions. You know, we were the best in the league at our positions. We made each other that.

Just wanting to be great. That's all. Wanting to be absolutely dominant. You know, and if you can take anything from being a teammate of Lawrence Taylor, you want to be dominant. You want to dominate, right? And if he could do it, I could do it, Leonard could do it, then it just becomes contagious. And, you know, not just being dominant, but being the best at it. And that was my thing, right? I might be the other guy, but you're going to have a problem with me and I'm going to be, you know, impossible to block. And that's how it ended up.