MINNEAPOLIS — If he didn’t invent the term, he certainly popularized it. Back in the day, Bill Parcells liked to boil his feelings about players down to acronyms. The first time he saw Lawrence Taylor in practice, back in 1981, he turned to another coach and marveled, “That guy is AFP — all football player.”
On the field that day were a batch of rookies and castoffs who were there just to fill out the practice roster. Parcells had an acronym for them, too: “SAF — Slow And Friendly.”
But the player that would get in Parcells’ head quickest — and the term for such players that would be his to pass along to a thousand football coaches who came after him, was of a melancholy bent: JAG.