Everyone knows how Bill Parcells used a plane ticket to fire up Lawrence Taylor. However, with him, there’s always a possibility that the ticket home might be the only reality one has to face. Ross Tucker learned that the hard way. An undrafted Princeton lineman who had already beaten the odds once just by making an NFL roster, Tucker arrived in Dallas having claimed Larry Allen’s starting left guard spot for the final seven games of the season after Allen went down with an injury. Tucker was trying to cement his place. What he did instead was hand Parcells a roster decision.

“I’m the biggest idiot in the world,” former Cowboys guard Ross Tucker said on the Ross Tucker Football podcast.

It started with a golf lesson. During the offseason, Tucker was working with an Australian instructor who had one thing on his mind: pausing at the top of the backswing. “Pause, hold, pause.” Tucker drilled it. And the next morning, he showed up to the team’s weightlifting session and went to hang clean 135 pounds, which is the lightest lift you’d see in any NFL weight room.

But the moment he pulled the bar, his upper back gave way. He got through the rest of the session, walked into the trainer’s room, and made the mistake of telling them the whole story.

“I like telling them the whole story. So they’re like, okay. They don’t make a big deal out of it, but they’re like, ‘Okay, you know, whatever.’ I am now face down in the Cowboys’ training room. All of a sudden, I hear our new head coach, Bill Parcells, walking into the training room.

I hear him say, ‘Who’s that?’ They said, Tucker. Parcells says, ‘What happened to him?’ The trainer says he hurt his back golfing. So now I’m the Princeton guy, which Parcells already didn’t like, who hurt his back golfing. I got cut right after minicamp, like three weeks later.”

Then there’s the contrast with how Parcells handled Lawrence Taylor. Per a story recounted by Chris Collinsworth on NFL Network, LT once showed up late to a Monday Night Football game and explained himself to Parcells by saying, “Coach, the foursome in front of me was playing so slow.” Parcells let it go. The difference? Taylor was Lawrence Taylor. On the other hand, Tucker was a fringe roster player with an Ivy League degree and a golf injury. Two things Parcells couldn’t overlook at the same time.

Tucker was released on June 5, 2003, after minicamp. The Buffalo Bills claimed him off waivers on June 16, and he went on to appear in 12 games with five starts at right guard, earning a spot on the USA Today All-Joe team in 2003. He started nine games in 2004 before offseason back surgery, the same troublesome back, limited him through minicamps and led to his release on September 3, 2005. He played for five more NFL teams after Buffalo before retiring following a neck injury in 2007.