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Redskins.com: Gibbs' Formula Starts With Hard Work


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This better not be a repeat thread like last time.

BTW, real coaching is back in D.C.!!!!

Gibbs' Formula Starts With Hard Work

01/19/2004

Inside the Redskins

By Gary Fitzgerald

Redskins.com

The long hours, the marathon film study sessions, studying the NFL’s complicated rules and regulations, jetting to undisclosed locales to recruit potential assistant coaches...Yep, Joe Gibbs is back. It’s not even been two weeks since Gibbs was hired as the Redskins’ head coach, and already the culture at Redskin Park feels different.

Got a problem? It’s nothing that a little hard work can’t solve.

Last Thursday evening, just before he and his coaching staff went out as a group to dinner, Gibbs stopped to offer a few comments to reporters. He complimented them for their persistence, and then joked: “I’ll lose you guys when the regular season starts because I’ll be leaving at two in the morning!”

It’d be overly dramatic to say that Gibbs’ inner flame has been rekindled. The simple truth is this: Gibbs just doesn’t know any other way. Hard work has been a cornerstone of Gibbs success throughout life, whether it’s on the football field or on the NASCAR race track.

“Obviously, if you’re going to do this, the long hours are something you have to really think long and hard about—because there’s only one way of doing it,” Gibbs said last week. “It’s a hard job from the standpoint of time and demand.

“But that’s the exciting part of it, too. You’re going up against some of the best coaches in the world and you’re trying to do something extremely hard. There’s only one way of doing it, and that’s with a lot of hard work. We’re gearing up for that—and it’s the only way I know how to do it.”

Given the long hours, one would think Gibbs is energized by hard work.

“I don’t know about that,” he replied, smiling. “It depends on how hard the work is. I figured out that when I was growing up, my brother had a job where he never got dirty. He was always working at Disneyland or a lawyer’s office. All of my jobs were loading boxcars or digging ditches. I’m one of those guys who just winds up working hard.”

When Gibbs departed the Redskins following the 1992 season, after winning three Super Bowl championships in 12 years, some believed it was due to burnout. Gibbs maintained it was more so the desire to spend time with his wife Pat and sons J.D. and Coy. Both J.D. and Coy had grown up fast and Gibbs wanted to spend more time with his family.

For four years, Gibbs watched Coy star as a middle linebacker at Stanford and oversaw the growth of Joe Gibbs Racing in NASCAR. J.D. and Coy were part of what became essentially a family business.

Now both J.D. and Coy are adults and Pat has given the go-ahead for her husband to start chasing a dream again. J.D. will oversee the day-to-day operations of Joe Gibbs Racing, while Coy, who became a successful NASCAR driver, is expected to serve on his father’s staff in an offensive assistant/quality control role.

After 11 years apart from the NFL, Gibbs returned knowing full well the time and energy it would take to build the Redskins into a playoff team. Eveb so, Gibbs has promised Pat to come home at some point every evening, no matter what time it is.

But, as he has emphasized, there’s no getting around it: “In football, you have to bust it.”

“For coaching, for me, it was always a process of diving into it,” he said. “I’ve always enjoyed that part of it. It stimulates me. Everything is a learning curve right now, but I’ve generally found when you dive into it, that’s the best way to learn things.”

If you believe that football teams eventually take on the personality of their head coach, then it seems likely that, in terms of preparation and performance, next year the Redskins will be among the hardest working teams in the NFL.

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