TSN/FOX-Training camp preview: Driven to win

[Kosher Ham]

http://msn.foxsports.com/id/2572662

You can't be subtle, not when you must shatter the culture of a franchise that has become pals with losing and alibis. Instead, you take a goal post and pound away. You begin by telling the players how to behave -- they better start being polite and respectful -- and you give them a few golden rules -- tardiness won't be tolerated, for one -- and you take down hokey motivational slogans that don't work and you have the practice facility repainted and you let it be known attendance at offseason conditioning is best for job security. And then you run serious practices where excellence, nothing less, is expected.

You tell them something else. You tell them you know this first year will be difficult, that it will take time for everyone to understand each other. Then you hammer them. Remember what I just said about the first year being difficult? That doesn't work for us. We must be good immediately. We'll be the most watched and scrutinized story in the NFL this season. That's the reality because you are not an ordinary new coach and the job you have taken over is not in some average NFL town. You're Joe Gibbs, back with the Redskins, willing to risk tarnishing your Hall of Fame bust in order to rescue this staggering franchise and restore its glory. And you just hope your players hear your message of urgency.

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He tells you this story and you remember what it was like 12 years ago, when he unexpectedly bolted, his face puffed and pale, his eyes weary, his body sagging from diabetes not yet detected, the drain of thousands of meetings and hundreds of game plans and immeasurable stress leaving a road map of toil all over his being. And now you look at him and he is so vigorous and energetic, his brownish-blond hair still full, his handsome face glowing, his eyes twinkling with anticipation, and you wonder if the next few years really are worth the toll they certainly will take on him.

You know he will win again. Always has, whether it was as a national age-group racquetball champ or those three titles in four Super Bowls or those two NASCAR cups. He'll win despite the free-agent market and the salary cap and a division full of coaching sharks and a league filled with a parity that didn't exist in 1992. He'll win because he knows how to organize and inspire and play to his team's strengths and hide its weaknesses and compile brilliant game plans and paint da Vincis on Sundays. Age doesn't diminish these gifts; he showed that in NASCAR, applying the same principles -- treat folks right, don't tolerate mediocrity, hire the best and leave them alone -- and passing everyone in a hurry.

Notice that Dan Snyder is not in the picture. That's because Joe Gibbs is running the show in Washington. (SportingNews)

But there seems so little to prove, so much to risk by coming back. So you ask why. He has reasons, lots of them. He had turned most of the racing team duties over to J.D., his older son. Coy, his younger son, had been driving but wanted to coach, and his dad felt it would be grand to be with him and guide him as he did with J.D. in NASCAR. He loved his life in Charlotte, close to his five grandbabies, but Coy would take two of them with him now and this was a way for the grandparents to remain close by, to have Coy on his coaching staff. Pat, his wife, had adamantly opposed any coaching renewals, but she sensed it was time for him to return and gave her approval. "I kept praying, and the Lord kept opening doors," Gibbs says. Then, when he was in the midst of talks with the Falcons, Steve Spurrier quit the Redskins, and suddenly, the only job he ever wanted came available, and it was as if the Lord was saying, Joe, get the message here?

Still, why? Why, at 63, introduce this kind of unrelenting stress and ruin a perfect sunset?

J.D. knows. His dad was bored. As a NASCAR owner, he really was a general manager, not a coach, and for the past six years or so had turned to golf to fill his unceasing competitive desire. He had pounded balls on the practice range, lowering his handicap to 7, obsessing over the game's nuances. But his play leveled off, and he told J.D., "What am I doing out here? It's not fun." Now, he needed something else to fill the void. Joe Bugel, architect of the Hogs, sensed that too when Gibbs got in touch last fall. Bugel had just finished a consultant's role with the Redskins, studying Spurrier's awful offensive line, when Gibbs called. "Buges, what did you see about the league?" he asked. Bugel had been out of the NFL for two years and enjoyed retirement, but just in case, he began exercising, lost 30 pounds, started watching films from their golden days. If Joe came back, Bugel wanted to be fit and sharp.

Then came the January call, to all these old staffers in retirement -- to Bugel, 64; to Don Breaux, 63, the offensive coordinator; to Rennie Simmons, 62, the tight ends coach; to Jack Burns, 55, the quarterbacks coach, and to Ernie Zampese, 68, the offensive consultant -- and they all said yes before Gibbs hardly could ask. Since 1992, they had knees replaced and fought through cancer and dealt with diabetes -- "We see who can out-Motrin each other every day," says Bugel, laughing -- but when Gibbs beckoned, it was like one of those movies where the general needs help, and scene by scene, you see the old-timers saying goodbye to their families and heading out the door, no questions asked. The NFL never has witnessed anything like it, all these aging guys reassembling, trying to re-create coaching paradise.

"This is all about the unfulfilled drive in Joe that will last forever," says Joe Theismann, Gibbs' first Redskins quarterback. "And what a challenge: to save the Redskins. Just knowing how hard that is and how great it would be to pull it off, that's reason enough to come back."

J.D. understands. "My dad," he says, "never takes on anything easy."

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It is late June and the offseason work has ended and the coaching staff is playing golf, offense versus defense, no mercy, bragging rights at stake. In the five months since they came to Washington, Bugel has not been home once to Arizona, and Gregg Williams -- the assistant head coach/defense and one of the young guys on the staff at 46 -- has seen his family three times. Gibbs has been living mostly by himself in a hotel near Redskin Park; he only broke away to see six NASCAR races.

They are pleased. It has taken the offensive coaches weeks to unravel the maze of defenses they will encounter -- "Defenses have all these blitz packages now," says Gibbs -- to break down the NFL's best running and passing games and to begin to understand and take advantage of their own personnel. But they're comfortable enough to have already started game-planning for their first September opponents. Williams, the former Bills head coach, has pushed his defense hard; a vocal force on the practice field, he is pulling his players out of their passive shells of last season and forming them into an aggressive, attacking bunch. Now, everyone needs a rest.

"It's already like when we left," says Breaux. "Might have taken a few days to get settled, but then it was as if we had never been away. Can't lie to you. It's been great."

Great is working grinding hours even in February. Great is Williams putting in 20 hours on Easter. Great is what happened after the first practice of the first minicamp when the defense embarrassed the offense and Gibbs couldn't abide a repeat the next day, so he and his staff put in a near all-nighter. It's great because they are coaches, no matter the age, no matter if it's harder now to stay awake late into the night, no matter if most of them are trading tales of their grandchildren, not their kids. To be together again, telling war stories, laughing, watching tape, it's all so crazy. And so much fun.

Gibbs is rightfully scared, knowing he has such little room for success and so much space for error. "I already know what is going to be said if we lose. 'These suckers are too old, they can't adjust, they've lost contact with their players,' " he says one night at dinner. "It's like this guy who drinks. As long as he does well, he's an OK guy. But if he stumbles, he is a drunk."

This won't be easy. He inherited a dispirited, disjointed, leaderless team whose owner was desperate for a miracle, having failed with Norv Turner, Marty Schottenheimer and Spurrier, the biggest bust of all. The Redskins have been in the playoffs just once since Gibbs left and have scratched out one winning season since 1997. Daniel Snyder has spent money boldly, recklessly, grasping at instant fixes, most of them flops. What was left of his credibility disintegrated amid the embarrassment of last year, when Spurrier refused to adjust to the realities of the NFL and quit rather than remake his staff as Snyder demanded.

The Redskins under Daniel Snyder have been a coaching carousel, from Steve Spurrier (left) to Marty Schottenheimer (right) to Norv Turner (not pictured). (GettyImages)

It was a joke, all of it. But no one is laughing at the Redskins or Snyder anymore. By a stroke of luck and timing, he did the only thing possible to become a hero. He hired Gibbs. Spend time in Washington now, and you'd think the team was atop the league. His return has electrified the area. It is like putting on a comfortable pair of shoes again. There's the glowing presence, the reassuring voice, the informality that draws in people, the self-deprecating humor that deflects adulation. This is an honorable, God-fearing, classy man who represents all that is good about the franchise. He is royalty, and that embarrasses him. "I am looking at this like I haven't done anything, and I have to prove myself again," he says. But he is a victim of his own outrageous resume.

"He is the best in the history of the game and that is hard to live up to," says Texans general manager Charley Casserly, who was the Redskins' G.M. when Gibbs retired. "When you are around him, you appreciate his ability to organize and motivate, to adapt to his talent, to make his approach simple for his players but complex for opponents. Just like Bill Parcells, his presence is worth five or six more wins. That puts them in playoff contention."

Based on the past 11 years, reacquainting the Redskins with the playoffs should be reward enough. But not with Gibbs. It's unfair, but the only measuring stick that can be applied to him is a fourth Lombardi Trophy. And that's exactly what he wants to embrace before he returns full-time to the rest of his life, which he says won't happen until he fulfills the five years on his contract.

"I wasn't ready to go off and retire, and now this is like trying to climb a mountain, and I was looking for that," he says. "I know there are people who think this can't be done. And I'm thinking, 'What if they are right?' "

And he gives off one of those high-pitched, cackling laughs of his that tells you this is a blast, trying to inch up that slope.

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At times, Joe Gibbs wonders if his players look at him and think, "Is this guy 100 years old?" But he needn't worry. "We've all been drawn in by his halo effect," says cornerback Shawn Springs, a free-agent pickup from the Seahawks who turned down more lucrative alternatives to play for Gibbs. "He has a gift to get you to want to play for him. We'll be good because a lot of guys will run through a wall for him already."

That certainly wasn't the case with Spurrier. "The last two years were the toughest professionally I have been through," says right tackle Jon Jansen. "It was just throw the ball around, and let's see what happens. There was never any decisiveness or leadership, and in this profession the key is to get both of those from the head coach position. We just want a taste of the good life that old teams here enjoyed."

Gibbs inherited a 5-11 underachiever not bare of talent, just poorly coached. His old rival, Parcells, took over a similar roster situation in Dallas and has been slowly upgrading the Cowboys. But Gibbs has proved much more impatient. He felt uneasy having young Patrick Ramsey as his only potentially reliable quarterback. So he signed former Jaguar Mark Brunell, 33, who played in only three games last season, hoping injuries have not deprived him of his winning edge. Brunell goes into training camp ahead of Ramsey and should start. And because Gibbs must have a running back -- all things offense start with rushing and protection -- he obtained Clinton Portis from the Broncos for disgruntled cornerback Champ Bailey and a second-round draft pick (running back Tatum Bell), a hefty price. The defense also will be improved, in part because of safety Sean Taylor, the fifth overall pick in the draft, but mostly because of the schemes and coaching of Williams and his assistants.

About a third of the roster was turned over, and Gibbs was in the middle of it all, courting free agents, orchestrating the draft, growing to like all things Snyder, becoming the owner's biggest fan. During the first three days of the free-agent period in March, everyone worked until 6:30 a.m., then returned two hours later; the Redskins wound up acquiring eight players in four days. It's what can happen, Gibbs says, when there is no general manager between him and the owner.

This new NFL? He gushes over it.

"I love free agency," he says. "It's like college recruiting; only it's legal to pay the players." He also isn't buying into the conventional opinion that salary-cap restrictions would bother him immensely. "I think concern about the cap is overblown," he says. "We are going to keep this team together. If we get a Redskin, we are going to keep him. We've got a plan."

Snyder certainly has been generous with his money. Gibbs is getting $28.5 million in his five-year deal, and Snyder spent $6 million to make his staff the highest paid in the league. The new players cost another $60 million in bonuses. Snyder always has been a lavish spender; the key now is whether Gibbs uses the money for the right players. Never forget that Gibbs consistently stood up to his last owner, the ornery Jack Kent Cooke. "Don't ever misunderstand how tough Joe Gibbs is," says Williams, who will run the defense without interference from his boss.

Gibbs promises to exercise more than he did previously and watch his diet more closely and keep intelligent hours. But he already has installed a shower and hideaway bed in his office. Those legendary, marathon, game-planning sessions are the only way he and the staff know how to function, and with a division filled with Parcells, Andy Reid and Tom Coughlin, Gibbs is more nervous and driven than ever.

"I hear people say that Vince Lombardi couldn't coach the modern-day player, and I laugh," says Reid, whose Eagles have won the past three NFC East titles. "He would figure it out. Same with Joe. They will do what they have to do to win." Eagles owner Jeff Lurie tells Reid he has created a monster. "They're bringing guys out of the grave after you," Lurie jokes.

It's insightful and intriguing to watch how all of this is affecting Gibbs. He won't talk about changes he has made to his old offens; he is closing more practices, and he won't even allow the cleaning crew into meeting rooms during coaching discussions. He wants to remain mysterious, unscouted. Anything to grab the slightest edge.

He's back, all right. And don't expect him to be bored with life again any time soon.

[TXREDSKINS44]

Good article thanks for the post!!!

[redskin56]

I've got goosebumps after reading that.

[Destino]

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!