SkinsNumberOne Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?id=1895494 Tuesday, October 5, 2004 By Tom Friend ESPN The Magazine Any Redskin fan who hasn't shouted #$%$#@ at Joe Gibbs is lying. I've done it. I've done it every game this year, and even though I feel guilty as hell, I'm here to tell every Redskin fan that it's okay. It's okay to be mad at God. We thought we'd give him a grace period. Maybe 10 weeks. Maybe a year. But then the season starts against Tampa Bay, and it takes us one half to start scratching our heads. He doesn't challenge a bad spot by the referees inside the five-yard line, and it costs us points. He goes on to coach a conservative game that we barely win. We bite our tongues. We say, oh well, he's just rusty. The next week, in New York, we have to sit there and watch seven turnovers. The running back he loves, Clinton Portis, keeps coughing it up, and the quarterback he buried, Patrick Ramsey, comes off the bench throwing lollipops to the other team. When Ramsey does throw it to the right place, Rod Gardner drops a sure touchdown. We're numb. We see our quarterbacks get sacked five times. We want to say, "Spurrier could've done this." But we say nothing. We look at the bright side and figure lessons will be learned. We figure Gibbs will have Portis carrying the football around in meetings. We figure Joe Bugel will sic Joe Jacoby on the offensive line. And then Dallas comes to town on a Monday night, and the instant replay problem rears its head again. Gibbs challenges a second-half touchdown pass to Terry Glenn that, on the initial TV replay, is not an obvious overturn. The first rule of replay is don't throw the red flag unless it's clear-cut, don't throw darts. But Joe admits later that he was thinking with his heart, and it cost him a timeout he needed later ... like when the clock was ticking 3-2-1, and he couldn't stop it for the game-tying field goal. But we didn't panic, not entirely. The experts kept saying Gibbs got out-coached by Bill Parcells, but we knew all he really did was get out-ref'd. The zebras gave the Cowboys a free touchdown on a bad pass interference call and took away a Redskins touchdown on a bad non-pass interference call. That's a 14 point-swing. And we only lost by three. And, hell, they should've flagged Roy Williams for helmet-to-helmet contact on the last play of the game, which would've enabled the game-tying field goal. So we bit our tongue again. It was all fixable. Yes, quarterback, Mark Brunell had to burn two time outs against Dallas because of mix ups at the line, but we heard Gibbs say he was going to simplify the offense to avoid that. Great. An adjustment. That's what he was famous for in the 1980s. So we're 1-2 heading into Cleveland, and what happens? All of the above. Portis fumbles. Gibbs throws another dart on replay -- and misses. Costs him a timeout. Then he burns another timeout when the team can't line up right. When he needs to challenge Laveranues Coles' game-losing fumble at the end of the game (an obvious incompletion), he can't. Because he's out of time outs. We're screaming in our living rooms. When Gibbs was hired, the one thing we all said was, "Well, at least we won't beat ourselves anymore." And now we've beaten ourselves three out of four. In Cleveland, there were false start penalties. Personal foul penalties. Blown coverages. Long punt returns against us. Complaints about the audio connection to the quarterback. It's blasphemous, but we have no choice but to say it now: Joe Gibbs is actually making Spurrier a sympathetic figure. But, most embarrassing of all, we have to sit here today and hear the Browns call Gibbs' offense predictable. Portis actually left the field thinking the Browns had a copy of the Redskins playbook, but, the truth is, the Browns just felt the Gibbs offense was vanilla. "Their offense is not that complicated," cornerback Daylon McCutcheon told the Washington Times. "They have certain tendencies. Let's say it's third down. They line up in this formation, and they only run two different routes. It makes our job a whole lot easier." There's truth to that. Even in the glory days, the Redskins offense only ran two-to-four basic plays. It's just that they'd shift and move before the snap, and the defense didn't know how to read it. But with the shorter play clock, and perhaps with his inability to get the play in quickly enough, Gibbs can't have his Redskins shifting the way they used to. There isn't time. Teams are simply loading eight men in the box, daring Brunell to throw, and there hasn't been enough ingenuity to make them pay. And so here we are again, circa 1981. He started 0-5 that year, his first year as a head coach, and, with the Ravens coming to town next Sunday night, he could be 1-4 this time around. Obviously, if he can coach his way out of 0-5, he can coach his way out of 1-4, but there have to be changes. In '81, he scrapped his four wide-out offense, used three tight ends instead and plowed John Riggins up the middle. A year later, they won the Super Bowl. Back then, he treated his players like men, and that's what won them over. He never called them out in the press, always did it behind closed doors. He could be just as tough as Parcells; it's just that he kept it in-house. And trust me, the old Redskins feared him. Former Redskin tight end Donnie Warren said in a post-game show Sunday that Gibbs would call players in after they fumbled and say, "This better stop or you'll be flipping burgers next week." He wasn't kidding. Gibbs got rid of Timmy Smith, his 1988 Super Bowl hero, because of fumbles. He got rid of Smith's successor, Jamie Morris, because of fumbles. But he obviously can't get rid of Clinton Portis. Or any other star player. Not with the cap hit. So how will he handle it? Knowing him the way I do (I spent three seasons covering him), he will always treat the players like men. But he also needs to instill fear, and I'm not sure he's gone there yet. It works for Parcells and it works for Bill Belichick, and it will work for Gibbs. Especially for Gibbs, because the players will know it's not some Parcells psychological act. Gibbs will not call anybody "she." He will simply start calling players in one by one, look them in the eye and challenge them. And if they don't improve, he will bench them. Then he will figure out instant replay, and then he will figure out the reduced play clock, and then he will figure out how to fool the defense. Even if it takes all night. We think. @#$^%$$ Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. 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Drkstar Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 I always thought Tom Friend gave it to me straight. I still feel this way after reading the article linked below. Good for Friend to step up and say what we all should be feeling as well as showing the courage to believe in Gibbs. Lets face it boys, Gibbs has been a trainwreck through the first 1/4 of the season. They dont give out grades until after week 17 but Gibbs is a strong "F" right now. He would say the same about himself I believe. And anyone who thinks there is nothing to be concerned about and expected exactly what we see from the team and coaching staff is completely egomaniacal. No way could any of us expected to see such poor clock management and such predictability on offense. If they say they did... link a thread from August and show the extremeskins world you’re all knowing knowledge. If thats not possible, shut up about what you think you knew all along and watch it play out. Gibbs is a winner. A Hall of Famer. But he has been a failure 25% of the way to the end of his first season back. And the only one I remember coming close to predicting that is Fatbelly himself... Lenny P. I think I might have to get sick again from that thought... Jon http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?id=1895494 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ECU-ALUM Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Good article...highly recomend it to one and all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afparent Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 damn good article and very true Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funkyalligator Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Very excellent article...I agree with him.....You hope for the best but expect the worst because it is so early in his tenure..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FBChick Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 I do think the article is spot on and very good at that, even with the critizism, which was very well done I might add. But I'll be the first to say that this statement Originally posted by Drkstar anyone who thinks there is nothing to be concerned about and expected exactly what we see from the team and coaching staff is completely egomaniacal. No way could any of us expected to see such poor clock management and such predictability on offense. Is way off the mark. While I have no post to link to from August, as I wasn't really posting in August, I will say what posts of mine I have posted since the season started keep saying that this is not so surprising and the rough spots needed to be ironed out. I think there are several others here that have continued to say the same thing. The egomaniacal ones here are the ones ready to dumped everything and start all over again, when that has been the skins problem all along. While citing exactly clock management and predicability as our short comings is not something I'll everv claim to have done, knowing that things would be rough starting out is exactly what I thought. Poor clock management, is partly due to the plays not coming in fast enough, the right plays getting called in to use the clock effectivly, players not getting set fast enough, the QB not making the adjustments soon enough, the players not understanding the adjustments, to finally the players not executing things correctly. Can we as fans really tell exactly which part is breaking down right now? As far as the replay, we questioned him when he didn't use it, now we question him when he does. It's something new to him, something he never dealt with before, so why are we so surprised that he is struggling with it? And can we at least say in part that maybe if the players would get set properly so a TO doesn't have to get burned for something like that, then maybe Gibbs would be able to take a gamble on a challenge once in awhile. Be able to learn how to effectively use it. Predictability, When an offense isn't firing on all cylinders yet, there are things that happen down there that gives the play away. Little things like the way the o line leans or looks prior to the snap. Certain sets that tend to show the direction the play is going. The more simplified the offense is, the more this becomes the case, but to have a more complex offense then you fall back into the play clock issue. But the reason many of us keep saying to be patient and not to panic yet, is because, just as the article itself states, Gibbs will adjust. He learn how to better handle the instant replay. Does that mean there won't be times he throws the flag when he shouldn't? Of course he will, but he'll do it less often. The play clock deal will improve with practice. As both the coaches and offense become more familiar and comfortable with the playbook, plays will come in faster and players will get set faster. Because, not only is the playbook new to the players, it is essentially new to the coaches as well. After twelve years, I doubt Gibbs still has his playbook memorized, and I'm betting he's had to make a lot of adjustments to it, which means even he is still thinking too much on the plays. What those of us who aren't panicking are thinking now is, that under Spurrier, nothing changed, nothing adjusted. Things stayed the same and went rapidly down hill. Gibbs changes and adjusts.. not always for the better, but he's willing to try for change and to be honest, the browns game was proof of that. You could tell he simplified the offense, unfortunately, it made it predictable. It'll be intresting to see what comes next. the egomaniac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dead Money Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Good post "egomaniac" The exact problem with Spurrier was that he refused to budge from "his way". His final straw was allegedly because the FO wanted him to replace key figures on his coaching staff. And he wouldn't budge. Gibbs I think would trade portis if he kept fumbling at this rate.. I think he would start from scratch if he thought it would help... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The extremist Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 my thoughts turned into his words...'nuff said Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drkstar Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 its funny how my take on some members of this board saying they were expecting the results this team is delivering presently completely blinds you to the fact that I am in fact not panicking. I have complete faith in Joe Gibbs the man and Joe Gibbs the football coach. But remember something... when giving an assessment of where things are presently, try and be candid and accurate. Is this team in disarray at this point in the season or is it not? I can speak my mind about what I see on Sunday's and what I have seen so far is frankly embarrassing.. Both the execution of the football team and the delivery of the gameplan and game management from the coaching staff have been as close to a failure thus far save the game against Tampa who is apparently in worse shape then our organization. Now, to your point of defending yourself against an opinion I have of extreme members saying they saw this coming and expected things to be this rough around the edges; I still stand by my statement that you are egomaniacal to think that way. There is no way in your heart of hearts you would have told me Butch Davis, Terry Robiskie and Dave Campo would out-coach our staff of aces in August. I am just not buying that logic for one second. I am not panicking but its safe to say that professional football is a results oriented business and after 10+ years of this unprofessional BS we put out on the field Sundays... well, please allow me to lose my patience. Jon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henry Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Drkstar, you've only been here since May, and only posting since August. Please don't tell people what they did and didn't say. http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45892&perpage=15&display=&pagenumber=1 From Art: I think a lot of you will be surprised that he'll struggle some. A LOT of the fundamentals of his old offenses won't work in this era of the game. Gibbs is great at adjusting and fitting his offenses to his personnel, so he'll find a way. But it'll take some time to get back into things. We'll lose some games because of that. I think Gibbs would make us better, but this isn't a situation like you have with Parcells who has been coaching on and off for the last decade. Slingin Sammy: Honestly I'm going with 8-8 in his first season. Bubba: Expectations maybe set too high airskins91: 7-9 to 9-7 Ancalgon the Black: I'd say he'll have a rough start before ramping up to payoff land. Rdskns2000 I think he'll have some rust and it will take him year to see what's going to work or not. The best case, he could do what Parcells did this year with the Cowboys. Worst case would be 8-8 IAMBG: He'll have to have a year to guage the new speed of the NFL, defenses and to get the team in a semblence of order.I wouldn't be shocked at an 8-8 season to start with. PiLfan: i'll caution towards the side of transition...and this is a transition year after all. some inevitable bumps in the road until the team really finds itself. me: I think 8-8 this year, and give the man half a season to get his legs back.Next season is another matter. Whiskeypeet: I voted for 7-9....although I could be persuaded to go 8-8. ciresolstice: I hope for better..but I went with 8-8... REDALERT: I have to look at reality. Reality in the affect that Art stated. Joe's been out awhile, a good while. And the excitement we all have including Joe himself will take some time getting used to. The speed, diffrent looks and Joe making proper adjustments on the fly will take time. And not overnite or immediately during game 1, 2 or maybe 3. Joe's gonna as art said have to get use to being back on the sidelines and making game adjustments. He was a master mind before in doing this and the time off will play a part in his slow start. Even Vermeil admitted it took him some time to get use to being back on the sideline and getting everything back into sync as being the head coach. Ok, I stopped looking, but I think you get the point. That was just one thread I looked at. PLENTY of people here didn't expect great things this season and did expect a slow start. There's no need to attack the board because they are reiterating what they said a few months ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skins_Junkie Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 (Didn't see this previously posted, so here ya go...) http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?id=1895494 By Tom Friend ESPN The Magazine Any Redskin fan who hasn't shouted #$%$#@ at Joe Gibbs is lying. I've done it. I've done it every game this year, and even though I feel guilty as hell, I'm here to tell every Redskin fan that it's OK. It's OK to be mad at God. We thought we'd give him a grace period. Maybe 10 weeks. Maybe a year. But then the season starts against Tampa Bay, and it takes us one half to start scratching our heads. He doesn't challenge a bad spot by the referees inside the five-yard line, and it costs us points. He goes on to coach a conservative game that we barely win. We bite our tongues. We say, oh well, he's just rusty. Joe Gibbs and the Redskins are in last place in the NFC East. The next week, in New York, we have to sit there and watch seven turnovers. The running back he loves, Clinton Portis, keeps coughing it up, and the quarterback he buried, Patrick Ramsey, comes off the bench throwing lollipops to the other team. When Ramsey does throw it to the right place, Rod Gardner drops a sure touchdown. We're numb. We see our quarterbacks get sacked five times. We want to say, "Spurrier could've done this." But we say nothing. We look at the bright side and figure lessons will be learned. We figure Gibbs will have Portis carrying the football around in meetings. We figure Joe Bugel will sic Joe Jacoby on the offensive line. And then Dallas comes to town on a Monday night, and the instant replay problem rears its head again. Gibbs challenges a second-half touchdown pass to Terry Glenn that, on the initial TV replay, is not an obvious overturn. The first rule of replay is don't throw the red flag unless it's clear-cut, don't throw darts. But Joe admits later that he was thinking with his heart, and it cost him a timeout he needed later ... like when the clock was ticking 3-2-1, and he couldn't stop it for the game-tying field goal. But we didn't panic, not entirely. The experts kept saying Gibbs got out-coached by Bill Parcells, but we knew all he really did was get out-ref'd. The zebras gave the Cowboys a free touchdown on a bad pass interference call and took away a Redskins touchdown on a bad non-pass interference call. That's a 14 point-swing. And we only lost by three. And, hell, they should've flagged Roy Williams for helmet-to-helmet contact on the last play of the game, which would've enabled the game-tying field goal. So we bit our tongue again. It was all fixable. Yes, quarterback, Mark Brunell had to burn two timeouts against Dallas because of mixups at the line, but we heard Gibbs say he was going to simplify the offense to avoid that. Great. An adjustment. That's what he was famous for in the 1980s. So we're 1-2 heading into Cleveland, and what happens? All of the above. Portis fumbles. Gibbs throws another dart on replay -- and misses. Costs him a timeout. Then he burns another timeout when the team can't line up right. When he needs to challenge Laveranues Coles' game-losing fumble at the end of the game (an obvious incompletion), he can't. Because he's out of timeouts. We're screaming in our living rooms. When Gibbs was hired, the one thing we all said was, "Well, at least we won't beat ourselves anymore." And now we've beaten ourselves three out of four. In Cleveland, there were false start penalties. Personal foul penalties. Blown coverages. Long punt returns against us. Complaints about the audio connection to the quarterback. It's blasphemous, but we have no choice but to say it now: Joe Gibbs is actually making Spurrier a sympathetic figure. But, most embarrassing of all, we have to sit here today and hear the Browns call Gibbs' offense predictable. Portis actually left the field thinking the Browns had a copy of the Redskins playbook, but, the truth is, the Browns just felt the Gibbs offense was vanilla. "Their offense is not that complicated," cornerback Daylon McCutcheon told the Washington Times. "They have certain tendencies. Let's say it's third down. They line up in this formation, and they only run two different routes. It makes our job a whole lot easier." There's truth to that. Even in the glory days, the Redskins offense only ran two-to-four basic plays. It's just that they'd shift and move before the snap, and the defense didn't know how to read it. But with the shorter play clock, and perhaps with his inability to get the play in quickly enough, Gibbs can't have his Redskins shifting the way they used to. There isn't time. Teams are simply loading eight men in the box, daring Brunell to throw, and there hasn't been enough ingenuity to make them pay. And so here we are again, circa 1981. He started 0-5 that year, his first year as a head coach, and, with the Ravens coming to town next Sunday night, he could be 1-4 this time around. Obviously, if he can coach his way out of 0-5, he can coach his way out of 1-4, but there have to be changes. In '81, he scrapped his four wideout offense, used three tight ends instead and plowed John Riggins up the middle. A year later, they won the Super Bowl. Back then, he treated his players like men, and that's what won them over. He never called them out in the press, always did it behind closed doors. He could be just as tough as Parcells; it's just that he kept it in-house. And trust me, the old Redskins feared him. Former Redskin tight end Donnie Warren said in a postgame show Sunday that Gibbs would call players in after they fumbled and say, "This better stop or you'll be flipping burgers next week." He wasn't kidding. Gibbs got rid of Timmy Smith, his 1988 Super Bowl hero, because of fumbles. He got rid of Smith's successor, Jamie Morris, because of fumbles. But he obviously can't get rid of Clinton Portis. Or any other star player. Not with the cap hit. So how will he handle it? Knowing him the way I do (I spent three seasons covering him), he will always treat the players like men. But he also needs to instill fear, and I'm not sure he's gone there yet. It works for Parcells and it works for Bill Belichick, and it will work for Gibbs. Especially for Gibbs, because the players will know it's not some Parcells psychological act. Gibbs will not call anybody "she." He will simply start calling players in one by one, look them in the eye and challenge them. And if they don't improve, he will bench them. Then he will figure out instant replay, and then he will figure out the reduced play clock, and then he will figure out how to fool the defense. Even if it takes all night. We think. @#$^%$$ Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. :helmet: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skins_Junkie Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 I Understand everyhting said in this article.... BUT I keep the faith! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweepea436 Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Hard to believe the Gibbs might ACTUALLY be human....haha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
China Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75964&highlight=Friend Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
More Complete Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Originally posted by sweepea436 Hard to believe the Gibbs might ACTUALLY be human....haha You're on to something! Really, I thought it was a pretty good article, not bashing per say. However, the players need to step up. Take away the mistakes players have made and we're 4-0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skins0128 Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Yell all you want to on Sunday night when our defense is on the field. This is the kind of yelling that Gibbs will appreciate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brooklynskinsfan Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 great article Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzSkinsFan63 Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Originally posted by Skins_Junkie (Didn't see this previously posted, so here ya go...) [/url And then Dallas comes to town on a Monday night, and the instant replay problem rears its head again. Gibbs challenges a second-half touchdown pass to Terry Glenn that, on the initial TV replay, is not an obvious overturn. The first rule of replay is don't throw the red flag unless it's clear-cut, don't throw darts. But Joe admits later that he was thinking with his heart, and it cost him a timeout he needed later ... like when the clock was ticking 3-2-1, and he couldn't stop it for the game-tying field goal. But we didn't panic, not entirely. The experts kept saying Gibbs got out-coached by Bill Parcells, but we knew all he really did was get out-ref'd. The zebras gave the Cowboys a free touchdown on a bad pass interference call and took away a Redskins touchdown on a bad non-pass interference call. That's a 14 point-swing. And we only lost by three. And, hell, they should've flagged Roy Williams for helmet-to-helmet contact on the last play of the game, which would've enabled the game-tying field goal. So we're 1-2 heading into Cleveland, and what happens? All of the above. Portis fumbles. Gibbs throws another dart on replay -- and misses. Costs him a timeout. Then he burns another timeout when the team can't line up right. When he needs to challenge Laveranues Coles' game-losing fumble at the end of the game (an obvious incompletion), he can't. Because he's out of timeouts. We're screaming in our living rooms. Gotta love the truth when you read it in black n' white Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzSkinsFan63 Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Only problem I see is that it's hard to instill fear when your making mistakes too. That players meeting was the right step I think though.. the players have to recognize how much Gibbs put on the line for them when he came back and we as fans need to recognize that also.. best 1-3 team I've had in a long time..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuji869 Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 Good article, I read it during lunch while I was @ work. :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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