As a Cowboys fan I a pretty happy with Fassell and Spurior out and Coughlin and Gibbs in. Coughlin (who really alienates players and imploded with a talented Jville squad) going to a Giants team that was overachieved for years and a guy who has been in race car driving the last decade going to the Redskins. I admit Gibbs was good, but that is a long time ago, he hasn't even been in pro football at all, and it wasn't under a guy like DS (the nerdy controlling one. For every Vermiel than are 10 coaches who tried to do such moves but the game had well passed them by. Personally I think Fassell is a hell of a coach (made the Giants much better over the last 5 years or so than their talented warrented) and glad he is out of the division. Again, I am feeling really good about that as a Cowboy fan. Now the Tuna just has to figure out how to be better than Reid & McNabb.
Seems hard to figure out how he will be personally committed to Gibbs Racing and still be a NFL head coach. Maybe he doesn't need sleep, but to me it looks like he'll run out of time between the 2 jobs.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1702341 Gibbs will turn the 'Skins around By Tom Friend ESPN The Magazine I can't wait for Redskins-Cowboys again. I can't wait for Joe Gibbs' rematch with Bill Parcells -- without Lawrence Taylor! What, this isn't big news to you? The Redskins rehiring Joe Gibbs? If it's not, the hell with you then. This would be the equivalent of Casey Stengel returning to mange the Yankees. Or Vince Lombardi returning to coach the Packers. This is a Hall of Fame coach coming back to where he belongs. This isn't Parcells selling his soul to Jerry Jones. Joe Gibbs turned down NFL jobs for 11 years, and I'll tell you why -- because he's a better man than Parcells. You think Gibbs would've come out of retirement to coach the Panthers? Or the Falcons? Or the, gulp, Cowboys? Never. Never in a million years. He's no Parcells. He's no sell-out. He was a Redskin in '81, and it looks like he's a Redskin again. And I promise you'll never hear another peep out of Dan Snyder. With the Redskins on the brink of becoming the Arizona Cardinals, Snyder has done what he had to do: he's gone retro. Dan Snyder is conniving, and Dan Snyder is impatient, but the one person he'll never interfere with is Joseph Gibbs. Do you know who Dan Snyder is? He's a kid from Charles W. Woodward High School in Rockville, Md. who grew up during the Redskin golden years. He grew up at a time Edward Bennett Williams was hiring Vince Lombardi and then George Allen to save the franchise. You think Steve Spurrier was a big name? Hah! Lombardi, now that's a name. Allen, that's a name. Dan Snyder grew up in an era where, from 1971-92, the Redskins had exactly two losing seasons, a 6-10 in 1980 and a 7-9 in '88. Other than that, it was five Super Bowl appearances and three titles, all courtesy of Joe Gibbs. It was Sonny and Billy and Hanburger in the 70s, and it was Gibbs and Riggo and Joey T. and Monk in the 80s. It was Sunday night celebrations at Duke Zieberts, it was Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in the owner's box and it was RFK Stadium throbbing, throbbing. Did little Dan Snyder get spoiled by it all? Of course he did. I went to a high school down the street from Snyder's, Wootton, and I got spoiled, too. From 1969-92, the team had three Hall of Fame head coaches. From 1971-85, they had just three celebrity quarterbacks -- Sonny Jurgensen, Bill Kilmer and Joe Theismann. And after that, you could've handed Gibbs anybody (even someone named Danny Wuerffel), and he'd have won with him. I mean, Gibbs won Super Bowls with Theismann, Doug Williams and Mark Rypien. He made the last two guys Super Bowl MVPs. It was football nirvana, and a young Dan Snyder even sat in the stands for the last game Gibbs ever coached, a playoff game in San Francisco in 1992. He sat in the stands and cheered. Lost his voice. So there you have it. Now you know why Dan Snyder is nuts for the Redskins. Now you know why he overpaid Spurrier and why, after that mistake, he's reaching out to Gibbs. Now you know why he wants a celebrity coach, why he wishes he could walk into ol' Duke Zieberts and get standing ovations, the way Edward Bennett Williams used to, the way George Allen used to, the way every Redskin used to. He could've hired Jim Fassel -- and if Gibbs falls through, he still might. But getting Joe Gibbs is bigger than big. I don't care if he's 63, and I don't care if he can only hold up until he's 65. This franchise needed credibility and it needed an old friend. And when Dan Snyder reintroduces Joe Gibbs as head coach, he will be able to just put his feet up and watch. You think the game's passed him by? Please. Take a look at Dick Vermeil, Parcells. They're just as ancient, and look what they did this year. I'm guessing Gibbs will bring old buddy Joe Bugel back as his assistant head coach, and I bet he'll bring Russ Grimm back from Pittsburgh and groom him to be his successor. He'll also probably hire former Bills coach Gregg Williams as his defensive coordinator, and I bet he'll work smoothly with Snyder's personnel director, Vinny Cerrato (Vinny's mentor is Lou Holtz; he's been around legends before). He'll have to get used to free agency and instant replay, but don't think for a minute he'll tolerate the cell phones and the eccentricities of today's young players. When I covered the Redskins for the Washington Post in the 80s, Joe Gibbs had his hand in everything. He was a control freak who slept at the office and who wanted lunch pail, work ethic players. At the same time, he knows how to deal with egos. He had Riggins and Theismann and Dexter Manley eating out of the palm of his hand. He's a people person. And now the rivalries will fire up again. Back then, Giant Week was as bad as Cowboy Week. He was always afraid L.T. would kill his quarterback, so sometimes he'd only send one receiver out in a pattern and use everyone else to block. You think Patrick Ramsey's gonna get killed this year? Forget it. He's more of disciplinarian than you'll ever know. He'll run three-hour practices in pads. Free agent Champ Bailey will want to stay now. LaVar Arrington will stop freelancing. If Ramsey thought Steve Spurrier knew quarterbacking, wait until he gets a load of Gibbs. Gibbs is also the master of adjustment. At halftime, he'd always come up with some new wrinkle, and he'll adjust to the new NFL, too. I found it amusing how people say that Spurrier came to the NFL to see if his Fun 'N Gun would work and then quit when he realized it wouldn't. What a loser! Gibbs came to the Redskins in 1981 with the same reputation as a gun-slinging coach, straight from the Air Coryell Chargers. But after an 0-5 start, he looked at his roster and adjusted, became a run-first offense behind Riggins. He didn't quit, he didn't run off to play golf. It took guts to do what change everything, but Joe Gibbs is no dummy. And he'll do it again. It won't be easy to win, not without a defensive line, but I bet they make a run at free agent defensive end Darren Howard or Jevon Kearse. And I bet Gibbs won't quit until he has his Redskins, his one and only Redskins, back in contention. The only coach who seemed to have his number in the old days was Parcells, but now he'll get another shot at the Tuna -- twice a year! I only wish Spurrier hadn't gutted his backfield, hadn't run Stephen Davis out of town. Because that would've been something to see … Stephen Davis running 50-gut. But that's okay. Joe Gibbs won with a scat back named Joe Washington, and he'll win with a scatback named Trung Canidate. Can we play at RFK?
A Quick Study By Michael Wilbon Thursday, January 8, 2004; Page D01 Even the biggest sycophants, the people who believe the return of Joe Gibbs is indeed the second coming, have this one nagging question about him coaching the Washington Redskins after 11 years away from pro football, away from studying film and running practices and making the instinctive decisions a head coach has to make on game days. The question is this: Is it possible that the game has passed by Joe Gibbs? The reasonable answer is that, if it has, he'll catch it and pass it pretty quickly. The issue is whether pro football has so radically evolved while he was at the garage, trying to hire the best right-rear-tire changer, that he won't immediately recognize a new NFL that has free agents, linebackers who are as fast as Gibbs's receivers used to be and 350-pound run-stuffers who would have outweighed Jeff Bostic by 80 pounds. We don't know whether Gibbs is going to win any more Super Bowls with the Redskins, or even if he's going to reach championship games. But we do know that nothing leaves Joe Gibbs in the dust. He wasn't merely a great football coach in those 11 years with the Redskins; he invented strategies and formations and entire methods of playing football, particularly on offense, that are being used by coaches everywhere right now. Gibbs then went to a completely unrelated industry as a total outsider given little more than a prayer of succeeding. He admitted freely he had no technical expertise, yet became a dominant figure in that industry, too. Gibbs never went in and tried to build the best engine. Gibbs found out who could build the best engine and hired him. And he's going to do the same thing in this second tour with the Redskins. He's already hired Gregg Williams, who might have been a washout as a head coach in Buffalo, but who nevertheless fielded one of the best defenses in the NFL. He's already rehired Joe Bugel, who didn't cut it as a head coach with the Cardinals or Raiders, but who can fix a physically capable offensive line in about the time it takes a pit crew to refuel a car. When Gibbs was here before, he preached building an organization by hiring the most intelligent people he could find, people unafraid of hard work and being accountable, and people with talent. In that order. We yawned; Gibbs kept inching along. Most days, coaching a football team seems like rocket science, only harder because there's no formula, there's no right answer. It's so complex that most men never get it right. The failure rate is about 80 percent. But Gibbs got it right in pro football, he got it right in auto racing, and he's going to get it right in pro football again more likely than not. He's going to seek out intelligent men, not stars. He's going to hire people with quiet character, not flair. And he's going to find assistants and administrators and coaches with enough talent to make the hard work and professionalism worth it. This is why whatever Gibbs's Redskins teams lacked in talent, they made up for in categories like turnover differential and fewest penalties. See, even though Gibbs has been away from football, he hasn't been away from world-class competition. Professional football, while it is America's sporting pastime, isn't any more competitive than auto racing. For the last 11 years, Gibbs has been operating in a sport that's so competitive it's excruciating, a venue where wins and losses are decided by tenths of a second, sometimes hundredths of seconds. It's a high-profile sport with prickly sponsors who have to be tended to and diva drivers. Gibbs, for instance, managed a very talented driver named Tony Stewart through a series of garage outbursts and numerous run-ins and conflicts. Stewart was something of a showman (think a cross between Dexter Manley and John Riggins). Yet, Gibbs always got the best out of Stewart without squashing his spirit. Gibbs was so good in walking that line with Stewart, while at the same time using a totally different touch to get the best out of Bobby Labonte, a driver who was not supremely gifted and never dazzling, a man who never wanted attention. When Liz Clarke, who covers auto racing for The Post, started describing Labonte, I couldn't help but think of Art Monk. For 11 years with the Redskins, then 11 years in NASCAR, Gibbs has been absolutely masterful in choosing people, then managing them, whether we're talking about scouts, linebackers, or catch-can men. That's his real genius, even more than strategizing to counteract Bill Walsh or Bill Parcells. God knows the Redskins organization, with all its turnover and drama the last four years, needs that touch, that stability. Some race teams have entire pit crews that up and leave for a better offer. Gibbs has stunned the race community in his ability to hire the best people and keep them together. The however is this: Gibbs has never coached in the free agency era. He can't have the Hogs for eight years or the Fun Bunch for six years or whatever it was. He coached at the sunset of a different game than the one to which he returns. Gibbs didn't have to hold a barbeque at the start of every training camp to have everybody introduce themselves to each other. That difference is going to take some getting used to, working with a young lineman only to see him leave when he's ready to become a great player. And something else we don't know -- chances are even he doesn't know -- is whether, at 63, he'll burn to work all those hours, if he still needs to, and manage all the increased drama a coach has to manage. Though I suspect if Dick Vermeil and Parcells and Hubie Brown and Jack McKeon can do it so effectively, Gibbs will, too. Probably, he'll go back to all the boring but tried and true stuff he used to build the Redskins the first time, and then Joe Gibbs Racing. I'm completely and totally philosophically opposed to one man both coaching the team and managing the football operation. Overwhelmingly, it doesn't work. In fact, everywhere you look owners are taking back power from coaches who have proven they cannot handle both duties. The Seahawks took away Mike Holmgren's personnel responsibilities, just as the Dolphins did recently with Dave Wannstedt. The Broncos ought to do the same with Mike Shanahan. As much as I like and respect Dennis Green, who is up for both gigs in Arizona, I wouldn't hire him to coach the team and run the personnel department. Charting the course of an organization is a long-term project, while coaching is by nature selfish and totally about what needs to happen today. But Gibbs may be the very rare exception here, a man who can strike the proper balance. Gibbs Racing employs about 200 people, more than a GM or VP of football operations would oversee at Redskins Park. Gibbs wasn't the crew chief, which is roughly akin to the coach; he's the chairman. He knows how to run a championship team. He'll find the best lieutenants who'll find the sergeants, and soon he'll be so up to speed the game will have to wonder how Gibbs got so far ahead so quickly.
Greg Williams defense should be awesome in Washington. All they need is a strong safety to call the plays. They have everything else they need to run it perfectly.
