His biggest challenge yet: Joe Gibbs won three Super Bowls in his first tour of duty with the Redskins, but the franchise has changed drastically since then

Football Digest, Oct, 2004 by Vito Stellino

JOE GIBBS IS SO FOCUSED ON the twin passions of his life--football and auto racing--that he doesn't pay much attention to what's going on in the rest of the world. He was living in Washington D.C. in 1986 at the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, yet he didn't know who Oliver North was until he was asked about him.

It's not surprising, then, that Gibbs never has heard of Thomas Wolfe. Nevertheless, he'll try to prove Wolfe wrong and show that you can go home again. Gibbs returned "home" to the Washington Redskins last January when He was coaxed out of retirement and away from his NASCAR team by owner Dan Synder for a five-year contract worth about $5.7 million annually, the richest coaching deal in NFL history.

If anybody is worth the money, Gibbs is. He was enormously successful in his first tour of duty with Redskins from 1981 through 1992. Gibbs is on the short list of the best coaches in NFL history. He's one of only six to win three or more titles since the modern era of pro football started at the end of World War II (Vince Lombardi, Paul Brown, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh, and Weeb Ewbank are the others). And Gibbs is the only coach to do it with three different quarterbacks.

Despite his 11-year absence from the game, Gibbs should be able to pick up where he left off. He has showed no signs that he's lost his ability to motivate players in this big-money era. For example, he gave up his reserved parking spot at Redskin Park so it could be used by the team's "Player of the Week." You might think players making a lot of money wouldn't care about little perks like that, but they do. Gibbs used the same technique with his successful NASCAR team. He's a people person.

Gibbs also is a great storyteller and a good mimic. At the end of the offseason program, he hunched into a riff about former president Ronald Reagan (he had heard of him), taken from the time the Redskins visited the White House after winning the Super Bowl in 1983. "He said, 'I played football, you know,'" Gibbs said, doing a slight impersonation of Reagan. "And I said, 'Yes, sir.' And he said, "You know, I played guard.' I said, 'Guard.' He said, 'I still sign a lot of things with the number 33.' I think that's the number he had.'"

Most coaches don't bother with little anecdotes like that. But Gibbs likes to communicate, and he'll use such stories to build a rapport with his players. "I don't think they're different," Gibbs said, comparing today's players to those of yesteryear. "People are people. I see so many stories that I relate to guys I coached in the past. Obviously, there are some cultural changes. But I've always got along with that and I've always admired that. The biggest thing is: get the right kind of guys and get a real team feeling."

Yet there's one major problem as Gibbs tries to return home. It has changed drastically. In fact, the only thing that's the same is the team's nickname. During Gibbs' first tenure, the Redskins were a model of stability under former owner Jack Kent Cooke. He could be an irascible old coot, but he let Gibbs coach and Bobby Beathard and Charley Casserly run the personnel department.

Despite being hands-off, Cooke set high standards. After Gibbs took the Redskins to the Super Bowl in his second and third seasons, one writer told him he was now good for a decade. Gibbs disagreed, saying that if he stunk up the joint two years in a row, he'd be gone. That theory never was put to the test, though. Gibbs won two more Super Bowls before stepping down.

But now the stability is gone from the Redskins' organization. Snyder changes coaches, players, and front-office personnel the way some men change their ties. It's hard to still find somebody who was there when he bought the team in 1999. And he even fires people he hired. For example, last year Snyder hired a former staffer at the Clinton White House, Julia Payne, to be his vice president of communications. She was supposed to improve his image. Her work got positive reviews from members of the media, but she barely lasted three months before being dismissed.

Since Snyder didn't buy the team until late May of '99, it was too late for him to make a lot of football changes for the upcoming season. But when he found out Casserly and head coach Norv Turner weren't always seeing eye-to-eye, he dumped Casserly, who since has since put together the roster for the expansion Houston Texans. The Redskins went 10-6 that fall and won a playoff game, but that was the high-water mark for the franchise under Snyder. Since then, it has been characterized by upheaval.

He first went on a spending spree in 2000, signing such aging superstars as Deion Sanders and Bruce Smith. Snyder thought he was buying a Super Bowl contender, but the team started 7-6, leading to the firing of Turner. That move wasn't a tremendous surprise, as Turner put together a mediocre 5060-1 record as Washington's head coach. The timing, however, was strange. At 7-6, the Skins were still in the playoff hunt. But after Turner's firing, things got out of hand and the Redskins promptly fell out of the race for the postseason.