It is easy to forget that before the Washington Redskins were the laughingstock of the National Football League that they are now, they were one of the greatest sports franchises not just in the annals of professional football but perhaps in all of sports.
William Morrow ($26.99).
Back then, in their heyday of the 1980s, when they made four trips to the Super Bowl in nine years and won it three times, they had an incredible fan base; a shrewd owner; amazing player evaluation, recruitment and scouting; and perhaps the greatest head coach ever.
That would be Joe Gibbs. And with apologies to the pantheon of usual suspects for Greatest Head Coach – our own Chuck Noll, Vince Lombardi, Paul Brown, Bill Walsh – an easy argument can be made that Gibbs was the best of the bunch, for one very compelling reason: All the other dynasties rested upon the arm of mostly one quarterback. Mr. Gibbs is the only coach to have ever won three Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks – Joe Theismann, Doug Williams and Mark Rypien.
Adam Lazarus’ “Hail to the Redskins: Gibbs, the Diesel, the Hogs, and the Glory Days of D.C.’s Football Dynasty,” an entertaining, lively and meticulous account of the glory days of the Redskins reminds readers that the Washington football franchise was once a far cry from the dysfunctional mess it is today.
Perhaps no coach got more out of his players, or forged better and longer-lasting relationships with them, than Mr. Gibbs, whose genius was far greater than the offensive schemes he devised and plays he drew. He was also a superb motivator and persuader of men, some of whom didn’t always want to cooperate.
A case in point is the opening tale Mr. Lazarus tells, which occurred just two months after Mr. Gibbs was hired. The coach went to Kansas to call on John Riggins, the team’s enormously talented but notoriously defiant running back, who had sat out the 1980 season in a contract dispute. Few coaches would have even made the visit, and fewer still would have won Mr. Riggins over, but Gibbs did.
Mr. Lazarus’ description of the circumstances which led Jack Kent Cooke, the team’s flamboyant and politically connected owner, to hire Mr. Gibbs in 1981 makes one realize that at the beginning of every dynasty, there are moments when it could go either way. Like Mike Tomlin years later, Mr. Gibbs was a young and obscure assistant coach who impressed the owner in the interview and was largely hired on a hunch.
The Gibbs era began with five consecutive losses to start the 1981 season, but only one year later (like Mr. Tomlin), his team had won Super Bowl XVII, Washington’s first NFL title in 40 years. Mr. Riggins ran for 166 yards in that game behind a huge offensive line nicknamed “The Hogs,” eclipsing Franco Harris’ Super Bowl rushing record.
Mr. Lazarus (a former student of mine at Carnegie Mellon) tells this extraordinary turn of events with marvelous insight and meticulous precision, aided by more than 90 interviews with former team personnel and players, including Mr. Gibbs. It is the inside story of how a proud but struggling franchise became a dynasty, based mostly on the managerial and relational genius of Coach Gibbs. My chief criticism is that his special attributes are under analyzed in Mr. Lazarus’ account.
There are moments of anguish, such as Mr. Theismann’s gruesome broken leg on Monday Night Football which effectively ended his career; moments of ecstasy, such as Doug Williams overcoming racial prejudice in the deep South to become the first black quarterback of a Super Bowl winning team; and moments of sadness, such as when Mr. Gibbs abruptly called it quits in 1993.
A notorious workaholic and devout Christian, who routinely slept on the cot in his office, Mr. Gibbs had finally had enough but not before he amassed the highest winning percentage of anyone in NFL history to coach at least 200 games. In his 12 seasons, the team reached the playoffs eight times and only once had a losing year.
Washington Redskins’ fans can only wonder how something so great could have fallen so far in so little time.
Tom O’Boyle is the PG’s senior manager of audience and associated strategies.
First Published: December 27, 2015, 5:00 a.m.