The spirit of Joe Gibbs is back with the Redskins. I noticed a vague sense of the familiar while watching the Rams at Redskins game. It was hard to pinpoint at first. Then it gradually dawned on me that I haven’t seen such slobber knocking Redskins football since Joe Gibbs’ heyday.
I don’t mean the “Return of Joe Gibbs” days. I mean the Joe Gibbs Redskins of the last century, the one your father and grandfathers talked about.
Those Redskins tried to knock you out.
Gibbs coached a muscular version of the Coryell System (Downfield offense). Don Coryell always had a big back like Chuck Muncie. Gibbs carried that further with John Riggins and Ernest Byner.
The today’s Redskins run the West Coast offense. Edge rushers like Roger Craig, Clinton Portis (in Denver) and Alfred Morris fit that system better. Matt Jones is the big physical back who would have been at home in Gibbs’ downfield offense.
Redskins' season began with QB controversy. Will end with RB controversy. Watch n see.
— Anthony Brown, The RedsCommander (@RedsCommanders) September 20, 2015
The offensive line stood up. They did things to Gregg Williams’ defense I never thought to see in Washington this year. They are not the legendary Hogs. They are not even the line that Gibbs fielded in 2004 that featured Chris Samuels and Jon Jansen, but we can see the potential.
It is galling when the Redskins sign free agent castoffs from other teams who are immediate starters instead of team depth. (Were we that bad?) DE Stephen Paea is exactly what the team needed. Terrance Knight is the first legitimate nose tackle on the team since the Redskins converted to the 3-4 defense.
More to the point, they are as physical as Scot McCloughan promised they would be. The old Redskins ran from the 4-3 alignment. They were the perfect physical compliment to their offensive counterparts. Against the Rams, the current defensive front were the same.
Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. ~ John W. Gardner
Much is made of the fact that Gibbs won three Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks. That misses the point. Gibbs always had the Hogs, which rendered the quarterback a commodity. (Of course, if Joe Theismann were healthy, he might have quarterbacked the Redskins in Super Bowl 22, and in 20 and 21 too. But, I digress.)
Joe Gibbs won regardless of his quarterback. It is why Gibbs tried to make a go of it with commodity QBs Mark Brunell and Jason Campbell when he returned 10 years ago. And it is what Jay Gruden is reaching for now, if it can be called a “reach.”
Gruden’s offense does not require superb athletic ability at QB to work. It requires timing, micro-movement within the pocket, good enough accuracy with ball placement and the discipline to let the game come to him.
Robert Griffin III called that “ordinary.” It turns out that Kirk Cousins masters the ordinary better than RGIII. Thus, Griffin’s superb athleticism is on the bench and third on the depth chart.
We wrote a few days ago that Cousins would do better this time around. We took a lot of words just to say Cousins can be successful if he is clutch at sustaining drives. He does not have to throw the winning TD pass all the time. He has to convert third downs more often than not. And he cannot be the reason the team loses. You know, ordinary done well.
Typically, the partnership between the quarterback and coach defines a team. For the 2015 Redskins, success will be defined by how close the Gruden-McCloughan partnership came to building a Joe Gibbs team.
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