Gibbs Has Little Time to Enjoy the Super Win; The ’88 Season Looms

Super Joe Gibbs, coach of the Super Bowl champion Washington Redskins and the greatest coach of all time, according to one recent magazine study, allowed himself to enjoy Sunday’s 42-10 win over Denver for what must have been 20 minutes, 30 tops.

Of course, it seemed an eternity for the worry-wart with glasses, who couldn’t set the Lombardi Trophy down fast enough Monday morning to get back to chewing his fingernails.

Who has time for a book? Certainly not Joe Gibbs, who might get an ulcer even thinking up such catchy titles as, say, “They Call Him Mr. Gibbs.”

Besides, Gibbs probably doesn’t have the five hours or so it takes to complete most post-Super Bowl sports biographies.

“There will be no book,” Gibbs said at Monday morning’s postgame Super Bowl press conference. “If I ever write a book, it won’t be about football. I wouldn’t bore you with that.”

A cookbook, maybe: “Twenty Ways to Bake a Bronco.”

Really, who has time to write or cook or even talk, for that matter.

Gibbs, in fact, officially became worried about the 1988 season on Monday, Feb. 1, 9:30 a.m., PST.

You don’t think the New York Giants want their Super Bowl back?

“It’s so fleeting,” Gibbs said of fame. “The awards are great but, for a coach, it would be greater if he were retiring or if his team just quits. But I want to coach again next year so I know what happens. People in Washington are not going to be satisfied unless we win every game. . . . A week from now, there’ll be about 10 guys knocking on the door wanting to renegotiate their contracts and here we go. It’s human nature all over again.”

Gibbs is so far ahead of himself that he said winning the Super Bowl has actually put him behind schedule for next year.

“Immediately, that’s the one thing that grabs you as a coach,” he said. “We got a late start right now, everybody else has already gotten some rest.”

Gibbs, as if it’s a big surprise by now, doesn’t handle adulation well. Sometimes he talks as if he’s the team’s ball boy, not the coach whose won two Super Bowl titles in the last five years.

Of course, he’s not really responsible for all that winning.

“That’s a tribute to the organization, to Mr. Cooke (owner Jack Kent Cooke) and Bobby (General Manager Bobby Beathard),” Gibbs said.

OK, then, there was all that great Super Bowl coaching strategy, Gibbs allowing George Rogers to be introduced as the starting tailback and starting rookie Timmy Smith instead. Smith went out and set a Super Bowl record with 204 yards rushing.

Now that was sneaky, if not brilliant, right?

“I wasn’t trying to trick anybody,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs said he’d been saying all week that Rogers wasn’t 100% and hasn’t been all year. Apparently, no one was listening. Rogers was introduced as the starter out of respect to Rogers, Gibbs said.

Gibbs then blamed himself for not playing Smith more. Smith gained only 126 yards in the regular season.

“It just tells you that I’m not real sharp,” he said. “I knew someone was going to ask that question. . . . I think the strike kept me from getting him in more. But I think I need to take the blame. But we got him in at the right time in the right place.”

Then there was that great call in the second quarter on third and one at the Denver 27-yard line. Instead of plunging ahead for the first down, which is the safe call, Gibbs went for the kill and quarterback Doug Williams found Gary Clark wide open in the end zone.

It put Washington ahead for good at 14-10.

A tough call, and courageous, too, certainly based on something Gibbs saw while studying Bronco tendency charts early Sunday morning.

No?

“It was just one of those feelings you have,” Gibbs said.

It was also Gibbs who told his players before the game they might be better off switching to longer cleats to get better traction in the slick grass.

“My suggestion was longer cleats, that’s about all I said,” Gibbs said.

Maybe not the stuff of geniuses, but if the Redskins keep slipping on their duffs, who knows what happens?

Gibbs, in the heat of his self-effacing, even took an inadvertent dig at Sport magazine, which, in this month’s issue, claims Gibbs is the best coach ever, based on independent statistical analysis.

Gibbs said an article in Sports Illustrated that had coaches such as Don Coryell ranked higher than he was more accurate. Gibbs then quickly realized that officials of Sport were in the audience to present their MVP award and a car to quarterback Doug Williams.

“Sport has been great to us,” Gibbs said, laughing. “I think it’s great, I appreciate it, but that’s hard for me to take seriously. I think really the (great) coaches are the Don Coryells, the Shulas, the Landrys, people like that, that have done it over a long period of time. Mine’s been seven years. You’ve got to do it over a period of time with different players to be considered the top. I don’t think I’ve been around long enough to be considered in that category. I know I’m not.”

Sounds like one coach’s future hall-of-fame induction speech.

Super Bowl Notes

Joe Gibbs’ postgame press conference was abruptly halted when Associated Press photographer Lenny Ignelzi exchanged punches with sportswriter Furman Bisher, a columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Gibbs was in mid-sentence when the two toppled over folding chairs in an exchange that started when Bisher, seated behind Ignelzi, asked the photographer to lower his camera. Bisher was cut on the left cheek, not seriously, and both men were removed by NFL security. . . . Quarterback Doug Williams, who made $475,000 this season, said Monday he will not ask the Redskins to renegotiate his contract. “I don’t think I’d have to go to them,” he said. “If anything, I’d think they’d come to me to work it out.” Stay tuned. . . . Add Williams: He said three hours of root-canal surgery on Saturday never endangered his chances of playing. The surgery was performed by team dentist Dr. Barry Rudolph. “It was only a toothache,” Williams said. “I’ve played with my jaw wired shut before.” . . . The NFL office should send the old Super Bowl record book to the Redskins and have them rework it in burgundy trim. Washington set 10 Super Bowl records, including the Big Three: most yards passing (Williams, 340); rushing (Timmy Smith, 204) and receiving (Ricky Sanders, 193). . . . The Redskins tied four other records and teamed with the Broncos to break three more. . . . More Williams: He had this to say to the 27 teams that passed on him as a free agent in 1986: “Thank God.”