Redskins’ Season Leaves One to Wonder Which Questions to Ask : Pro football: Another season without a playoff berth leaves Washington plenty of time to ponder its future.

Gerald Riggs was not the answer.

Dexter Manley was the answer, but to the wrong question.

Then there was the matter of the Dallas Cowboys. Ask yourself about that one.

When the Washington Redskins look back on this season, and they’ll have to eventually, it may take some time to figure out just exactly what took place. Even after watching the films.

We know they missed the playoffs, and for the second consecutive year, which, in the Joe Gibbs era, amounts to a serious slump.

We know, too, that if the Redskins were to win this Sunday against Seattle, it would be their fifth consecutive victory and leave them with a 10-6 record, which might win in a few divisions of the AFC.

So, which is it: Are the Redskins on the way down or on the way back?

Maybe it’s both.

Once, the Redskins were a consistent Super Bowl contender, a candidate for team of the ‘80s, a better bet around town than Ronald Reagan. Those days seem to be over. In the age of parity, the NFL’s top tier has shrunk to one team, the San Francisco 49ers. Maybe Denver could argue the point.

But then you have the Philadelphia Eagles, a team supposedly on the way up, now in a late-season struggle. And you have the New York Giants, a team that was supposed to be on a slide, back in contention. What happened to Buffalo? And now the Green Bay Packers are part of the way back. These are confusing times, folks.

As the season began, with the Redskins coming off the 7-9 debacle that followed the Super Bowl title, it didn’t look that confusing. The Redskins thought they were in great shape. Doug Williams would return. They picked up running backs Riggs and Byner. The hogs were healthy. The defense looked sound. Dexter Manley was learning to read.

And then everything that could go wrong did go wrong. They lost to the Giants and Eagles to start the season, with one setback more improbable than the next. In each, the game was lost on a fumble by Gerald Riggs, famous for not fumbling. Then Riggs hurt his foot and disappeared to become the ghost of George Rogers past.

A few weeks later, as quarterback Mark Rypien was struggling, Gibbs made the strange decision to throw a rusty Doug Williams, only minutes off the injured list, back into the ring. Williams would look a lot like Roberto Duran, and so another game was lost and with it the season.

Meantime, there was the Dexter Manley trauma, as Washington’s most popular player failed a third drug test and was banned for life to many tears and much beating of breasts. Barry Wilburn also had drug problems, was suspended and then put on the injured reserve list. There were other injuries, including cornerback Darrell Green and most of the offensive line.

And yet, if you take away the two fumbles, the Redskins could be looking at a 12-4 season and talking Super Bowl. If they don’t become the only team in the league to lose to the Cowboys, they might be headed for the playoffs, and suddenly the future doesn’t look so dim.

Mark Rypien came on strong in the end after nearly losing his job. They must have fed the incredible fumbling quarterback an all-glue diet. But who was he coming on against? The Redskins’ home-stretch schedule of Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego and Atlanta is a lot like Georgetown’s early-season lineup of St. Leo’s, Hawaii-Hilo and Hawaii Five-0. How far back have they really come?

Joe Gibbs doesn’t know the answer. But he does know the question: Does Gibbs still have it?

After the 1988 season, he suggested that he might be fired, probably in the hope that owner Jack Kent Cooke would then reply that Gibbs was a great coach whom he would never fire. Cooke obliged.

During this season, Gibbs has hinted that he might well quit, suggesting that it was in God’s hands. There is a popular theory these days that coaches wear out after 10 years. John Madden went out on top after a decade. So did Bill Walsh. Unfortunately for Gibbs, who began in 1981, there’s no TV gig in his future, unless CBN picks up pro football.

In any case, Gibbs looks just fine in comparison to his colleagues, many of whom have gone, well, nuts. There was Mike Ditka, who told the world his team stinks. There was Sam Wyche, who told the world that somebody else’s team stinks. Jimmy Johnson claimed that Buddy Ryan was putting out bounties, and Ryan, well, what can you say about Ryan that Jimmy Johnson hasn’t already?

Ditka’s Bears are a puzzle. And so are Ryan’s Eagles. This is hardly an easy season to figure, particularly in the AFC where six teams have eight wins and two more have seven. Pete Rozelle should be happy.

The Redskins aren’t happy. Happiness is, at a minimum, making the playoffs. But they like their new young offensive line. They like the way Rypien has responded. They like the fact that their schedule next season doesn’t look too demanding. What they don’t like is thinking about the Cowboys, about what might have been in 1989, and how it was that the season got away.