SUPER BOWL XXVI : Gibbs Throws a Pass : Pro football: He sends credit flying toward Redskin assistants and players, laughs at genius tag.

Faithfully following his team’s desire to avoid more glory, Joe Gibbs spent the day after Super Bowl XXVI denying what was rather apparent Sunday.

The Redskins could not have defeated the Buffalo Bills, 37-24, without him.

A genius?

Gibbs can barely suppress a laugh when that label is applied to him.

“It’s almost funny sometimes,” Gibbs said Monday morning. “I feel very humble because I get credit for so many things I don’t even do. It just gets thrown my way.

“I’m grateful. But I think everybody on the Redskins knows where I stand on that level.

“As Mr. (owner Jack Kent) Cooke said, there have only been two (geniuses) in history, and they weren’t in football. It was Michelangelo and somebody else, I forgot, but it was definitely not in football.”

Among football coaches, few rank with Gibbs, who is tied with Bill Walsh and one short of Chuck Noll’s record four Super Bowl championships. He is the only one to win Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks.

Gibbs, however, says it was all done by his players and his assistants.

“The thing that was different about this football team, and we were talking about it this morning with Charlie (Casserly, the team’s general manager), this team truly had great, great chemistry,” Gibbs said. “There was a great feeling among the players for each other.

“Immediately from Day 1 there was nobody fighting for their own personal goals. It truly was a team.

“I think last night was a great example. In that game there wasn’t a superstar out there winning that game for us. We just had a lot of players chipping in with plays here and there throughout.”

Left unsaid was the stark contrast between the Redskins’ version of team togetherness in the days leading up to the Super Bowl and the Bills’ public propensity to elbow each other out of the limelight.

Once the game began, the cocky Bills lost their composure; Thurman Thomas lost his helmet for the first two plays. But the Redskins lost none of their ability to share the credit.

“This team had great character to it,” Gibbs said. “It just was a very close-knit group of guys who were very focused on what they were doing. They were so focused. I’ll tell you, even at halftime, they were saying things normally coaches are running around saying.”

Gibbs parried questions about his long-term future with the Redskins, but made it clear his situation would resemble the in-one-day-out-the-next situation that has followed Bill Parcells’ 1991 Super Bowl victory with the New York Giants.

“Hey, there’s tremendous positives in what I do,” said Gibbs, who has coached Washington for 11 seasons, second only to Don Shula’s stay with the Miami Dolphins for most years with the same team by an active coach. “(But) there’s some real negatives.

“For six months of your life, even if somebody in my family gets sick. . . . Losing my dad (during the 1989 season) made me realize how trapped you are. I couldn’t get two days to go see my dad, and that’s a little scary.

“What’s scary is when something happens inside my family, and I can’t get there. I think it’s like an emotional marathon. You’ve got to be ready every year. You’ve got to be well-rested, and you’ve got to have your jaw set before you start. Because it’s going to wear you down.

“As long as I can get excited about it and be set emotionally so I feel like I can run as hard as I have to, I’m going to continue to do it.”

Assuming he does continue, Gibbs will have to deal with the traditional post-Super Bowl blues. The last time the Redskins won the Super Bowl, after the 1987 season, they dropped to 7-9 the next year.

But Gibbs said he hoped having stability at quarterback, assuming the team can sign Super Bowl most valuable player Mark Rypien to a long-term contract quickly, will help.

“We had our poorest season after our Super Bowl,” Gibbs said. “I think you’re (starting the next season’s preparation) late. You’ve got trouble getting players signed. The way other people look at you, they definitely want a chunk of you.

“I think we had an uncertain quarterback situation with Doug (Williams) being an older guy. Hopefully, now. . . .

“For about five years, every time we lined up against Philadelphia, it was (Randall) Cunningham. Every time against the Giants, it was (Phil) Simms. We never had the stable quarterback thing.

“I could stand a few years with those other guys standing over there sweating because of our quarterback. I think the quarterback thing will help us.”

So does that mean this Redskin team, which already has laid claim to a piece of history by winning three titles in 10 seasons, is one of the greatest teams?

“As far as our team and history, I think that belongs to you guys (reporters),” Gibbs said. “I don’t think that’s up to us. . . . That’s not for me to say. We’re just proud to be here.”

Mark Rypien, looking ahead to negotiating a new contract, said he is looking forward to trying to put “three or four or five” quality seasons in a row and raise himself into the elite class of quarterbacks.

“I’d like to maybe be considered to be a quarterback like Joe Montana or a Terry Bradshaw, who have taken their teams to titles for multiple years,” Rypien said. “If I can stay consistent, I think the team will be all right. But when you see what San Francisco has done over the years, that’s kind of a goal.”

Rypien signed a one-year, $1.5-million contract last preseason, gambling that he would have an outstanding season and be able to cash in.

“I haven’t sat down and discussed my future,” Rypien said, “because going into this game, money wasn’t the issue. Winning it was. Now it’s going to be time to sit down and figure out what’s in store.”