His Face Was Made for Poker

Lots of people don’t look like what they are. Napoleon sure didn’t look like a military genius. In fact, he didn’t even look like a general. He looked like Peter Lorre, in fact.

Hemingway looked more like a linebacker than an author. I never saw a king who looked like a king. And, God help us, Hitler looked comical.

I always thought the reason they never caught Jack the Ripper was because he didn’t look like Jack the Ripper. Horror comes in sheep’s clothing.

Still, I’m not sure anyone ever looked less like what he is--a great football coach--than Joe Gibbs, who is probably the best there is on a sideline right now.

We all know what football coaches are supposed to look like and sound like. Take Knute Rockne, the greatest of them all. Busted nose, bald head, staccato speech, he was born to be a football coach--and nature outfitted him for the part.

Look at Vince Lombardi, the greatest of the pro coaches. Gap-toothed, bull-necked, a voice like an iron foundry, a volcanic temper. A football coach right out of Central Casting.

Now, check out Joe Gibbs. Pie-faced, mild, smiling all the time, soft pudgy features, he looks like your favorite neighborhood druggist. Or a pediatrician. He reminds you of a favorite uncle. He looks kind, unflappable, full of understanding. You wonder how in the world he could get 40 of the biggest, meanest, toughest mounds of muscle on the planet to go out and play their hearts out for him.

You half-expect his halftime oration to be, “Aw, please, fellows, can’t we just try to do better?” Where Rockne might refer slightingly to his varsity as “girls” in a contemptuous pep talk, where Lombardi might scream at them as quitters and numskulls, you see Joe Gibbs as merely patting them on the head and murmuring, “Oh, well, I know you’re trying your best, guys.”

But, the Washington Redskins are not only the champions of all football at the moment but, year in and year out, they are the best-drilled, most successful professional football team this side of the Lombardi Packers or the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers. Or the 1970s Dallas Cowboys.

But Lombardi had Bart Starr. The Steelers’ Chuck Noll had Terry Bradshaw. The Cowboys’ Tom Landry had Roger Staubach.

Joe Gibbs has gone to four Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks. He has won Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks.

In his 11 seasons, his team has won seven playoff berths, five division titles, four NFC championship games and three Super Bowls.

How can that kind of success come from a guy who looks as harmless as a chicken dumpling? With that record, shouldn’t he be one of those neolithic types with a barbed-wire beard, a profane vocabulary, a perpetual snarl? One of those guys who roars “I don’t want to see this game, I want to hear it!”

Shouldn’t he have a nickname such as the Bear, the Rock, or old Blood and Guts and be likened in the media to General Patton? What’s he smiling about? Why does he look so happy all the time?

Joe Gibbs doesn’t even cuss. He looks like somebody you would hand your coat to when you arrive at a party.

Of course, Joe Gibbs, underneath that sunny veneer, is pure football coach. You get a clue in his recreation. Joe is not into opera or rare book collecting. Joe is into stock car racing and has his own car and team at places such as Daytona. He once acknowledged, in his biography “Joe Gibbs--Fourth and One” that all his life has been given over to the physical--bike riding, car racing, football, baseball, hunting, fishing. He even won the national seniors racquetball championship in 1976 after falling into the sport while an assistant coach at St. Louis.

But if Gibbs isn’t careful, he is going to get his nickname after all: Super Joe. Four Super Bowls is nickname time. The only thing that could be more impressive would be if he went there with another franchise.

Gibbs is a modest man. He takes the position that he is only an assistant coach. God is his real coach. If Joe Gibbs doesn’t have a playbook in his hand, he has a Bible.

Does this mean he is a soft touch? Hardly. Gibbs in his own way is as unsentimental on the job as a prison guard. When quarterback Joe Theismann wanted to come back after the shattering injury to his left leg, Gibbs gently but firmly put him right. It was a sad story, but Joe’s hankie was dry. His quarterback had to be able to run. When quarterback Doug Williams, who won him a Super Bowl, thought he had one or two years left and the club owed him that shot, it was Gibbs who read him the facts of life. He was going with the young guys, he was going with the future, not the past. Beneath that custard pie exterior lies a stainless steel center.

Football belongs to the coach. The differences in on-field talent between the best team in the league and the worst is small. A bad team with a good coach can’t win, but neither can a good team with a bad coach. Gibbs for his part, is quick to spread the praise--it’s his staff, the organization, the fans, the town, the owner and so on, he assures you. But the league is no longer fooled. Gibbs is worth two touchdowns per game.

It probably should have known what to expect when owner Jack Kent Cooke hired him. Cooke, throughout his career, has betrayed an uncanny ability to pick a winning combination out of a crowd shot in Times Square.

Even so, Gibbs is his finest hour. To look at Joe Gibbs and recognize that he is even a coach, never mind the best, means you can see things other people cannot. Almost anyone else would have taken on Gibbs, all right. As chaplain.