Redskin Revivalist : Former Ram Sean Gilbert Found Religion, Ditched His Wild Ways and Now Is Saving Washington

By T.J. SIMERS

Oct. 16, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

Sean Gilbert, the toughest, meanest, baddest guy in a Ram uniform, called a team meeting in Anaheim two years ago, and he was sobbing and babbling like a repentant Sunday preacher trying to make good with his flock.

The linebackers looked at the defensive backs. The defensive backs at the offensive linemen. The offensive linemen at the running backs, and they kept waiting for their scheming buddy to stop the sobering slop and deliver the punch line: “So, guys, where are we going for beers tonight?”

But Gilbert threw them all for a loss, announced he had changed--that he had been saved--and from then on the Rams never looked at him the same way, which explains why he is employed today by the Washington Redskins.

The Redskins, who acquired Gilbert in a trade for letting the Rams draft Lawrence Phillips, are now the surprise team in the NFL with a first-place NFC East record of 5-1. And while there were whispers around the league a year ago that a born-again Gilbert was no longer competitive, or as violent or as dedicated to destruction, it is Gilbert, as much as anyone, who is responsible for the Redskins’ renaissance.

“If this hadn’t happened, if Sean hadn’t changed,” says Gilbert’s wife, Nicole, “he wouldn’t be playing for the Rams or the Redskins. He would probably not be playing in the NFL right now. He’d be flat broke. He’d be a bum on the street corner.”

Two years ago, the best player for the Rams was an alcoholic, and while he has not discussed it until recently, no matter, he says, it would have been all right with the Rams. The best player for the Rams, while downing a pair of 40-ounce beers after practice each day, getting tanked before he got on the plane for an away game, and smashed on the way home, was making plays, sacking the opposition’s quarterback and acting every bit like a hard-hitting football player.

He would get sick from all the alcohol consumed. “I was having 15 shots, five or six mixed drinks, seven or eight beers. . . . I’d see other guys in the locker room, and there was something different about them and I couldn’t understand how they could leave here each day and not stop to get a beer.

“Then I’d look at a guy who was married and think, ‘He’s married to just one woman. Wow.’ I had to have a squad--my starting five, and then I’d need a sixth one. I was doing it all, all the crazy stuff. The game was running me; I was consumed by football, the image, being an athlete and all that came with it.”

Two years ago, there was no taking Gilbert seriously. Everything was a game or joke to him, a schemer with an agenda for constant fun. “My teammates?” he says. “They were in the Jacuzzi with me with the bottles of booze--I should have owned stock in some of those companies. I was just this big old sweaty lush hanging out and goofing off with the guys.”

Still, it was business as usual for the Rams, who had drafted him from Pittsburgh third overall in 1992 and paid homage to his talent. The coaches designed game plans to maximize Gilbert’s skills. Gilbert, 26, was too much for one opposing offensive lineman as he bullied his way to the quarterback. He was so good, the Rams made him their franchise player to keep him from being hijacked, and players around the league selected him to play in the Pro Bowl.

“Everybody sees the fame and fortune,” Nicole says. “But everybody is just seeing the front door; they don’t know what’s going on behind that closed door.”

Gilbert had the fame, the fortune and a party every night, but he had become so unhappy, so angry that he frightened Nicole, who had known him since their sweetheart days together in high school.

“I had the houses, the cars, the money,” Gilbert says. “But none of it brought happiness. I would still argue with my girlfriend, still be upset, still be lonely. No one really knew, but then it was never a problem with Michael Irvin until the issue popped publicly. Can you say that was the first time for Michael Irvin? Or, was he just caught?”

Gilbert was drunk regularly driving home, although he had a dread of driving in Los Angeles traffic, being killed in an accident and going to hell. There was constant remorse, but not enough to keep him from courting danger in ways now, he says, better left untold.

“I was scared,” Nicole says. “Why was he ruining his life like this? He was on a road to destruction, drinking, smoking and going out every day to strip bars; he was way out there doing terrible things I can’t even imagine he was doing. After the games, sometimes we would go out with other people and everything would be fine, and then we would go home and he would go out with the guys again to do whatever.”

Night after night there was no way of knowing when he would come home, and when he did, he would fall asleep in a stupor.

“Football grabbed this young boy when was drafted, made him a millionaire overnight, and he didn’t know how to handle it,” Nicole says. “It ruined him. I told him one day that I wished he had never had all that money, and we had never gone through what we went through.”

Not married at the time--for all the aggravation and humiliation--Nicole still rode it out. “I was in love,” she says. “I knew him before the football, the money, the fame. I loved the man.”

But one night after a particularly heavy binge, the 6-foot-5, 316-pound football player went on an angry rampage, yelling at Nicole and their two children.

“I was leaving and taking the kids with me back home to Pittsburgh and I was not ever coming back,” Nicole says. “I was just fed up. I was not going to subject my kids to such treatment--to be yelled at for no reason. No child in any household should be put through that.”

The telephone rang at David Rocker’s home late that same night. Rocker, a journeyman defensive lineman with the Rams, heard the caller identify himself as “Sean.” The last name of Gilbert never crossed his mind.

Rocker had spent the season trying to avoid Gilbert at work. They shared no common interest, and while Rocker was willing to share his religious views with other players, “I stayed clear of Sean. The only time our paths crossed was in the locker room when you could smell him reeking from alcohol.”

But this was really Sean Gilbert on the telephone seeking his help, and the most intimidating player on the Ram roster was crying and asking to turn his life around.

“I thought it was a joke,” Rocker says. “When I realized how bad off he was, though, I jumped into my truck and drove over to his house. That night he became reborn.”

Just like that--overnight. The last night Sean Gilbert took a drink. No more parties, strip joints or substance abuse. “One day he’s the old Sean and the next he’s different, the difference being God just showed up,” Nicole says.

The day after meeting with Rocker, Gilbert was standing before his teammates, “and they were looking at me like I was crazy,” he says. “A day earlier, I’m cussing and drinking and carrying on, and now I was talking about being saved.”

For Rocker, it was more than a night never to be forgotten. His football career failed to approach his expectations, and now as he reflects, he believes he was brought to the Rams with a higher calling.

“I played a major role in this guy’s life,” says Rocker, who was cut a few weeks after assisting Gilbert. “The Lord needed me in Anaheim for this one reason--to help Sean Gilbert. The fact that I had some impact on this man’s life is as important as anything I accomplished in football.”

The Redskins now have one of the best defensive players in the NFC on their side, and as defensive coordinator Ron Lynn says, “anyone who thinks Sean Gilbert is soft hasn’t tried to block him.”

Gilbert collapses the pocket as a defensive tackle with pass-rushing skills, and his enthusiastic leg-kicking salutes to Redskin fans have already made him one of the team’s most popular players. He has three sacks and 44 tackles.

“When I’m on the field I’m coming at you,” Gilbert says. “Kill ‘em all and let the ambulance sort them out. When I’m out there, the guy across from me will drive me down the field and put me through the goal posts if I’m not playing like that, so I’m bringing it.”

The Rams had a new front office directed by Steve Ortmayer, a former Raider official, and a new head coach in Rich Brooks, and according to some within the organization, they were not impressed with Gilbert, who had found the Lord but could no longer locate the quarterback.

Remarkably, the Rams were willing to trade their best defensive player, and the Redskins responded.

“God doesn’t call cowards, but most people in the NFL think if you’ve got Christians on your team it’s a soft team,” Gilbert says. “But these guys won Super Bowls with people like that. You have alcoholics on your team who are beating their wives and they can’t concentrate in practice. If that’s how people want to think, fine, but on the field they will learn how wrong they are.”

Ram President John Shaw says he knew nothing of Gilbert’s alcohol problems, but he said he was aware of Gilbert’s religious revelation to the team two years ago. The trade to Washington, he says, was made because Gilbert had one year to go before becoming a free agent, and there was no guarantee he would have remained with the team.

Gilbert says the pain in his shoulders, which would require surgery, had taken the zip out of his game in St. Louis. He could not raise his arms, could not even pick up his young daughter, and so he became helpless against opposing offensive linemen, and after compiling 10 1/2 sacks in 1993, he had 8 1/2 in the next two years combined.

“They say my play declined, but when I had to get my shoulders operated on, it wasn’t religion, it was the beatings from being double-teamed,” Gilbert says. “If I hadn’t gotten saved they would have put an arm around me and said, ‘Yeah, he’s struggling, but he’s a tough, hard-nosed guy and he’ll be back.’ Once I began playing for the glory of God, everything changed.

“The whole thing is this--I was at peace because God had become alive in my life. The Rams weren’t pleased with that. They want the fellows hanging together, drinking beer and running as a team. They see someone like me and they become afraid I’ll take one of their cussy-cussers and convert him.

“But you know what, I was an alcoholic and all the money in the world couldn’t have delivered me from alcohol. I was a goner, but the Lord changed my life and gave me a second chance. Now I am doing the Lord’s business in Washington.”

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Then and Now

SEAN GILBERT WITH RAMS

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Year G Sacks Tackles 1992 16 5.0 45 1993 16 10.5 61 1994 14 3.0 47 1995 14 5.5 34

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GILBERT WITH REDSKINS

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Year G Sacks Tackles 1996 6 3.0 44

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(Southland Edition) Then and Now

SEAN GILBERT WITH RAMS