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The reason Joe Gibbs left in January '93 was burnout. He had developed migraine headaches, was tired of sleeping in his office several nights a week, and wanted to spend time with his sons before they were all grown up and left home. The owner he worked under was Jack Kent Cooke, who pretty much gave Gibbs and general manager Bobby Beathard free reign (and an open and very deep checkbook) to run the club. There were no real problems between them, the way that Norv Turner, Marty Schottenheimer, and Steve Spurrier have had with Dan Snyder.

However, Gibbs now has nothing left to prove in NASCAR, his sons are grown and married, and he probably figures that if Dick Vermeil and Bill Parcells can come back successfully, he could give it one more chance as well.

The effect on Snyder would be interesting because he knows that the fans will side with Gibbs in a heartbeat on any issue. Snyder will have to back off somewhat and let the professionals take over. However, what the media usually doesn't report is that Snyder is a very persuasive salesman when courting free agents, and is fairly innovative in working salary cap numbers. "Experts" have been saying for years that each year the team will hit the wall and have to start jettisoning players, but to this point that has never happened (Stephen Davis was let go primarily to let Spurrier mold the team to his liking, plus Davis wasn't willing to negotiate much off of his $11M cap hit for the '03 season, and cutting him allowed the Skins to sign WR Laveraneus Coles, G Randy Thomas, K John Hall, KR Chad Morton, etc.). So, with the right personnel man in the front office and Gibbs as the coach and Snyder as the salesman, this could work.

Hatteras, the Redskins have the makings of a very good offensive line in place. Chris Samuels and Jon Jansen are a very good pair of tackles, Randy Thomas is a good guard, and Derrick Dockery may turn out to be a fine guard as well (he was a rookie this season, so its hard to tell). Many of the hits the Redskins QB's took this year were as a result of blown blocking assignments by the RB's or TE's, not the OL, or just poor scheming on the part of Spurrier.

Owl, I have to say this comes as a shock. Nobody in the DC media saw this coming (if indeed it does come to fruition)!

I don't want to jinx you here, but just from looking at the media coverage, this thing has all the makings of a done deal.

I heard about it on the radio this morning and the first thing that came to mind was Dick Vermeil. I remember when we were coach shopping in '94 after the Richie Kotite era and there was a lot of talk about Coach V making a triumphant come back. I was on the fence and was eventually swayed against him by the argument "Do you think Wilbur and Orville Wright would do a good job managing Delta Airlines?" History has proven me wrong.

I wonder how big a roll Vermeil's involvement with broadcasting from the collegiate ranks played in him still being in tune with the game (same goes for Parcells, but, of course, he was away for a much shorter period of time)? Or maybe it's something that you never loose. I can't think, off the top of my head, of a coach who left the game for 10 years, came back and realized the game had passed him by.

Personally, I think it would be a good fit, and I'm really looking forward to a new era of titanic NFC East match ups!

Best of luck, but as always, not too much luck.

Owl_Eagle

" WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH"