Gibbs switched gears, but he's still in the fast lane
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On the first Sunday of the National Football League season, Joe Gibbs, the Hall of Fame coach who created a Beltway buzz when he returned to Washington in 2004 for a second tour of duty with the Redskins, is nowhere near a football stadium.
On this resplendent day, Gibbs is in an entirely different arena as he navigates the hustle and bustle of Richmond (Va.) International Raceway's garage. His approach, however, is no different.
It is about an hour and a half before the start of the Chevy Rock & Roll 400, the cutoff race that will determine the 12-man field for NASCAR's Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship, and Gibbs girds himself for game time the same way he did on the gridiron when he toiled for 16 years as head coach of the Redskins, with whom he compiled a 154-94 record and won three Super Bowls.
"I'll be a minute. I'm just going to have a team meeting with the guys," he says, ducking into Denny Hamlin's hauler to give the crew of the No. 11
No longer part of the gladiatorial NFL, the 67-year-old Gibbs is running full throttle in NASCAR's chariot races as principal owner of Joe Gibbs Racing, a formidable three-car stable that will field
And it seems to suit Gibbs just fine.
"Well, I wouldn't say the stress level is different, mainly because we've got so much riding on this," Gibbs says. "Obviously, the difference over here, too, is that I've got to pay the bills and we've got to make sure that things go well and we keep people happy over there, because it's usually important to the people we got working back at the race shop.
"What we have over here is we've got about 400 families counting upon us to make good decisions so that they can keep their job and keep working with us. So there is a lot of pressure. It's just the role for me is different, it's an ownership role.
"When you stop and think about it, obviously, there's a lot of pressure for everybody opening their first games in the NFL. I remember how nervous I was and all that, but it's the same nervousness over here."
Football, with all of its attendant demands, he says, is not far removed in that respect from racing.
"The thing I wasn't sure of when I came over here, I was not aware what it would be like, but what it wound up being like, I tell everybody, is it's exactly like football," says Gibbs, who founded his race team in 1991 and went on to win the 1993 Daytona 500 with driver Dale Jarrett and three NASCAR championships with Bobby Labonte (2000) and Stewart (2002, 2005).
"The comparisons are unreal. Over there, you've got quarterbacks, over here you've got drivers. Over there you've got coaches, over here you've got crew chiefs. Same thing.
"You watch 'em, for me it's the same thing."
The toughest time
Gibbs says he sometimes chuckles to himself when he sits perched atop the pit box and watches crew chiefs obsess over decisions. He's been there and done that, to a certain extent.
"Watching them try to make a decision on race day and what calls to make - two tires, four tires, come in now, stay out - those are the type of decisions we made on the sideline," Gibbs says. "Everything that's happened to me in football has happened to me over here."
Nothing in racing, though, could have prepared Gibbs for dealing with the emotional swells he dealt with the last four seasons with the Redskins, particularly his last in 2007 when Gibbs shepherded a 5-7 team to four consecutive wins and an NFC wild-card berth on the heels of the devastating loss of All-Pro safety Sean Taylor, who died last Nov. 26 from a gunshot wound suffered while confronting an intruder in his Miami home.
"All my years of coaching never came close to anything with what happened to Sean," Gibbs says. "It was a huge thing to deal with, and for the team to deal with. It sent a shockwave through everything."
The day before Taylor's death, the Redskins dropped to 5-6 with a 19-13 loss at Tampa Bay, then suffered a 17-16 loss to the Bills in their first game following the tragedy.
"It took us a while to get back on track after that," Gibbs says, "But then to see that team turn around at the end of the year and play four of the best games I've seen anybody play in a row - against some real first-class people like Minnesota, the Giants, we beat the Bears, and beat Dallas. I mean, that's stout.
"For them to come back and do that was just unreal, and it was a great finish to the end of the season and I was hoping we were going to go further."
The season concluded Jan. 5 with a 35-14 playoff loss at Seattle, which probably proved to be a blessing for Gibbs, who was torn devoting his time and energy to Daniel Snyder's football team at a time when his presence was badly needed at JGR's team shop back in Huntersville, N.C., where his 39-year-old son, J.D., the team's president, had his hands full not only with team business but with family matters.
In addition to presiding over decisions involving JGR's switch in manufacturers from Chevrolet to Toyota, the hiring of the enormously talented Busch, and the rapid development of 18-year-old wunderkind driver Joey Logano, J.D. also dealt with the leukemia fight of his 2-year-old son, Taylor, who is now 3 and in remission.
"It was a huge deal for me, and I wanted to be here," but I was really torn on that," Gibbs says. "Of course, there was a lot of things going on with racing, but I stayed pretty much focused on the Redskins because you have to.
"What I've told people is that you can't do that job without being totally committed to what you're doing, you just can't. People have said, 'Surely, you can get away from it,' but you can't, because you have so many people counting on you.
"But I felt like, it was definitely after the season, and I came back for a visit at home and after that, I kind of felt like it was the time for me to . . ."
Gibbs returned to be with his family - including eight grandchildren - and his extended racing family of 400 people.
Always the coach
"It was good timing," J.D. says. "If he had coached a few more years, we would've been fine. We've got a real strong group from a leadership standpoint, but to have him back is always great, because he's a great guy to bounce ideas off and to build a team and that's what he's good at, so it was good to have him back."
Did the stresses of the last season with the Redskins wear on his father?
"It did," J.D. says. "I think whatever he does, he's so into it, he shows his emotions on his sleeve. If they wouldn't have finished off strong, I think he would've felt obligated to stay another year. The way he was able to leave on a high note, that made him feel pretty good about the whole situation."
But that's not to say Gibbs still doesn't have an itch to coach football. He still lends a hand coaching his grandsons.
"For him to be back, helping coach my kids' football team and all that stuff is invaluable from a family standpoint," J.D. says. "I laugh because when he came back from Canton, Ohio, after watching those guys [Art Monk and Darrell Green] get inducted, he comes back the next day to a bunch of 10-year-olds who don't know who he is, don't care, and don't listen to him."
J.D. rears back and laughs.
"Oh, how the mighty have fallen," he says. "They were more interested in a water break. But he has fun with it."
While it is meaningful to see his father, in his first year back full time with the team, involved in another playoff hunt for the Sprint Cup, J.D. is asked if Coach Gibbs misses the fact the 2008 NFL season has started without him.
"Oh, I think he'll always miss it," J.D. says. "He loves that competition and he loves being a part of it, but, hey, we have that over here, so he won't miss it a whole lot because we got it going full speed on this side, too."
