Redskins Feel at Home With Gibbs’ Approach

ASHBURN, Va. —  They were the irregular Joes.

Joe Gibbs, Joe Bugel, Joe Theismann -- once Washington’s most influential running mates this side of Pennsylvania Avenue -- shared the field at Redskins Park this week, with Gibbs and Bugel, his legendary offensive-line coach, working to revive the franchise and Theismann observing from the sideline.

“Feels like old times,” said Theismann, the quarterback-turned-broadcaster who led the Redskins to a victory in Super Bowl XVII. “Just hearing the plays being called, seeing ‘Bewgs’ too close to the huddle -- I used to yell at him all the time to back away from my huddle -- just the terminology’s the same, the plays are the same, all those things are the same.”

Time will tell whether Gibbs’ consistency will foster the same success he had in his first coaching go-around, when his teams won three Super Bowls and made the playoffs eight times in 12 seasons. After Gibbs retired in March 1993 and turned to stock-car racing, the Redskins made the playoffs once and went through five coaches: Richie Petitbon, Norv Turner, Terry Robiskie, Marty Schottenheimer and Steve Spurrier.

The new-look Redskins will make their exhibition debut Monday against Denver in the Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio.

Gibbs, who signed a five-year deal worth $28.5 million, didn’t wait until training camp to put his stamp back on the franchise. He began making changes right away. He had team headquarters repainted, and had a racquetball court knocked out to create more space for a luxurious players’ lounge, one with cushy leather couches, a fully stocked kitchen and plasma TVs everywhere you look. His goal was to create an environment that felt like home, a place players wouldn’t want to leave.

“This is an enjoyable place to be around again,” tackle Jon Jansen said. “The first couple years that I was here, with Norv and Marty, you liked coming and being around the coaching staff, you liked being around the guys.... [But] we got away from that. Now we’ve gotten back to it. It’s an enjoyable environment to be in again.”

When things weren’t so good, Jansen, for one, felt like a mercenary.

“It was an environment where you didn’t want to ask questions, you didn’t want to hang out, you just wanted to get your job done, get in and get out,” he said. “It’s miserable. It’s miserable with your family. Any time you see anybody, they want to talk about why you guys aren’t any good. It’s a miserable existence. You don’t feel right on any level.”

If it was bad for an offensive lineman, it was worse for Patrick Ramsey, who was sacked 30 times in 11 games last season, and may have taken as brutal a beating as any quarterback in the league. A lot of that was traceable to Spurrier’s system, which worked like a dream at the University of Florida but didn’t translate to the NFL. Often, there were too many receivers and too few guys sticking around to block.

“You can do as many exotic things as you want,” Theismann said, “but if your quarterback is laying on the ground, it’s not going to be very exotic.”

That’s why -- to the great relief of battling Redskin quarterbacks Ramsey and Mark Brunell -- Gibbs and Bugel have made protecting the quarterback a priority.

“I don’t think Steve Spurrier had that as a priority,” Theismann said. “I think that’s one of the problems that Steve ran into last year. He didn’t design any type of protection for his quarterback at this professional level until Week 8. That’s when things started changing, and he wasn’t calling the plays then. Sometimes when you have a philosophy that was so successful, and his was, you think it can just be moved to another level. It took awhile to find out that it just didn’t work out that way.”

Some people figured it out much quicker than others. Jansen said he and his fellow offensive linemen could see those sacks coming even before the ball was snapped.

“It’s amazingly frustrating when you can’t talk to the coaching staff to try and make things better,” he said. “You can’t even make them see that there might be a different way to do it. And when they bring seven guys and you’ve got five guys blocking, some guy comes free through the right side, ‘Well, it must be [guard] Randy [Thomas] and Jon’s fault.’

“There were times when we would line up, and it’s like, ‘I’m going to block this guy, but I know this other guy’s going to come around here and get him.’ You knew the block wasn’t there. You just took the lesser of two evils and hoped the ball got out. It was embarrassing.”

Bugel, who in the 1980s transformed an anonymous group of linemen into “the Hogs,” among the best offensive lines in league history, says he sees the same potential in this group.

“I told these guys, ‘Men, there’s a standard in Washington here where a lot of fans who go to the game watch the offensive line,’ ” Bugel said. “That’s been built up over the years. It’s kind of slipped over the last eight or nine years.... These guys are like a bunch of Dobermans. They want to be coached, they want to be pushed, they want to be disciplined.”

Like Theismann, a few of the old Hogs have dropped by to take a peek at training camp. Joe Jacoby has been by. So has Jeff Bostic. Jim Lachey has called.

“Their spirit is here,” Bugel said. “This bunch knows what they’re following. When you walk in that main corridor and see those three Super Bowl trophies, that’s Joe Gibbs.”

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Even before Detroit rookie receiver Roy Williams got his first pro start, he began working on his second career: acting.

Williams, the seventh overall selection who signed with the Lions this week after holding out the first 1 1/2 days of training camp, had a bit part this spring in “Friday Night Lights,” a soon-to-be-released movie on H.G. Bissinger’s outstanding 1990 book about high school football in Odessa, Texas.

Williams knows the subject well. Before becoming a star receiver at Texas, he played for the Odessa Permian Panthers, whose march to the state championship is profiled in the bestselling book. In the movie, Williams plays the coach of Midland Lee, Permian’s hated rival, and had the uncomfortable chore of wearing that school’s colors on the sideline.

“It felt like I was wearing an Oklahoma jersey,” Williams said. “I had on one of those coaches’ shirts with Lee on the front, some 1987 polyester pants.... “

He rattled off his only line -- “He ain’t gonna play! No way!” -- in a few takes and felt pretty good about his performance. Then again, he has an acting background. He took drama in junior high and once played a security guard in a dinner-theater play in Odessa.

“You see Shaquille O’Neal in the movies,” he said. “I can do that. That’s one thing I can do if I can find time in my schedule.”

But Williams has yet to read “Friday Night Lights,” which caused a stir in Texas because of the often unflattering light it cast on high school football in the state.

“I don’t think my mom liked the book,” he said. “She said some of it’s not true. My brother was playing at the time, and the author tried to interview him. My brother thought it was a negative book from the get-go.”

All that didn’t dissuade Williams from taking the part, though. And he’s looking forward to seeing himself on the big screen. The movie, which is directed by Peter Berg and stars Billy Bob Thornton and Tim McGraw, is scheduled for release Oct. 15. Williams knows this for sure: He never wants to wear that Lee shirt again.

“This was my first and last time for that,” he said. “Unless there’s a sequel.”

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Dallas Coach Bill Parcells, who abruptly released quarterback Quincy Carter this week, reportedly after a failed drug test, attaches a lot of importance to a player’s character. Before signing running back Eddie George and defensive end Marcellus Wiley this off-season, he quizzed some of his players about them.

“If you ask a player [about another player], he knows his reputation is on the line when he answers the question,” Parcells said. “When I said to Leo Carson, ‘Leo, I need to know about Wiley,’ Leo knows we are not having a casual conversation here. And the answer he gives needs to be as accurate as he can make it.

“Terry Glenn can tell me a lot about Eddie George, since he played with him in college.... When those guys get on the table for a guy and say, ‘Bill, this is your kind of guy,’ their reputation is on the line.”

One of the most memorable times Parcells recalls asking a player about another player was in his New York Giant days, when he asked defensive tackle Jim Burt about running back Ottis Anderson, a former college teammate at Miami. Burt’s response was quick and direct: “Get him on the team and hurry up about it.”

Anderson, who played his last seven seasons with the Giants after playing his first eight for the St. Louis Cardinals, went on to be named most valuable player of Super Bowl XXV.

Said Parcells: “It was a good answer.”

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There won’t be any Monday night games in California this season, a rarity. According to ABC executive Mark Mandel, that’s happened only once in the 35-year history of “Monday Night Football,” in 2000. The only MNF game played on the West Coast this season will be Dec. 6 when Dallas plays at Seattle.

Seeing as how the Left Coast is left out this season, is it a hint that little is expected of the Raiders, 49ers or Chargers?

“Since the NFL gives us our schedule,” Mandel said, “we’ll let them answer that.”