On further review, Gibbs didn't like play he'd called

[Schwartz Fan]

On further review, Gibbs didn't like play he'd called
THATSRACIN.COM OPINION
By Scott Fowler


Joe Gibbs messed up.

He wants you to know that.

Gibbs once coached the Washington Redskins to three Super Bowl titles in a dozen years. He was a driven man, blinded by ambition, who frequently slept in his office. His job was his life, and he did that job extremely well.

And that single-mindedness, Gibbs has decided, was an enormous mistake – one he is trying to make up for now, at age 68.

When his wife Pat pulls down a scrapbook of one of the Redskins' glory years with Gibbs front and center, the former football coach avoids the photographs.

“I don't even like looking at the older pictures,” he said when we spoke recently in his Huntersville office at Joe Gibbs Racing. “It makes me kind of sad.”

The Gibbs who stares back from those old football photos was a man motivated to win at the expense of his own family. And he did win. Not only as a coach – he also became a nationally ranked racquetball player in the bit of spare time he had.

But Gibbs lost, too. He missed a large chunk of his two sons' childhoods.

“He beats himself up a lot over that,” said J.D. Gibbs, the elder of those two sons.

Joe Gibbs took J.D. and his younger son Coy out to lunch not too long ago. All three of them work together now as part of Joe Gibbs Racing, based in Huntersville.

Remembered Joe Gibbs of what he told his sons at that lunch: “I said, ‘I just want to tell you guys something. The one thing I second guess about life is the time I was away from you guys when you were growing up…. If I had it to do over, I wouldn't be gone as much. So don't do what I did with your kids.' ”

Gibbs paused. “And the second part of that for me,” he said, “is I don't want to do that again with my grandkids.”

Ah, the grandkids. They are Joe Gibbs' salvation.

There are eight of them – four boys in J.D.'s family, three boys and a girl in Coy's family. Those grandchildren range in age from 1 to 11. They are chaotic, irrepressible and messy, and Gibbs adores them. He keeps a basketful of toys for them to play with in his office.

One of his grandkids has leukemia. That was one reason Gibbs chose to retire for good as an NFL coach after the 2007 season following his second stint as Redskins coach. All eight of the grandkids need him – although, to hear Gibbs tell it, not nearly as much as he needs them.

“The grandkids are my second chance in life,” Gibbs says.

It is partly due to those grandchildren that Gibbs, a devout Christian, published a book this summer called “Game Plan for Life.” In the book, he tries to leave a legacy based on a firm belief in God and an insistence on family time.

The book – in which Gibbs and a battalion of 11 Christian experts he recruited state the case for the Bible as a modern, relevant game plan for life – has already reached one of The New York Times' bestseller lists.

The book is one way Gibbs said he wants to maximize his second chance. He is trying to leverage his celebrity to get his message out. Gibbs not only won three Super Bowls with the Redskins, but his race teams have won three NASCAR championships at the highest level of stock-car racing.

But while Gibbs works in a high-profile way to ensure that his race teams remain competitive and his book gets read, he also works in a much quieter way to ensure that the grandkids who call him “Coach” get to know him fully. He tries to do something with at least a couple of them every day.

Said Coy Gibbs, Joe's younger son: “It's not like we're all hanging around and having a Sunday picnic every single day, but he is around a lot. Both my parents are. He's always taking the grandkids somewhere – although he still hasn't figured out quite what to do with that one granddaughter yet.”

And it is because of the grandkids that – despite having publicly retired twice from leading football teams – Gibbs is back coaching again.

'They don't give a flit'

Gibbs has spent much of his life around men in their prime, telling them what to do next. He is used to being respected, to a hush settling over a meeting room when he walks into it.

So he wasn't quite prepared for his job as an assistant coach for grandson Jackson's fifth- and sixth-grade football team in 2008. J.D. Gibbs, Jackson's father and Joe's son, was the head coach of the team, which plays eight-man football on a recreational level and mostly gets its players from SouthLake Christian Academy in Huntersville.

“Those guys don't give a flit who I am,” Joe Gibbs said, laughing. “Their fathers know me, but they don't. It's a real ego downer.”

Once, Gibbs was trying to teach the kids several new plays, which he had carefully diagrammed in his neat script. As Gibbs tried to explain the formation required, he kept getting interrupted and started to lose his temper.

“I bet I turned around 100 times and said, ‘If you're talking like that when you get to high school you'll be running laps all day,' ” he said. “I mean, they are yakking!”

Finally, as Gibbs started again, one kid pointed to the sheaf of plays Gibbs had spent so much time diagramming.

“Did you draw those or buy those?” he asked Gibbs.

“I'm going to kill you,” Gibbs growled.

But Gibbs has persevered through the interruptions. In fact, he has staged a coaching coup this year, deciding that he would replace son J.D. and become the team's head coach for the fall of 2009.

“I've been demoted,” J.D. said.

Because Joe Gibbs so much wants his grandson's team to get better, he held offseason practices at J.D.'s house on Tuesday nights this summer. The old coach would get out some of his Redskins film to study with his players. Then there would be a practice, a Bible study and ice cream.

“He really likes investing himself in the grandkids,” J.D. said. “That's what the football team is mostly about. After Jackson is too old for the team this year, my next-oldest son will be in the league. So we may be coaching for a long time together.”

Taylor and the video

When Gibbs returned to the Redskins in 2004, you could almost hear trumpets blaring. The most successful coach in the team's history was back. Surely, more glory days would follow.

It didn't work out like that. Gibbs did lead the Redskins to two playoff appearances in four seasons, but his overall record the second time around was 31-36. His wife Pat did not travel with him to Washington, preferring to stay in North Carolina near the grandchildren. Gibbs' son Coy – a former Stanford linebacker – was an assistant coach with him for three years in Washington but then returned to North Carolina and start a motocross team.

“It was a great experience for me and I learned a lot,” Coy Gibbs said. “But working for your dad isn't always the easiest thing in the world.”

Joe Gibbs returned to his workaholic ways for much of the time in Washington. He did fly home occasionally, though, once for his grandson Taylor's third birthday party.

That party was a lavish affair, themed by the movie “Cars.” Taylor had been diagnosed with leukemia at age two, which shook the Gibbs family to the core. Many lives changed to accommodate Taylor's frequent treatments and visits to hospitals and doctors.

Taylor's parents – J.D. and Melissa Gibbs – had a video made that was shown at Taylor's party. It featured Taylor and many of the people who had dedicated some of their own lives to help the boy through the first, scary months of diagnosis and treatment.

“So many people sacrificed for Taylor,” Joe Gibbs said. “But I wasn't in the video at all. I hadn't been around. And seeing that video just made me realize how little I had been involved.”

That year – 2007 – was an emotionally wrenching one for Gibbs on several fronts. It was also the year that Redskins safety Sean Taylor was shot and killed by intruders at his Miami area home. That death colored the rest of the Redskins' season a dull gray.

It was also the season that Gibbs made what he calls “my most crushing mistake as a coach.” He illegally called consecutive timeouts in a game against Buffalo in an attempt to ice the Bills' kicker, allowing Buffalo's Rian Lindell to make an easier 36-yard field goal in the final four seconds rather than a 51-yarder to beat the Redskins by a point.

Washington nevertheless won its final four regular-season games and made the playoffs before losing in the first round. After the season, Gibbs decided it was time to go – that his family needed him.

Since then, Gibbs has frequently accompanied grandson Taylor to his treatments, which are scheduled to continue for about nine more months.

“He got out of coaching at the right time,” J.D. Gibbs said of his father. “If he had been in Washington while Taylor was going through all those treatments, it would have really torn him up.”

Taylor, who has three older brothers, is currently in remission. “He's just as ornery as the rest of his brothers,” J.D. Gibbs said.

Said Joe Gibbs of Taylor: “He's my hero.”

‘The fourth quarter of life'

While Gibbs is remorseful for all the time he missed while his sons were growing up, those two sons long ago forgave him.

“You only know what you grow up with,” Coy Gibbs said. “Yeah, he was gone a lot, no doubt about that. On the flip side, not many kids get to hang out at an NFL training camp or go to Super Bowls. I remember mostly the good times. I definitely feel like he regrets it more than we do. I've got no hard feelings.”

Said J.D. Gibbs: “My family is not a deep, emotional family. We're a lot of football, a lot of rough-and-tumble. Yes, my father thinks he spent too much time on things that were fleeting, that didn't matter in the long run, and he has told us he wants us to make better decisions than he did. We're trying to. But as far as a father and a man, to me, he's about as good as they get.”

Gibbs has diabetes but is otherwise in good health. But he thinks a good bit these days about his own mortality. While he is invariably introduced as a man who has won both three Super Bowl and three NASCAR championships, he doesn't want those titles to be his legacy.

“I know I'm in the fourth quarter of life, probably in the two-minute drill,” Gibbs said. “And I know that when we leave here, we leave everything behind except for the influence we've had on others. So that will be my focus for the rest of my life. I'm going to make the most of my second chance.”


On further review, Gibbs didn't like play he'd called | www.thatsracin.com

[blueyedfairy_1]

They dont come ANY BETTER then Big Papa Joe!!!! The whole Gibbs family as a whole is good people... When Taylor got sick JD and Melissa was with him EVERYDAY... Even when he was better, to this day Melissa still goes to the hospital everyweek to visit other kids and volunteers....