By John Feinstein
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, January 7, 2008
5:35 PM
Some columns are easy to write.
Ripping the BCS presidents is a little bit like shooting fish in a barrel. They are such a bunch of hypocrites, claiming their corrupt, money-grubbing system exists because of academics, that they can't be criticized enough.
Writing today about the remarkable class of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger in the wake of his team's 31-29 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars on Saturday night would also be easy. While Jaguars quarterback David Garrard was being interviewed on NBC, Roethlisberger stood to the side and waited patiently for Garrard to finish so he could congratulate him. You don't see that very often from star athletes today.
This column, though, isn't easy because it touches on subjects that make many people queasy , especially in Washington: the Redskins, Joe Gibbs, religion and death. By taking on any of these topics -- especially by saying anything other than "Hail to The Redskins," "Hail to Coach Gibbs," "Hail to Sean Taylor," and "Hallelujah!" -- I know I am heading down a path that will make a lot of people unhappy with me. But someone has to say these things, if only so people will think about them, whether they choose to agree or disagree with anything I'm about to say.
First, the Redskins. The four-game winning streak that landed them in the playoffs was admirable. It also had a lot more to do with good fortune and Jason Campbell getting hurt than Taylor's tragic death. Inspired as they may have been, the Redskins looked no different in their first game after Taylor died than they had looked before he died. They couldn't hold a lead on a second-rate team with a rookie quarterback and lost to the Buffalo Bills.
The season actually turned around for Washington the following Thursday, when Campbell was hurt and Todd Collins became the quarterback. Whether it was because the system suited him; the team rallied behind a backup quarterback or that he simply avoided the critical errors that seemed to haunt Campbell in close games, the Redskins were better with Collins running the team than Campbell.
Good fortune played a role, too. They beat a very mediocre Bears team, then beat a New York Giants team that had all but clinched a playoff berth. They were very impressive beating the Minnesota Vikings on the road in a game that was pretty much for the last playoff spot. Then they beat a Dallas team that simply couldn't get excited about playing a meaningless game -- just as the Indianapolis Colts yawned their way through a loss to Tennessee (at home) earlier that day in a win-or-go-home game for the Titans.
And then the Redskins lost 35-14 to the Seattle Seahawks, a team that had beaten one team with a winning record all season. After all the talk about "destiny" being involved in the 21-point victory margin over the Cowboys, there was little talk about the margin in the loss to Seattle. With all the talk about the brave rally from 13-0 down, there wasn't much talk about the complete collapse in the fourth quarter or the fact that the margin of defeat -- destiny or no destiny -- was easily the widest of the four playoff games this past weekend.
On a local radio show Monday morning former Redskin Rick "Doc" Walker, who is as much of a Redskins flag-waver as anyone in town, was asked if it was fair for Campbell to have to compete for his job next summer after losing it to injury, not poor play.
"What has he won?" Walker asked. "What has anyone on this team won?"
A more than fair question. The Redskins were 9-8 this season in the remarkably weak NFC. They beat two teams with winning records -- the Giants playing for little and the Cowboys playing for nothing -- and needed overtime to beat the god-awful Jets and Dolphins. They were an okay team. If you were to read the papers, watch television or listen to the radio around here, you would think that Tom Brady would have to drive the Patriots 99 yards in the last two minutes to beat a team like this in the Super Bowl.
That's the nature of Washington and the media around here. I am not making this up: When Joe Gibbs returned four years ago, a column appeared in The Washington Post just about guaranteeing a return to the Super Bowl based on . . . the first play of mini-camp.
I kid you not.
The Redskins are now 31-36 after four years of Gibbs II. They have had two awful years and two decent years. They have won one playoff game -- which makes two playoff wins total in nine years of the reign of King Danny I. The Redskins won six playoff games during his first three seasons in Gibbs I, won a Super Bowl and lost another. Of course, back then he had a real general manager (Bobby Beathard) and an owner who could be mean-spirited and overbearing, but could also be charming and knew that he knew nothing about football.
Gibbs was named to the Hall of Fame based on his coaching in the 1980s and early '90s. Even now, he's still a very good coach who is as good as anyone who has ever lived at convincing his players that the only people in the world who believe they can win are those in the locker room. No one this side of Dean Smith has ever done more to turn his team into an underdog in every single game than Gibbs.
That's said with admiration. Other coaches try to do it; Gibbs does it. In 1987 he called a scab game during the players strike, "as great a challenge as any group of athletes has ever faced."
A scab game. The Redskins won. They also won the Super Bowl that year when the real players returned.
Gibbs was a great coach then. He's a good coach now. Give him a real general manager and he might be great again, even in his late 60s.
Now we come to the hard part: religion and death.
Gibbs, as everyone who has ever heard him talk for more than 30 seconds knows, is an evangelical Christian. He not only believes that Christianity is The Way, but that he needs to show others that it is The Way.
I find evangelicals in any religion a little bit frightening. This has nothing to do with my being Jewish, for those who are about to go down that road. I find rabbis who say Jews shouldn't marry out of the faith offensive, just as I find ayatollahs who say that anyone who doesn't subscribe to Islam isn't worthy of living to be terrifying. When my daughter was baptized, the priest who performed the baptism made the point that there is far more common ground between Christians and Jews than differences. I happen to agree with that.
What I don't agree with is anyone who tells me or anyone else that his or her way is the only way. I believe that religion should be private. I have no issue with what anyone believes as long as they don't tell me what I should believe. I have relatives who tell me I shouldn't work on Yom Kippur. I tell them how I choose to atone for my many sins is none of their business.
When Glenn Brenner, the wonderful WUSA sportscaster, died in 1997, Gibbs stood up at his funeral and said that Brenner had accepted Jesus Christ as his savior just prior to his death. Many of us who knew Brenner were skeptical about the comment, but even if it was 100 percent true, found it completely offensive that Gibbs chose a moment meant to celebrate Glenn's life to literally use the pulpit to claim that Brenner had "seen the light." If he did, fine, that should have been a private matter.
Gibbs did it again Saturday night. He was hooked up by Comcast Sportsnet to their postgame studio where Pete Taylor, Sean Taylor's father, had been brought in to participate in the postgame show. Why Pete Taylor was there is another question for another day. His presence made for maudlin television -- it wasn't his fault, it was the fault of whoever decided to invite him on the show.
But there was Gibbs, shouting -- really shouting -- that Taylor had found Jesus Christ before his death and, as a result of his death, many other Redskins had also come around. This was, according to Gibbs, a blessing brought on by Taylor.
With all due respect, Gibbs's evangelical rant was totally out of line. If his claim is true, name the players and then let them talk about how Taylor's death did or did not affect their feelings about religion. If Gibbs wanted to say (for the 900th time) that the players missed Taylor and mourned Taylor and played as hard as they could to honor Taylor -- that's fine. But for him to try to turn Taylor's death into a religious revival meeting of some kind just isn't right. Especially when Taylor isn't around to discuss how he feels on the subject.
Religion is a very touchy and controversial subject in the world, in sports and in football. Because the sport is so violent and serious injury is always potentially one play away, I have found that many players find comfort in believing that a higher power has a plan or is protecting them in some way. I understand that.
But I also remember a conversation I had while researching my book on the Baltimore Ravens three years ago. Ray Lewis, the Ravens unquestioned team leader, is also a devout Christian, much like Gibbs. Before every game, even though the team said the Lord's Prayer after then-coach Brian Billick's pregame talk, he insisted on gathering the players in a circle following pregame warmups and delivering a lengthy prayer, complete with thanks for the ability to play football and requests for the strength to do what had to be done to win the game -- and keep everyone healthy.
One Ravens player who participated in the prayer told me it made him terribly uncomfortable. "It was just too much," he said. "The notion that because we prayed we were better or more deserving people always bothered me."
Why then, I asked, didn't he leave the room during the prayer. "Because if I did, Ray and the other really religious guys would notice and it would upset them. Ray's the leader of our team. I couldn't possibly go against him."
Do you think it is any easier to go against your coach? To disagree with him when he says his way is The Way?
No. Anytime you disagree with someone who invokes God, you are going to be in trouble. I'm sure I'm about to learn that lesson again. But some things need to be said, even when staying away from the topic is far easier. If Gibbs wants to say, "Hail to the Redskins," that's more than fine. But that's where the public "hails" should end.
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