A Good Move: Gibbs Can Leave With His Head Held High

Gibbs can certainly leave with his head held high, despite his team's sub-.500 record and one playoff victory in his four-year encore. Anyone who even dares to think that his Hall-of-Fame career has been tarnished over that span need only look at his masterful and truly inspiring performance over the last month to know the foolishness of that premise.

Still, with all of that being said, and despite the insistence of both Gibbs and Snyder that the organization has been stabilized with greater glory just around the corner, we're not quite prepared to take such a gigantic leap of faith.

If anything, Tuesday's news conference confirmed what we've suspected all along, that Snyder remains very much in the decision-making loop on all matters pertaining to his football team. He may have taken a far lower profile in recent seasons, demurring to his childhood idol as the public face of the organization. But when Gibbs said Tuesday that "over four years, we made all the decisions together," that should not necessarily be taken as a positive sign for the future of this franchise.

The translation ought to seem obvious. There's a reason Snyder steadfastly refuses to hire a general manager for his team: he clearly still thinks of himself as the de facto GM. He is The Decider on all things football, and enabler Vinny Cerrato apparently will continue in perpetuity as his main yes-man.

With Gibbs moving on, once again we're left to wonder if there will be anyone else in the building, including his next head coach, with the moxie to stand up to the 43-year-old owner and tell him how much he doesn't know about building a championship team. For now, we'll take Snyder at his word that he listened and learned from Gibbs over the last four years. But it also won't take very long to see how much he actually retained.

Gibbs now takes on the nebulous role as a so-called adviser to Snyder, and no doubt will be trying to convince him to avoid the temptation of going after a big-name coach and keep some continuity in place by hiring Gregg Williams, the team's assistant coach for defense, as his replacement. That would be the prudent choice, popular with many players who have already gone on record as saying yet another upheaval -- the sixth head coach in Snyder's eight-year tenure -- would be counter-productive.

Bill Cowher? His long-time mentor and best friend in football is Marty Schottenheimer. You think Marty is telling him to take the money and run to the Nation's Capital to coach for a man who fired him after what Schottenheimer has always said was the best coaching job of his life, salvaging 8-8 from an 0-5 start?

Does Snyder truly understand the virtue of patience? Or will the owner now revert to his flash-over-substance days of trying to corral the biggest names on the planet -- players and coaches -- to come work at what had always been a dysfunctional Redskins Park in the pre-Gibbs days?

As for the football team Gibbs leaves in his wake, it's definitely in better shape than when he arrived following the Steve Spurrier disaster, but still far behind the league's elite. New England 52, Washington 7, the fourth worst loss in franchise history and the worst loss of Gibbs career, offered a slap-in-the-face benchmark on how far this team still has to go to approach that lofty level.

There is a promising kid quarterback with great potential, but until Jason Campbell stops throwing critical interceptions in the fourth quarter, pardon us for holding off on anointing him the savior of the franchise. They're still in desperate need of a big, physical wide receiver, and Santana Moss drops far too many balls. The offensive line should be better with the addition of injured Jon Jansen, but running back Clinton Portis -- despite his late-season rush -- may well be on the down side after six seasons of pounding.

Williams' defense held up for the most part. The front four pass rush greatly improved from a year ago. But replacing Taylor, their most talented player, won't be easy and they'll likely lose their best corner, Shawn Springs, to free agency. Middle linebacker London Fletcher had a fine season, but at 33 is hardly a long-term fixture, and once-promising outside linebacker Rocky McIntosh has to be a question mark going in to the offseason after major reconstructive knee surgery. And did we mention the club is $20 million over the salary cap?

But this is all hot stove stuff, with plenty of time before the draft in April and training camp in July to contemplate a Redskins future without their Hall of Fame coach.

For now, why not just give it a rest and simply say it one more time? Good for Joe Gibbs, good for his family, good for his health and good for his future. And good for the followers of Washington's favorite sports franchise that he graced us all with his pride, his patience, his passion and his presence one more time before exiting with pure class, a welcome smile and that signature cackle we'll not soon forget.

Leonard Shapiro can be reached at Badgerlen@hotmail.com or badgerlen@aol.com.