He finds he still belongs

ASHBURN, Va. – Yes, there are times when Joe Gibbs still wonders why in the world he came back to the NFL to coach the Washington Redskins. Such as the last time he faced the New York Giants, who handed Gibbs his first regular-season shutout loss in 13 NFL seasons.

“I have all the normal feelings everybody else has,” Gibbs said after practice the other day at Redskin Park. “When you come back, you know there’s a chance things like that are going to happen. So you go into it with your eyes open. You go, ‘Gosh, is this the right thing?’ “

But every time the doubt creeps in, Gibbs invariably comes back to the expression that has been his mantra in his second coming as an NFL coach: This is where he is supposed to be.

“It’s what I lean on,” said Gibbs, a deeply religious man who says prayer is a big part of his life. “Any time I feel down, like we all do, I think about that. Hey, this is where I’m supposed to be. There’s a confidence knowing that God has put you here, and it’s a matter of you living this, doing the best you can, working the hardest you can, trying to make it happen. Whether it’s going to happen or not, we don’t know.”

For a while, it looked as if Gibbs’ return was an ill-fated decision. The Redskins went 6-10 in his first year back since the 1991 season, and after a promising 4-2 start this year, doubts arose as the Redskins lost four of their next five.

There were times when Gibbs, 65, looked overmatched. It looked as if he didn’t have that play-calling magic that set him apart in winning three Super Bowl championships with three different quarterbacks in his first run in Washington.

Gibbs wondered, too.

But the Redskins have won three straight, including a dominant 35-7 win over the Cowboys on Sunday, and have their playoff fate in their hands. If they win their next two games, starting today against the Giants, they will make the playoffs.

Gibbs still isn’t quite sure how it will work out, and this avowed worrywart knows things still could fall completely apart.

“You look at this and you say, ‘Am I going to go through a lot of adversity?’ That could be the case, because this thing is a tough deal. But again, I feel like this is where I’m supposed to be. That’s a good feeling, because I’d hate to be sitting in an old-age home saying, ‘I was supposed to do that (coach again), but I didn’t have the guts to do it.’ “

Gibbs said he rarely thought about coaching again throughout his 11 years away from the Redskins. He had built a championship NASCAR team with his two sons. He had enjoyed spending time with his wife and grandchildren, and never felt the tug of the NFL.

But then a sequence of events rekindled some relationships with football people, including Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who tried to convince Gibbs to return to coaching.

“I didn’t give it a thought for 11 years,” he said. “My grandbabies were with me, my kids were with me in racing, and we were trying to do something from a family standpoint with a family business. I figured my life was charted.

“Then, through a set of circumstances, which sometimes happens in life, which really to me didn’t add up at the time, I started seeing something there,” he said. “And it felt like I was supposed to come back.

“Having said that, I realized it might put me through some adversity. But every other time I’ve had adversity in my life, I didn’t like it when it was happening, but later, when I looked back at it, those were the best times of my life.”

Now, at 8-6 and with a football-crazed city desperate for success after only one playoff appearance in the post-Gibbs I era, the Redskins appear on the verge of doing something special. All because of this man, who possesses one of the greatest offensive minds in the history of the game, and who is back on top of his game after appearing as if the NFL had passed him by.

“When you get to this point in the season, it’s not about strategy, it’s about the players,” he said. “When you have the players, you have a chance.”

Sorry, Joe. You can have the best players in the world, but if you don’t have the right coach, they’re not going to play as well as they should.

Gibbs is the right coach, even if he still might be a few players away from winning another championship.

At least Gibbs senses he’s back where he belongs. Fans can expect the run to last a while longer, because Gibbs said his energy level is as high as it’s been in quite some time.

“I feel good,” said Gibbs, a diabetic who retired in 1991 partly because of health reasons. “Health-wise, I’m probably in better shape than I was a bunch of years before. Being a diabetic, I watch everything I eat. I feel great physically.”

He doesn’t look too bad mentally, either. We’ll see just how good today against the team that only a few weeks ago made him wonder whether coming back was worth the trouble.