In my eerie attempt to become Radley, I called Agitator fave Steve Czaban’s show tonight. My conspiracy theory:

Last week Chris Mortensen, a careful though not infallible journalist, reported that Redskins coach Joe Gibbs would cede the coaching reins to defensive coordinator Greg Williams at the end of the season because of his diabetes problems, and keep only his general manager and administrative duties. Czaban and his local show partner tried to get assurances from Gibbs that he would coach next year. Gibbs said his health is fine and he “planned” to coach.

Cue the X-Files soundtrack. The key question here is, assuming Gibbs is sincere, where did Mortensen, who doesn’t make stuff up, get the story? Jim’s hypothesis: Redskins owner Daniel Snyder’s people. This is the opening shot in a whispering campaign aiming to move Gibb upstairs. It’s a weird accusation, since not only is Gibbs, this season aside, the most successful coach in Redskins history, but he famously grew up idolizing the Joe Gibbs Mark I Redskins, eating chili in his parents’ basement while the games were on. But Snyder is also famously impatient and never one to sit tight through a three-game losing streak, and Williams’ defense is the shiniest bauble on his threadbare football tree. Bill Belichek was a stinko head coach his first time around. In the second act American lives are not supposed to get: two Super Bowl trophies.

And there’s an oedipal logic to it. Snyder idolized Gibbs, so Snyder must kill Gibbs. In a weird way, by visibly destroying the Gibbs legadcy - bring the Old Man back, watch him fail and shunt him off to the front office - Snyder makes the team his in a way it hasn’t been, 800 million dollar investment or no. It doesn’t work if the fans want Gibbs to stay (which most of us do, I think), but if he can get the “bad health” meme to take hold, and get Gibbs to retire after losing, then Snyder has smashed the Father-Idol. Is any of this remotely conscious on Snyder’s part? Not for a second. Do I believe my own cockamamie theory? Eh. The psychologizing, only half. The rest, two-thirds three-quarters easy.

The overriding principle for thinking about these things is: it’s likely to end badly because everything Redskins ends badly.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 29th, 2004 at 9:57 pm by Mystery Man and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.