Let me caveat this post by first making it clear that I love Joe Gibbs. He is the quintessential Washington Redskins icon and is responsible for all three of the Redskins Superbowl rings. I also believe that, no matter what a coach has done, they are never completely above criticism. Even Hall of Fame quality coaches make mistakes on occasionally.
How a coach handles the media is largely irrelevant to their ability to coach a football team. Whether Bill Parcells insists on ducking Terrell Owens related questions has little bearing on the outcome of an actual Football game. A press conference cannot change the score of a game. So please do not assume that any criticism of how Joe Gibbs handles himself in press conferences is a criticism of him as a coach.
Joe Gibbs' press conferences are usually uninformative. He will come out and repeat the same trivialities that rarely reveal anything substantive about what needs to be done or how he will go about doing it. It's typically "well, gee, willickers..." type stuff.
Trolling around Jason La Canfora's Redskins Insider Blog, I noticed that one of his readers had posted the following that I am repeating here with that reader's permission because I thought it was hysterical.
From CPRunning=WIN--
If Joe Gibbs were the captain of the Titanic:
Crew Member - "Sir, the ship is sinking!"
Joe - "Well the good thing is we are all in this together."
Crew Member - "Uh, how exactly is that suppose to be comforting?"
Joe - "Well we got some real good character crew men onboard."
Crew Member - "I'm sorry, let me rephrase, what are we doing to keep from sinking into the frozen Atlantic?"
Joe - "Well I can't comment on that until I have a chance to see the tape of us hitting the iceberg."
Crew Member - "But didn't we hit the iceberg when first mate Brunell tried to squeeze through 4 different icebergs?"
Joe - "Well the first mate showed me a lot of things out there, and I think we are going to use him to navigate the life rafts."
Crew Member - "But Sir, don't you think we should use the younger, faster, stronger 3rd mate to man the life rafts? I mean we all love the first mate, but hasn't he just gotten us into this mess."
Joe - "No."
Crew Member - "I see, well do you think we should have the 3rd mate ready in case we get out onto the Atlantic and something happens to the first mate?"
Joe - "No."
Crew Member - "But Sir, if we don't prepare 3rd mate Campbell, then we will be stuck with the second mate and that doesn't really give us much chance of survival, does it?"
Joe - "Well we won't have to worry about that because nothing will ever happen to first mate Brunell and everything will turn out fine."
Crew Member - "Uh Sir, I just wanted to inform you that while we were having this conversation all of the life rafts have just floated away."
Joe - "Well, the good thing is we are all in this together."
--
If you've seen Joe Gibbs' press conferences, that should be funny. If you can't laugh at your own team, I pity you. Thanks for that CPRunning=Win.