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The players will not give up on Joe Gibbs

By Skin Patrol

Not all of them, at least. Mike Wise's column today was read after I'd visited the Fire Joe Gibbs Now website (which is apparently brought to you by Don and Mike) and there couldn't be a bigger contrast to how (some) fans are treating Coach and how (some) of his players are rallying behind him. It's a great piece in aggregate though I'm only quoting players throwing their support behind a Coach they still very much want to help win. Jon Jansen, for instance

"This is Washington. This is the Washington Redskins," offensive tackle Jon Jansen said. "This is a lot of history. This is Joe Gibbs."...

"Nobody wants to be the team that doesn't get Joe back to the Super Bowl or back to the playoffs," Jansen said. "I don't know what Joe wants to do personally, but I like playing for him. He's been good for me and my family. And I would feel terrible knowing that I couldn't help him out if this was his last year."

Chris Samuels:
"Coach Gibbs is the best coach I've ever had," [Chris] said yesterday. "I respect him. I admire him in a lot of ways. He definitely still has the passion. A lot of people want to question that, but I think he's a great coach. I think we need to pick our game up. The plays that they designed, we need to execute 'em. And we didn't do it."
Fred Smoot:
"That's the Gibber," Antwaan Randle El said, with affection. "What he's done in the past, we want to try and get back to that. You ask yourself, 'Why isn't it working?' "
Fred Smoot:
"You don't want to lose, period, but going through it with Coach Gibbs is a whole other plateau," Fred Smoot said...

"We got one of the best coaches ever," Smoot said. "Why would you turn on him? That's stupid."

If you had to be a team with question marks all about, an injury of indefinite length to your best player, with strong reason to suspect that the season could slip away at any moment, I'd rather have my players behind their coach than not.

Perhaps this is me donning some burgundy shaded glasses, but I can't help but love me some Joe Gibbs in spite of all the frustrating endgames, the below .500 record, etc. Thus I'll repeat my agreement with Chris Mottram; I think Joe Gibbs has earned his time in Washington and the way (some of) his players have rallied -- though we are still 5-4 -- behind him reinforces my belief that he's a great coach, even if I'm questioning some of the on-field calls, wondering publicly about his compatibility with the rest of the coaching staff, even while considering that the game has passed him by.

He is a Redskins institution. I just cannot ignore that.

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