Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches by Gary Myers Page B

prohibited from calling consecutive time-outs. Gibbs didn’t know the rule and called time-out again to ice Lindell just before Lindell would have attempted the kick a second time. Gibbs thought the official on the sideline had given him the okay. The flag went up, and Gibbs’s heart sunk. He had blown it. The unsportsmanlike conduct penalty cost 15 crucial yards, moving the ball to the 18-yard line. Lindell then drilled a 36-yard field goal to win the game.
    “I will never forget it,” Gibbs said.
    He was sixty-seven years old. His age had nothing to do with him blanking out on the rule. Less than one week earlier, one of his best players had been murdered. He won’t use that as the reason. He says he wasn’t distracted. “I just think it was a terrible mistake,” he said. “There was no excuse for it. I did it. I don’t think you make an excuse for something like that.”
    It had been the worst week in Redskins history. It wasn’t supposed to end with the iconic coach, the glue of the Redskins, losing the game. “When I first saw the commotion, I was hoping it had been a procedural penalty on Buffalo,” left guard Pete Kendall said after the game. “After that, after it was explained, my first thought was I felt for whoever called that. To find out that it was Coach Gibbs, after the week that he’s been through, my heart just breaks for him.”
    In the end, it did come down to Gibbs making a mistake. But it would have been tough for the Redskins to beat any team that day, even a team as poor as the Bills, who finished 7–9 that season. The Redskins were still in pain. Gibbs knew by looking at his players before the game that “they were wanting to, but just couldn’t. It just wound up being a huge disappointment for all of us.”
    And the players knew by looking at his face that he was tired and worn out. Gibbs had been through a lot in the last week. The team had been through a lot. Now there were whispers that his blunder against the Bills was proof that he never should have returned to the sidelines. Had the game passed him by? It was the same criticism Tom Landry faced at the end of his twenty-nine-year run as the Cowboys’ coach. This is a results-oriented business, and when the team is not having success, it’s the coach who gets the blame. This was new for Gibbs. In his first life with the Redskins, he was considered an innovative coach. When he walked away two months after the 1992 season, he left at the top of his game. He wanted more time with his family—that’s what they all say—and had driven himself so hard that leaving when he did was the right thing to do. He had taken the Redskins to the playoffs eight times and won three Super Bowls in twelve years. He said his decision had nothing to do with his health, his racing team, or the Redskins. It was simply family-related. His son Coy was playing at Stanford, and Gibbs had seen him play only twice. He felt guilty.
    Gibbs did reveal that late in the 1992 season he had been unable to sleep and had developed a nervous twitch, which ultimately was blamed on exhaustion. His decision to leave shocked the Redskins simply because so much time had passed since the end of the season. But after a family vacation in Vail, Colorado, his mind was made up. It was time to go.
    “Every year, we get away and talk about it,” Gibbs said at the farewell news conference in 1993. “We always reach the same conclusion. This year, it was different. The boys didn’t encourage me one way or another, but they understood when I told them what I was thinking. I think Pat’s happier than anyone. This isn’t an easy lifestyle for a coach’s wife. The coach is the guy who stands up and hears everyone tell him how great he is. The wife is the one waiting at home alone while the coach is spending every night at the office.”
    When he returned to the Redskins, Gibbs promised his wifehe would stop sleeping in the office. It was a promise he could not keep. Gibbs knew