If we’re going to talk about the Redskins, let’s start with these hopeful nuggets to look for in this Saturday’s game: T.J. Duckett, who came to Washington in a trade for a 3rd round draft pick, needs only 864 yards rushing against the Giants to have his first 1,000 yard season as a Redskin. If he scores 7 touchdowns in the game, he would equal his highest season total as a professional (8). [A nod of the rabbit ears to the Slouch for inspiration]

Well, that’s better, now, isn’t it?

If you’re a fan of the NFL, you know that Joe Gibbs’ second tenure as the Washington Redskins’ head coach has been a disappointment. Gibbs had retired from coaching the Redskins after the 1992 season, and then spent the next decade building Joe Gibbs Racing from a small organization into a multi-million dollar company with hundreds of employees; one of the most successful NASCAR teams on the Nextel Cup circuit. JGR won all the big races including the Daytona 500, the Brickyard 400, and Cup championships with drivers Bobby Labonte and Tony Stewart.

While fortune, perseverance and quickly learning corporate management skills helped reward Gibbs with success as a racing team owner, things did not go well for the owners of the Redskins. The Cooke family and subsequent owner Dan Snyder tried a variety of coaches and management teams over the next decade, with little success and a fair amount of embarrassment (i.e. Deion Sanders and Jeff George).

In January of 2003, Snyder and Gibbs struck a deal for Gibbs to return to being Head Coach of the Redskins, and was also given the title of Team President (reporting to Snyder). Gibbs started putting the old Band back together, hiring Joe Bugel, Don Breaux, Jack Burns and Earnest Byner, but adding new faces like Gregg Williams (Assistant Head Coach – Defense), recently dismissed from his head coaching job at Buffalo.

The 2003 Redskins compiled a poor 6-10 record in Gibbs first season back, despite good defensive play under Williams, who ran the defense with a relatively free hand, as Gibbs’ football background is as an offensive coach (Gibbs depended on Richie Pettibon to run the defense in his first tenure with the Redskins). They had a rough start in 2004 with a 5-6 record at the end of November, but showed new life after Head Coach and Team President Gibbs held direct meetings with his players after Thanksgiving and connected with them on a personal level. Despite criticism that the team ran a very basic offense, the team responded with 5 straight victories and finished the regular season with 10-6 record, earning a spot in the post-season playoffs. They won their first round playoff game but lost to eventual NFC champion Seattle. Things were moving in a positive direction.

The team spent a lot of energy and money in the off-season with flashy pickups on both the player and coaching fronts, and many predicted the Burgundy and Gold were set to go deep into the playoffs and possibly to Gibbs’ fifth Super Bowl appearance. As one of the key off-season moves, Gibbs fired himself as the Redskins’ offensive coordinator and brought in impresario Al Saunders, who was the Coordinator for the stat-racking Kansas City offense under Dick Vermiel. The Redskins looked loaded for a big run to the playoffs, and Gibbs, by relieving himself from the burden of having to be Offensive Coordinator, could concentrate on being Team President, Chief Motivator, and Personnel/4th Down Decider (sound familiar?).

Instead, the Redskins have floundered to a 5-10 record to this point in 2006, and Saunders’ infamous 700-page offensive playbook (remarkably not titled “Achieving Goals by Running Sideways, or, New Way Forward Utilizing Indirectness: a Theoretical Study in Predictability”).

So, where did it all go wrong?

As with any complex problem, there are a variety of reasons, but I think the big problem is a simple one: Joe Gibbs appears to be managing the Redskins like a big NASCAR team.

A large modern multi-car NASCAR “team” fielded by a single owner (like Gibbs) has an administrative organization that manages the facilities, resources, and communications (like an NFL front office) of the corporation. The central organization also has groups that produce basic race car components such as chassis and engines for all of the race teams. But each of the individual race teams (one team per car) have a distinct and separate management structure and staff that report to a Crew Chief. The Crew Chief is the undisputed car/team leader and coach of the race team. He’s the boss, no if’s, and’s or but’s. All of the guys on that team – the engine tuners, chassis and suspension engineers, the strategists and pit crew - are dedicated to getting their car and driver across the finish line first. But on a day to day basis –including Sundays - they answer to and take their motivational cues from the Crew Chief. Think a tire changer who does not get all five lug nuts back on the left front during a pit stop isn’t going to get both barrels from the Crew Chief; who has to tell the driver to come back to the pits to have the missing nuts installed, losing a lot of track postion in the process?

Now, if you’re starting to think, “Hey, the administrative organization sounds like an NFL front office. And each of those crew chiefs could be compared to the coordinators of the offense, defense, or special teams. The drivers, tuners, engineers, and pit crew might be skill positions like, quarterbacks, defensive backs, or offensive linemen.” And you’d have a good analogy.

So, when Joe Gibbs started building his new football organization, it’s possible that he took the successful model and philosophies he’d used in North Carolina, and used them at Redskins Park. Make each of the Associate and Assistant Head Coaches and Coordinators roughly equivalent to a Crew Chief, and relatively complete autonomy over their domains. Driving a large amount of management and communications responsibility down to the small teams (note individual coaches for Safeties and Cornerbacks) requires a lot of coaches (at 21, the Washington has the highest number in the league), and depends on excellent communications among a lot of people in order for the team as a whole to be successful.

But a big problem with applying the NASCAR model to football is that the Crew Chiefs and teams within a single organization are in competition with each other on Sunday. Each of them are trying to beat the other guys, including the other cars in their same stable. Crew Chiefs on the same team do not typically share a great deal of information with the other teams in the organization, because an individual item of knowledge can be an advantage, an advantage that Chiefs would protect as long as possible. So, the NASCAR organization does not put a premium on, foster, or facilitate a high degree of cross-team communications, because the Crew Chiefs naturally want to maintain any competitive advantages they have over anyone else, including the other Crew Chiefs in the organization.  So, when we read Tom Friend’s article on ESPN.com a few weeks ago, we saw some very familiar behaviors. Hoarded information. Limited communications. Divided loyalties. Divisive leadership and empire-building. Hypercompetition between teams in the same organization. A lack of high-level team cohesion. You could see this manifest itself early in the 2006 season, when Washington racked up an alarmingly high rate of penalties per game; neither the offensive or defensive units appeared to have all 11 guys on the field playing from the same pages of the playbook.A football team is a single team that wins or loses together. A winning team responds to a single unquestioned leader, with all acting to his will on the gridiron. All coordinators, coaches and players need to submit their egos and wills to the betterment of the team, as dictated by the Boss and Chief Motivator. Gibbs proved that there’s hope for this team last season, when he pulled the players around him and the team romped through December 2005.But when he returned to NASCAR-style business as usual this season, and divorced himself further from the team by turning the offense over to Al Saunders, he demotivated his players, who probably could not help but think that he wanted to be an office Executive and not their Coach.My solution? Streamline the coaching staff to just those willing to put the team above their own egos, and put Gibbs not in front of TV cameras, but in front of the players every single week. Gibbs needs to exert his considerable personal skills and charm over this team. They need to know and love and fear the man, not his reputation. Hands-on management, not executive management, not Crew Chief or Assistant/Associate Head Coach management. This is a people problem, one that cannot be fixed with organizational changes. And Gibbs is that person. Not that Team President, not that NASCAR Executive. They need The Man.Next: What benefit can Gibbs’ NASCAR experience bring to the Redskins? The answer is: Technology?    bc Thanks to Curmudgeon for not ROTFL when I brought this idea to his attention. © Copyright by the author 2006, all rights reserved.