It’s a new dawn in the NFL

Hey peeps, you might have missed it, but I’m here to tell you that there is a new dawn in the National Football League. A changing of the guard. A monumental seismic shift. A subtle slither.

Joe Gibbs is the mastermind behind this new millennium maelstrom. I know, I know, he’s an old guy. You say that he can’t think clearly enough to come up with anything new or revolutionary. Well, I’m here to tell you that he can and he did.

During Joe’s first tenure as an NFL coach, he introduced numerous innovative schemes and policies to his team. But, still, I thought of him only as a coach, a football coach. Sure, he was innovative. He utilized the counter play and the H back, but I was never sure if those were his ideas or just schemes foisted from the San Diego/Don Coryell school of football nuance. He was also a master motivator. Anyone who can make Dexter Manley, Gary Clark and Sean Taylor mesh into a team and be productive deserves recognition and respect.

But, now, dear friends, Joe has moved from the pantheon of football coaches to the realm of institutional restructuring. Joe is one of the first to realize that one can manipulate the NFL system unencumbered by the salary cap by focusing on assembling the best coaching minds money can buy.

Coaches’ salaries aren’t capped. Player salaries are. Little Danny believed that one could buy a championship by acquiring the best free agents. That was a monumental blunder. See Deon Sanders, Lavernaeous Coles and Jeremiah Trotter. Danny knew that one needed to acquire the best people for whatever job was needed. He reasoned that even though you can’t acquire all of the best players, he thought that if he got more than the Cowboys, he could bring a winner to D.C. Wrong.

As Joe settled into his second reign, he had an epiphany. He concluded that it’s not the players who are the most important to the organization. Free agency has made the players commodities to be bought and sold on the open market. Only a few elite players will be able to finish their careers with the team that drafted them.

So, Joe decided to concentrate on assembling the best coaching staff that he could find. He has hired Gregg Williams as defensive coordinator and Al Saunders as offensive coordinator. These two coaches are the best of the best. They could both be head coaches in the league, but since General Danny is willing to pay them head coach salaries to be coordinators, they both readily accepted the jobs. It’s a win-win situation for them. They get the pay of a head coach but much of the distasteful head coaching duties are handled by Joe.

It has been proven over the years that an outstanding coach can take mediocre talent and create a team that can win. The players are pawns for these coaches. If one player goes down from injury or leaves via free agency, these coaches will just plug in the second teamer and the team isn’t affected.

It’s the coach’s scheme that wins games. Of course, the players must perform up to a minimum level of competence, but no more. A team can’t have high salaried super stars at every position like the Yankees in baseball.

So, I’m giving Joe his due and jumping on his bandwagon.

You go, Joe. I’ll be rooting for the skins in Super Bowl 41.