The Redskins are back in camp this week, preparing for a second season of The Passion of The Gibbs. New faces abound and new strategies are being hatched, but there are old questions lingering from last year’s campaign and a tumultuous offseason that are never far away. Cable sports channels and the internet have bred a new type of football fan—where a decade and a half ago, local diehards might give even the preseason game only some passing thought, the Skins fan circa now follows the team year round. Draft day vagaries are obsessed over, personnel moves are parsed for hidden meanings, players are scrutinized for fantasy league potential…for some, it’s a year round pursuit. The rest of us are playing catch up ball. So let’s abandon the run, split five wide, and get down to the pre-preseason storylines.
1. The Legacy
There are two schools of thought on Gibbs’ potential in returning to coach. One side says that deep down, the basic fundamentals of the game haven’t changed much over the years, and that once they’re mastered, they’re always mastered. After all, Dick Vermeil and Bill Parcells made late-career returns to the sidelines and thrived, right? Certainly Gibbs should be no different. The other school of thought is that the pro-game has evolved by leaps and bounds since Gibbs first strode toward the sunset, on the field and in the boardroom, and it’s no place for a throwback coach who can’t step to the new. One season is in the bank for the Second Coming, and neither side has officially declared victory. But the rumblings in the sports editorials seem ominous. Like it or not, this is a put-up-or-shut-up year for the coach, and the critics will have their flashlights and luminol ready to dissect the season CSI-stizz.
2. The fate of Patrick Ramsey
Anyone who’s mustered up even an ounce of sympathy for our former QB of the future had to ache for his insertion last season, as Gibbs seemed to prefer not Ramsey but Rameses, a.k.a. the mummified corpse of Mark Brunell’s career. This DCist knew that the fans were reaching their limit when he attended last year’s Green Bay game and listened to the fans begging for Ramsey, then Hasselbeck, then Schroeder, then Laufenberg, then Wuerffel, and finally Jeff George. That’s when it became necessary to stand up and calm some people down. Ramsey hoped to be the clear cut starter this season, but then Jason Campbell got drafted. Now Ramsey’s the odd man out in the trio—the only QB on the roster not “handpicked by Gibbs.” Will the pressure make him? Or break him?
