Daniel Snyder extracted himself from the most untenable set of circumstances any man could have created for himself. He’s the Houdini or David Copperfield of NFL owners. How can you top Bill Parcells in Dallas? Bring Joe Gibbs riding in on a stretch limo to save the day, and send Steve Spurrier riding out on a golf cart to play. Daniel Snyder is the culprit here. Snyder destroyed Spurrier’s spirit—bringing [Foge] Fazio and [Joe] Bugel in to critique him, and that’s after he ran Schottenheimer off. We’re still going to have to deal with Mr. Snyder when Gibbs and Bugel go off and die. Let’s all pray for Mr. Gibbs’ health. Hope he doesn’t kill himself with work or that his boils aren’t replaced by a worse pain in the derrière—Snyderoids. The only news better than this is if Snyder sold the Redskins to Gibbs. Maybe Gibbs and Bugel can take Snyder down in that submarine they keep talking about and fire him out a forward torpedo tube at a depth of about 800 million feet. Football is not telemarketing, it’s a man’s game, and you, Mr. Snyder, are a little boy, and so is your Mini-Me, Vinny Cerrato. Park Redskin One and walk—in fact, walk from Landover Mall to FedEx Field, you little twit. And hey, little Vinny Cerrato, a piece of advice: Be careful. Joe Gibbs doesn’t need anybody to lose to him in racquetball. I know we’re supposed to get snow this week, but Gibbs’ staff is looking pretty white. Watch out for Johnnie Cochran on the all-out blitz. You can’t say anything bad about apple pie or Joe Gibbs, and I don’t want to. But a word of caution here on the Messiah coming down from Mount NASCAR: Two of his three Super Bowls were strike seasons, so they should have an asterisk next to them, and Bobby Beathard deserves more credit than he ever got. That Super Bowl loss to Oakland was a record-setting defeat. At the time of his retirement, Dallas was coming on like Attila the Hun riding a tidal wave. But this scenario now with Joe Gibbs was addressed in Shakespeare. Shakespeare said, ‘The cry went once on thee, and still it might, and yet it may again, if thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive, and case thy reputation in thy tent, whose glorious deeds, but on these fields of late, made emulous missions ’mongst the gods themselves and drave great Mars to faction.’ That’s Ulysses talking to Achilles in Troilus and Cressida. If that ain’t Joe Gibbs, I don’t know what is. He’d entombed himself in Charlotte, but NFL coaching is his whole life. This is what he does, he almost has to do this. He’s not a race-car owner, he’s a coach. An NFL coach. Not some ball coach. We’re going from counterproductive to counter-trey, we’re getting out of the rut and going to 50 Gut, from Who’s the Boss? to Boss Hog. I’m walking around out here thinking a lot about this: Joe Gibbs is working. They’ll be airtight. They’ll be sound. Just like it was before. Hail to Joe Gibbs and his attempt to climb Pete Rozelle’s Everest. And hail to the Redskins. Hail yes!”—Interview by Dave McKenna