Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [100]
“[I] never had a chance to earn what I was making,” he said.
Jack Pardee replaced Allen after the 1977 season, and Riggins enjoyed the finest stretch of his career, breaking the one-thousand-yard mark in consecutive seasons and winning the NFL Comeback Player of the Year Award in 1978. With the start of the new decade, Riggins felt he had out-performed his $300,000 per year salary and demanded the Redskins raise it to half a million. He announced his “retirement” and sat out the entire 1980 season.
Without Riggins, the Redskins struggled mightily in 1980, and Pardee was fired three weeks after the season. But the club refused to increase his salary. Still, Riggins returned to the team in the summer of 1981. The man who helped rescue Riggins back from the wilderness (literally) was Washington’s new coach, Joe Gibbs.
Five months into his first head-coaching job, Gibbs journeyed to rural Kansas and personally met with Riggins to see if he could coax him out of retirement:
When I got the job, everyone said, “You got to get John Riggins back here.” Of course, he sat out the year before in a contract dispute, and everyone got fired. I didn’t want to get fired. Without saying anything to anybody, I got on a plane. Flew to Lawrence, Kansas. Got a rental car. Went to the first corner gas station and said, “Do you know where John Riggins lives?” They said, “Yes, I do. Out down the dirt road.” I pulled up on the back of this farmhouse. I knocked on the door, and I always say, I knew I had a chance to get John Riggins back because his wife answers the door, her hair’s up in rollers, kids are running through the house, and says she wanted to come back.
I said, “Get me an appointment with John Riggins. I’ll be at this motel.” Got up the next morning. The [voicemail] red light was on. It said I got a breakfast appointment at 10 a.m. I put my best stuff on. Young coach. I go roaring out there. Pull up to the back of his farmhouse. First time I laid my eyes on John, he’s walking across the back of the courtyard. He’s got a buddy with him in camouflage outfit. They had been hunting that morning. It’s 10 a.m., and he has a beer can in his left hand. I said, “I can tell he’s impressed with me!” I sit down at the breakfast table and man, I start my sales pitch.
Gibbs’ charm worked on Riggins, and in July, he was back at training camp, ready to don the Redskins’ burgundy and gold.
“I’m out here trying to act like a young kid, which I’m not, and it’s not easy,” said the ninth-leading rusher in NFL history. “I can’t do that and learn the plays, too. I thought about using something to cover up my gray hairs, but I skipped that.”
By October, Riggins regained the role of feature back, and in Gibbs’ power-running system, he began to flash shades of his former self. During a Week Five win at Soldier Field, Riggins upstaged a sore-legged Walter Payton, rushing for 126 yards on twenty-three carries as Joe Gibbs notched his first win as Washington’s head coach.
Three weeks later, Riggins gained only fifty-six yards on the ground, but his trio of rushing touchdowns was the difference in a 42-21 win over the Cardinals. St Louis’ featured back—twenty-four-year-old Ottis Anderson—racked up twice as many yards on the ground, but failed to get in the end zone as the woeful Cardinals fell to 3-6.
Despite splitting the carries with Joe Washington, Riggins’ thirteen rushing touchdowns tied for the most in the NFC. Gibbs rewarded Riggins with an increased offensive load, and he responded with a remarkable half season. (Nearly two months of the 1982 season was canceled by a players’ strike from mid-September to mid-November.)
Riggins