The Jack Pardee Years

[SmootSmack]

This thread is more so for the backrows and longtimefans of this board. I've always been kind of curious as to what the Jack Pardee years (1978-1980) era was like in Washington, DC.

Seems to be like he wasn't too bad a coach, but he ultimately got run out of town because apparently he and Beathard weren't on the same page right?

Anyway, we always hear about George Allen and Joe Gibbs and for good reason. But I was hoping to get some first hand anecdotes of the Pardee years. Was he a good coach? Did the fans like him? The players? Could he have gotten the team to a SB if given a couple more years? What was his style?

Thanks

[backrow]

It was....................................short. Players and fans liked him, but the teams were old and lost too often.

Maybe the FO was against him, but us fans did not have the same inside info as we have in today's world, with the i-net, talk forums, blogs, and Redskin insider. All we really had was the local paper (VAPILOT), which by that time, I had stopped taking because it was and is trash.

I liked the Pardee story because he was a Skin Cancer survivor, and I remembered him from his hard hitting playing days as a Linebacker with the Rams.

[SFREDSKIN]

I thought Jack was a pretty good coach and made the team competitive. The problem with Jack is that he inherited an old team with a lack of first round picks and other high picks traded by George Allen during his "future is now" campaign. I liked Jack and was bummed that he got canned, who would have know at the time that his successor would come in and become a legend of the game.

[SmootSmack]

What was his coaching philosophy? Was he like a Schottenheimer?

[SFREDSKIN]

Originally Posted by SmootSmack

What was his coaching philosophy? Was he like a Schottenheimer?

He was a quiet but tough guy, he was different than George Allen and wasn't a rah,rah guy like Marty. Didn't show much emotion. His records were 8-8, 10-6, 6-10.

[LRT]

I was a kid during the Pardee era. In fact, that's when I first became a serious Skins fan. I remember that folks were excited because he had been a part of the Over-the-Hill-Gang himself as was known for hardnose defense. He was also coming off a playoff year in Chicago.

His first season in Washington, the Skins started 5-0. It was, I believe, Theismann's first year as the fulltime starter and the fans really started to rally around Joey T during that run. Then, they finished 3-8 and fans started calling for Kilmer. (And the kids think a QB controversy in Washington is a new thing!)

I remember that during Pardee's run the defense tended to the star but the defense itself had no "big names". John Riggins was just starting to emerge as the running back he'd later become under Gibbs, but we wasn't yet the star.

In Pardee's first year, we had the famous 9-5 Monday night victory over the Cowboys. In his second year, we were within one blown timeout call by the refs of beating the Cowboys in the last game of the season and winning the division. Then, Riggins sat out his last year and that was that.

Finally, I remember that when JKC fired Pardee the fans were outraged. The outrage only grew worse when he hired some baby-faced offensive coordinator from the pass-happy San Diego Chargers. Everyone dreaded the idea that this kid - Joe Gibbs - would undo Pardee's hard work. Hmm... That sounds familiar somehow...

[Luxorreb]

difference being Gibbs is in Hall of Fame and Pardee coached a few years and got fired...

[LRT]

Originally Posted by Luxorreb

difference being Gibbs is in Hall of Fame and Pardee coached a few years and got fired...

Not to compare Pardee to Gibbs... there simply is no comparison when it comes to coaching skill and leadership. However, I do think it's interesting that fan reactions tend to follow predictable paths...

[djnemo65]

Originally Posted by Luxorreb

difference being Gibbs is in Hall of Fame and Pardee coached a few years and got fired...

I think he's actually comparing Joe Gibbs to Jim Fassel

[freddyg12]

This was when I first started to understand football a little & became a big Skins fan. I remember something was off about Pardee's time in DC, but I was too young to analyze anything beyond pure instinct. That said, I remember people talking about him. Seemed he came in as an odd contrast to Allen & it took people a while to warm up to him, but then people were surprised that he was fired.

Is it just me, or do some of the others here remember that fans & the general public used to be more upset when coaches were fired? I don't mean really upset, just that they showed more sympathy back then & a coach had to totally tank before people (other than in philly) called for his job.

[SouperMeister]

Pardee was ultimately too loyal to veterans that were his former teammates in the Over the Hill Gang. In '78, he led the Skins to a 6-0 record out of the gate before they faltered badly to finish 8-8. That may be the only time that a team started 6-0 and didn't make the playoffs.

'79 was his best team. The Skins went into Dallas the last week of the year at 10-5. With a win, they would have clinched the division. It looked great as they jumped to a 17-0 lead. Dallas chipped away, but midway through the 4th quarter, John Riggins rumbled for a 66 yard TD to put the Skins up 13. That is when Roger Staubach led the Cowboys back with 2 TD drives in the closing minutes - what made it even more heartbreaking was that the last wild card came down to a point differential tiebreaker, which kept the Skins out of the playoffs. Going from near certain division champs with a road win over our most hated rival to out of the playoffs altogether is to this day the most devastating loss that I've suffered as a Skins fan.

The most notable news from Pardee's last season was that Riggins held out for the entire season, and the team finished 6-10. Beathard's desire to turn over an aging roster won the day when Jack Kent Cooke fired Pardee and brought in Gibbs.

It's funny that Pardee became a run & shoot (Mouse Davis/June Jones) proponent as a college coach at Houston, because by and large, he was a pretty conservative coach here, having learned the ropes playing for George Allen.

[SmootSmack]

Thanks for these anecdotes guys. Really appreciate it, I hope others do as well. Seems like Beathard wanted to focus on youth and a certain more open style of play that didn't mesh with what Pardee wanted so JKC had to decide and gave Beathard the go-ahead to shape the roster and coaching staff. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but I see similarities with Williams-Cerrato-Snyder now. Just in terms of the GM-Coach struggle, the owner going with the GM (or EVP in today's case). Granted, I realize Williams wasn't the HC here, but he was a part of the Redskins family similar to how Pardee was.

I remember Pardee leading those Warren Moon offenses for the Oilers back in the early 1990s

[skinsfan69]

Originally Posted by SmootSmack

This thread is more so for the backrows and longtimefans of this board. I've always been kind of curious as to what the Jack Pardee years (1978-1980) era was like in Washington, DC.

Seems to be like he wasn't too bad a coach, but he ultimately got run out of town because apparently he and Beathard weren't on the same page right?

Anyway, we always hear about George Allen and Joe Gibbs and for good reason. But I was hoping to get some first hand anecdotes of the Pardee years. Was he a good coach? Did the fans like him? The players? Could he have gotten the team to a SB if given a couple more years? What was his style?

Thanks

He was doomed from the start. The team was old. But I remember his first year he started out something like 6-0 and then it fell apart. Then that next year we would have made the playoffs except Roger S. pulled out a miracle down in Texas 35-34. Anyone remember that game? It was the last game of the 79 season. The clock ran out as Mosely was going to come on and try something like a 58 yarder? Then riggins retired the next year and it was 6-10 and Jack was gone. But what's funny is that in Jack. P. last year we ended up playing SD that year and blowing them out something like 41-10 if I remember correctly. And who was the OC of that SD team? Joe Gibbs.

[SFREDSKIN]

Originally Posted by skinsfan69

He was doomed from the start. The team was old. But I remember his first year he started out something like 6-0 and then it fell apart. Then that next year we would have made the playoffs except Roger S. pulled out a miracle down in Texas 35-34. Anyone remember that game? It was the last game of the 79 season. The clock ran out as Mosely was going to come on and try something like a 58 yarder? Then riggins retired the next year and it was 6-10 and Jack was gone. But what's funny is that in Jack. P. last year we ended up playing SD that year and blowing them out something like 41-10 if I remember correctly. And who was the OC of that SD team? Joe Gibbs.

I remember it as it was yesterday. I hate Drew Pearson for life.

[skinsfan69]

Originally Posted by SouperMeister

Pardee was ultimately too loyal to veterans that were his former teammates in the Over the Hill Gang. In '78, he led the Skins to a 6-0 record out of the gate before they faltered badly to finish 8-8. That may be the only time that a team started 6-0 and didn't make the playoffs.

'79 was his best team. The Skins went into Dallas the last week of the year at 10-5. With a win, they would have clinched the division. It looked great as they jumped to a 17-0 lead. Dallas chipped away, but midway through the 4th quarter, John Riggins rumbled for a 66 yard TD to put the Skins up 13. That is when Roger Staubach led the Cowboys back with 2 TD drives in the closing minutes - what made it even more heartbreaking was that the last wild card came down to a point differential tiebreaker, which kept the Skins out of the playoffs. Going from near certain division champs with a road win over our most hated rival to out of the playoffs altogether is to this day the most devastating loss that I've suffered as a Skins fan.

The most notable news from Pardee's last season was that Riggins held out for the entire season, and the team finished 6-10. Beathard's desire to turn over an aging roster won the day when Jack Kent Cooke fired Pardee and brought in Gibbs.

It's funny that Pardee became a run & shoot (Mouse Davis/June Jones) proponent as a college coach at Houston, because by and large, he was a pretty conservative coach here, having learned the ropes playing for George Allen.

OMG do you remember that game against Dallas in 79???? Roger S. just killed us that day. He pulled that win out all by himself and sent us home. One of the best Redskin Cowboy games of all time. Sucks that we lost though.