The 1991 Washington Redskins: One of the NFL’s Greatest Teams

Twenty years ago today, the Washington Redskins beat the Buffalo Bills 37-24 in Super Bowl XXVI in the Metrodome. I was living in San Francisco at the time, but I flew to Minneapolis for the game and was in the stands that day. The Super Bowl was the only NFL game I saw in person that season, but I and three displaced Skins fans in San Francisco watched every minute of every Redskins game on TV that year (no easy task in those days, but one of our group was a bartender who worked at a place with a satellite dish).

I had closely, religiously, followed other Redskins teams in the decade and more before 1991—including its Super Bowl championship teams of the eighties—but the greatest Redskins team ever was certainly that 1991 group. In my opinion it ranks with the five or so best NFL teams of all time. The players were remarkably dedicated to each other and to winning, as their Super Bowl victory and 17-2 record attest. (For evidence of just how committed the players were to each other, check out the articles, interviews, and video in today’s Washington Post Sports section commemorating the team.)

I mentioned in another post of this mostly soccer-themed blog that the 1991 Redskins were stacked top to bottom with above-average players. However, the team had no superstars. It is true that it boasted three future Hall of Famers in Art Monk, Russ Grimm, and Darrell Green. But no one ever thought of those guys as “superstars,” in fact that may be the first time the word’s been used in the same sentence with any of their names. If one were cynical, he or she might even dismiss them as boring players, which is more or less why it took so long for a guy like Monk to get elected to the Hall of Fame. His under-the-radar demeanor on and off the field made it easy to forget that he played on four Super Bowl teams and three championship teams, held significant NFL receiving records, was a willing and savage downfield blocker often used more like a tight end than a wide receiver, and was an acknowledged team leader. The New York Times appropriately reported his retirement announcement thus: “Art Monk quietly became one of the best wide receivers in National Football League history. Just as quietly, he retired yesterday.”

If I were to pick a single fact about Washington Redskins fans that shows them to be a knowledgable bunch, it’s the fact that Monk is their most beloved player, past or present. When the Redskins played the Cowboys on the last day of the 1996 season—their final game at RFK stadium—the team trotted out all the great ones during halftime. Charismatic Hall of Famer John Riggins may have brought the house down when he was introduced, but Monk positively demolished it.

Monk went for over 1,000 yards in 1991, and fellow receiver Gary Clark—my candidate for the most underrated football player ever—went for over 1,300 and averaged over 19 per catch. If you think I’m looking back at Clark through rose-colored glasses, go check out Hall of Famer Michael Irvin’s statistics and compare them to Clark’s. Clark’s stats are very similar to Irvin’s—each caught 65 career touchdowns and averaged between 15 and 16 yards per catch, for example—but you never, ever hear Clark’s name in connection with the Hall of Fame. This is particularly unjust, since Clark toiled for two full years in the USFL before being taken in the supplemental draft by the Redskins. Clark—quietly excellent, quickly forgotten—can be seen as yet another player that embodies those ’91 Skins.

The 1991 squad was not built around Monk and Clark, though, but around its offensive line, which remains one of the league’s greatest units. It yielded only nine sacks, allowing quarterback Mark Rypien to throw for over 3,500 yards and 28 touchdowns, and allowing running backs Earnest Byner, Ricky Ervins, and Gerald Riggs to combine for 21 touchdowns and over 2,000 yards on the ground. You could make the argument (and many Skins fans have) that Joe Jacoby was an even more dominating lineman over the course of his career than Hall of Famer Grimm (and Jake should almost certainly also be in the Hall of Fame). You could also make the argument that tackle Jim Lachey was in 1991 better than both of them, which should give some indication of the group’s quality. Grimm, a little long in the tooth by then, was actually a backup, which gives some indication of the group’s depth. Mark Schlereth, who would go on to win more Super Bowls with the Broncos, was the starting right guard.

I could go on about the offense, but I haven’t even mentioned the defense. I read in the Post today that the 1991 Redskins defense shut out their opponents three times in their first five games that year, a particularly amazing stat when you consider that since 1991 no Redskins team has shut out an opponent even once. Wilbur Marshall was sublime. His combination of size, speed, and athletic talent would have allowed him to dominate in any era. But how many fans today so much as remember that Marshall played for the Redskins? I’m reasonably sure that most football fans outside D.C. remember Marshall, if they remember him at all, as a guy laying waste to opponents with the 1985 Chicago Bears. But Marshall was every bit as good with the Redskins. In ’91, he recorded 135 tackles, 5.5 sacks, and 5 interceptions, one for a TD. The touchdown run was particularly memorable; Marshall looked like Walter Payton streaking down the left sideline, running half the field and freezing a defender brilliantly with a fake lateral just before running it in.

One of my favorite defensive players that year was role-player James “Jumpy” Geathers, whom as I recall the Skins picked up for nothing from the New Orleans Saints. Matt Millen said that Geathers and Jacoby were the strongest players he’d ever been around, which is saying something given Millen’s pedigree as a player. Geathers had a move he routinely used that year that I’d never seen employed before and haven’t seen since. He called it “the forklift.” Though Geathers was a rather wiry, tall defensive tackle, he was so strong that he could run at an offensive lineman, extend both his arms, and quite literally pick up the opposing player and drive him into opposing quarterbacks. It was positively degrading, and amazing. Geathers had only 21 tackles that year, but 4.5 of them were sacks.

I’m almost driving my fingers through the keyboard as I think back on all those players from twenty years ago. I suppose this modest reminiscence is in effect a thank-you note to them for performing so well and with such dedication. I appreciated watching them then, and, given the Redskins problems since that time, I appreciate them almost as much now, reflecting from my house outside Boston, Mass. So bravo, guys. Some of us still remember that season with striking clarity and remain grateful to have witnessed a collection of very good players willing themselves to be a great team.