Here is the full transcript of the interview I did with Joe. The first part is for my magazine and is a preview of the Rams v Patriots game taking place here at Wembley Stadium in late October. It's a lifestyle magazine for Londoners, so no particularly heavy football questions I'm afraid.
The second part is where I put some of your questions to him and he was more than happy to answer those.
He was a really great guy to speak with and didn't mind giving me his time even though I couldn't pay him for it!
The interview took place the Friday before the season opened.
NFL Heavyweights Touchdown in London
The NFL is back in London later this month when the St. Louis Rams take on the New England Patriots at Wembley. SLR catches up with legendary former quarterback Joe Theismann to get his thoughts on the game and more.
So the Rams v Patriots, how do you see that playing out…?Well The Patriots are one of the perennial great teams in football over the last decade, and the rams have struggled since their Championship years. As the season goes with the Rams having a new coach and the Patriots having Quarterback Tom Brady and the weapons around them and Bill Belichick is one of the greatest coaches to ever coach this game, you’d have to think that the Pats have a distinct advantage, no matter where they play, or what continent they play on.
How do you see their respective seasons going…?
I would think the Patriots will have a winning season. The Rams, they’re a big question mark. Jeff Fisher, the new head coach in St. Louis, is a terrific football coach, but they still don’t have the talent the Pats do or a lot of other teams. They’re in a building stage so if they have four wins by the mid point I think that would be really good for them.
So no playoffs for the Rams this season then..?
I don’t see it. The NFC is just loaded with teams. I mean Green Bay, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington - Every place you look in the NFC Each division has a team or two that could make it into the playoffs very easily or even to the Super Bowl. The NFC is very balanced this year.
Do you see a day when London will have its own team competing in the NFL..?
You know I doubted it at one point but I really believe that London could very well have a team. The travel distance is barely more than an East coast team going to the West coast. For me the biggest factor about international play would be travel. I don’t see Asia as an option, it’s just too far. You’re not gonna flip guys upside down for 12 hours and expect them to play a week later. I’ve made that trip to Asia 15 times and it takes me weeks to get back on a schedule. Now travelling to the UK, like I say, for the East coast teams is a little more than 6 hours. So it’s well within the scope of what they could do. It would be very interesting; I think it’s feasible, I don’t know how quickly it could happen.
Who are you tipping to go all the way this year…?
Well I like the Harbaugh brothers, (head coaches) Jim in San Francisco and John in Baltimore. Both of those teams lost in the Championship games (Super Bowl semi finals) last year. Baltimore had a chance to tie it missed a kick, dropped a touchdown pass. San Francisco had a chance to win the game but they fumbled it away. I see both of those football teams being better this year. So I’m going to go with The Harbaugh Bowl!
What of your old team, the Washington Redskins, what sort of season will they have do you think…?
I think they’ll have an exciting season. We have the Heisman trophy winner, Robert Griffin III as our quarterback and they’ve added a lot of weapons on the offensive side of the ball. Pierre Garcon comes over from Indianapolis, Josh Morgan comes in from San Francisco and defensively they’ve added Brandon Meriweather who with the Patriots was a two time pro-bowler. It’s a football team that has a chance to compete for the title in their division. You have Philadelphia, New York, Dallas and Washington in the NFC East, and so much of it will hinge on how well RGIII plays. It’s a young mans opportunity to lead a franchise that’s struggled for the last decade to some place special.
Are you still in touch with any of the guys from your days as a Redskin..?
Yeah, a lot of us stayed in the area. You see back when I played there wasn’t free agency so you didn’t have as much player movement as you do today. Plus we all sort of lived in this community, our kids went to school here, our families grew up here and so a lot of us have stayed. So at different golf outings or reunions, out of a 53 man roster they’ll probably be about 25 or 30 guys. So we get a chance to see each other quite a bit.
Who was your best pal on the team…?
Mark Mosley. Mark was a good friend. Art Monk, my wide receiver, was another good friend. Dave Butz was another. It was a fun group of guys, we were together quite a few years, and we had a good time! I always described our football team as characters with character. Much like when you watch Manchester United or Real Madrid play, they’re characters. You know, the way they express themselves when they score a goal. You want guys that are edgy a little bit, guys that enjoy the game, guys that have fun being around the other guys. And that’s what we were.
What are you up to nowadays..?
The last couple of years I did the NFL network shows. Right now I do a lot of motivational speaking, I do a lot of appearances and try and play as much golf as is humanly possible!
Ha! So what’s your handicap..?
Two! Maybe one of these years I’ll try and qualify for the senior British Open!
We’d love to have you here, definitely!
Thank you Joe, that’s great for the magazine interview. As a Redskin fan I mentioned to some other fans I was interviewing you and I got a load of questions sent through that people wanted to ask you, do you mind answering a couple more for them…?
Oh sure, be happy too Karl.
Thank you Joe.
Firstly, what's your take regarding the concussion scandal the League faces at this moment? Will you sue the NFL as other prominent players have done?
Having experienced them, erm, knowing the situations that we deal with… First of all, when you think of, and I’ll use the English term, when you think of ‘Bobbies’ or when you think of firemen you understand that when you take on that job there’s a risk that goes with your job. As a professional American football player you understand that when you play football that there’s a risk that goes with your job. We certainly have guys that have been affected, and the National Football League and the players association both are working very hard to make the game safer. I just don’t know how much safer you can make it. If you build the helmets to be more safe, they become I think more dangerous weapons because now players aren’t afraid to use them. The concussions are real problems for our players going forward. It’s a violent contact sport, that’s what it is.
I can’t quite see Manchester players running around with helmets on their head. And it’s an interesting topic Karl because in our sport we’re very concerned about safety and concussions, but in soccer you’ve got a ball travelling 40 or 50m and what do you hit it with..? Your head! Parents say to me ‘Boy, I don’t know if I want my child playing football because I’m afraid of concussions’ but I say ‘You’re gonna let them play soccer!?!’
I think it’s a problem that everyone in football is trying to work on to make the game safer.
Were you ever asked to return to a game by a coach after taking a shot to the head..?
No, I wasn’t asked, I would volunteer!
You know, we didn’t have the money that guys are making today and there weren’t the medical staff on the sidelines like it is today. I mean you have concussion doctors on the sidelines, you have different regulations regarding a player getting knocked out and going back in…If I didn’t go back in the game and the other guy did, I could lose my job! So for me, I was lucky enough to play in 163 consecutive football games, I never missed a day of work and I never missed a practice, because I just didn’t feel I wanted to give that other guy a chance to be able to take my job.
On a lighter note, did you ever hear Joe Gibbs say a real curse word?
Once.
I won’t tell you the word. I saw him get upset this once. We used to have overhead projectors, they would project an image on the screen, and I used to have to sit right in front, right next to the aisle, right next to this machine in meetings. He walked in one day, and you knew he was pissed, and he got up there and took his fist and slammed it into this thing and basically cracked the mirror part of it and I believe he said a cuss word. But that was the only time. I did all the cussing for Joe. I guess you could say I ran my mouth like a sailor a lot of the time because I played the game with a passion and I held nothing back at any point in time.
If by any chance you bump into LT in an elevator, what would you say to him?
Don’t get on my left side! Just stay away from my left side…
With the rule changes of today's game, do you think an injury like yours could happen now to a QB?
It has, yeah. As long as you have bodies flying around an injury like mine could happen. As a matter of fact there’s a kick returner by the name of Mark Mariani who was a pro bowl kick returner for the Tennessee Titans during this years pre season suffered the same injury that I did. Whenever I find out that someone has an injury like mine I endeavor to contact them just too sort of explain to them the process that they’re going to go through.
Is his career over..?
No, he’s a 25 year old pro bowler, an all star. They put a rod in his leg and it makes it a lot more stable and I think he can come back and be as good as he’s ever been, if not better.
Good. The Hogster asks: Do you still think Cam Newton wasn't worthy of a 1st round pick?
No, I don’t. Cam proved me and everybody else wrong. He really is an unbelievable young man. When guys come into the league people really don’t know. I don’t know if it’s this way in cricket, when you get – I don’t know what you call the person who throws the ball…?
The bowler.
Bowler? OK, let’s say you get a really good young bowler comes in. Nobody has really seen him before so nobody really knows what his balls gonna do. I think Cam Newton was that way last year. I felt like Cam was in a situation where nobody really knew how good he was. I didn’t think he could throw the ball as well as he did, but he proved, like I say, all of us wrong. Now in year two people know what he looks like. This is where he has a chance to really show how terrific he can be.
If RGIII goes down in a game, Rex comes in as his backup. If Griffin cannot go, does Cousins start the next game, or does Rex get the nod?
I think Rex gets the nod. I think Rex is number two, right now. Kirk had a terrific preseason but I still think you lean towards Rex because he’s the guy that knows the system a little better and has played in regular season games. But I tell you Mike Shanahan does not shy away from going with really young guys. I mean he put John Beck out there last year.
Yeah. Unfortunately…
What would you have changed in your preparation and game-day performance against the Raiders in Super Bowl XVIII???
You know the first mistake I made was I put new shoes on! I would have stayed with my old shoes, because the whole week my shoes were bothering me.
And I would have spent more time studying the game plan instead of trying to be Joe Theismann, Super Bowl-winning quarterback celebrity.
OK. That’s very humble of you.
I just didn’t pay attention to details Karl. You know I have very few regrets about the game of football. One is that I just didn’t prepare the way I prepared for every other game. You know, I was back in another Super Bowl a year later, we won Super Bowl XVII, we’re in Super Bowl XVIII, I’m the MVP of the league, I think I’m really great, we’d beaten the Raiders here, and all of a sudden I just played bad, I played a bad football game.
That’s what I sort of like about football as opposed to basketball or baseball and hockey. And even in the World Cup matches, you know you play one game to advance, right..? You don’t play a best of three or a best of five or best of seven. You get one chance to have a shot at what I call the brass ring. I’m sure you know what a merry-go-round is, and when you ride the merry-go-round there’s a brass ring and you get to grab it maybe one time – and in football that’s what you get. You get a chance to grab that brass ring one time, because there’s only one three hour segment where you get a chance to be a champion. There’s no ‘well we lost game one, we’ll come back and win the series 4-1’. That’s what I think makes soccer and football so unique, is that one window of opportunity, you don’t get a redo.
It’s drama.
It is, it’s great. It’s ‘how good can you be in that one moment..?’. I’ll give you an example; when I was the MVP of the league I got a pat on the back, if you’re MVP of the Super Bowl they’ll give you a car! So for one game you get a car, for an entire season you get a handshake.
It’s all about the winning…
Yeah, it’s about winning that one game.
Finally, Kazoo asks: When I worked for GE Consumer Finance, Joe almost ran over me at the Cincinnati airport. He was in a hurry. It was roughly six or seven years ago. Oh, and he was wearing a leather jacket. We didn't actually talk or anything, but can you ask him if he remembers me?
(Laughs) Tell him I do and I apologise.
Lol. Do you really?!?
Yeah. I haven’t run over many people!
Brilliant! He’ll be chuffed to hear that I’m sure.
Tell him I’m sorry the apology comes so late but I do apologise.
This is a great interview.
