They are natural reactions when someone makes a radical life change at any age, let alone 63. It just isn't very often that you see a man step away from NFL coaching with three Super Bowl rings and a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, only to return 12 years later to the same team. Nor is it common to see a man give up being in charge of an extremely successful business that gave him far less stress than coaching, only to go back to the ultra-stressful world of X's and O's.

Gibbs isn't the first retired high-profile coach to be pulled back to the NFL sidelines. It happened to Dick Vermeil. It happened to Bill Parcells. But with a thriving NASCAR racing team, Gibbs figured to fight the urge. He figured to resist following suit.

If anyone had asked him even a year ago if he could have imagined himself entering his second stint as coach of the Washington Redskins while Parcells -- who had been with the New York Giants during Gibbs' first NFL go-around -- was preparing for his second season with the Dallas Cowboys, Gibbs would have thought he was insane.

A year ago? How about five months ago?

"Five months ago I'd have said, 'You're crazy ... you've got to be nuts,' " Gibbs said with a laugh during the annual NFC coaches breakfast at the league meetings. "Five months ago my life was all settled, all programmed. I had it all figured out, but that all kind of blew up in my face."

It blew up when Steve Spurrier suddenly resigned after two years as coach of the Redskins. That was promptly followed by a lucrative offer from team owner Daniel Snyder to entice Gibbs to come back and fix a club that had gone through four coaching changes and fallen upon hard times since his departure.

"I kept praying for the doors to close, and they keptng," Gibbs said.

But he insists he feels at peace with his decision to accept the job, especially after getting the blessings of his wife, Pat.

"It may be to get some real lessons and get pounded around, I don't know," he said. "But I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be. To go back and be real successful is something that's extremely hard. I go into it with my eyes wide knowing that it's kind of next to impossible to try to do that.

"But I felt it was a great challenge and would be something that was fun to do."

His younger contemporaries certainly don't think he is out of place. This is what Tampa Bay's Jon Gruden, the NFL's youngest coach at 40, has to say about Gibbs' return: "He's like Mick Jagger. He hasn't been on tour a lot lately, but he comes back and he rocks the house and does a hell of a job. There are some things you don't forget."

After three months of mostly administrative work, Gibbs had his first taste of what his second turn at coaching the Redskins would be like during a recent minicamp. The night before the first practices, players gathered in a room that quickly became noisy as many teammates reunited for the first time since the end of a frustrating 5-11 season. As soon as Gibbs walked in for his inaugural address to the full squad, the room immediately became silent and everyone sat up in his chair.

Three Super Bowls and a Hall of Fame induction tends to make you a larger-than-life figure, especially in a town where you have long been held in the highest regard.

Gibbs had mostly fundamental messages for his players. The biggest was that their recent struggles and his not-so-recent NFL dominance would have no bearing on what the Redskins would do in the 2004 season and beyond. His three Super Bowl rings were conspicuously absent from his fingers.

"The past means nothing, with the exception of great memories," Gibbs told them. "I've got to prove myself. The way I'm looking at it is I'm starting all over again. Our focus is going to be on this football team, and the fact that we're trying to build with this group right here in this room. Going forward from this point, I think we've all got to prove ourselves."

He didn't watch a whole lot of NFL games while he was with NASCAR because he usually traveled on Sunday. When he did watch, he didn't pay particularly close attention to the technical aspects of the game.

Gibbs' considerable offensive expertise should serve him well, because he doesn't see much dramatic change in that area to make his ideas seem outdated. The Redskins will use an H-back and plenty of single-back formations, just as they did during his previous tenure.

However, there have been some dramatic defensive changes since he left the Redskins in 1992.

"People today are much more aggressive on defense than they were 12 years ago, particularly in our division," Gibbs said. "Philadelphia and Dallas are very, very aggressive. It scares you to death because there's a chance, when people are that aggressive, that you don't make a yard. They're going to really force the issue. I think we'll be pretty aggressive, too."

Gibbs has made a point of studying the league's five-best rushing teams and five best passing teams to see if there are any ideas to incorporate into his scheme. He was particularly interested in studying the Chiefs because their offense uses considerable shifting and motion, which are trademarks of Gibbs' offense.

He is still trying to adjust to the far more complicated business environment he sees now in terms of acquiring, retaining and releasing players. All moves must fit under the NFL's salary cap, something that didn't exist when Gibbs previously coached in the league.

"It used to be if I could convince (former Redskins owner) Mr. (Jack Kent) Cooke that we needed something and I did a good job of that, we could go get it," Gibbs said. "Today, everybody has a set amount of money that you can spend and it's just a matter of how you want to spend it. But what limits you is that it becomes a point where you run out of (cap space).

"Free agency is totally different. I like free agency because you have a chance to go get some guys and fill some holes."

Despite huge success in his first stint with the Redskins, Joe Gibbs feels he has a lot to learn.

It helps to have an owner such as Snyder, who never flinches when it comes to spending the big money to acquire free agents.

Yet even with the obvious benefits of a free-spending boss, it has been widely assumed Snyder eventually will clash with Gibbs, as he has with previous Redskins coaches. But Gibbs doesn't seem the least bit concerned about his ability to get along with the owner.

"If we lose games this year, it won't be because of Dan Snyder," he said. "It will be because of me and the coaching staff. When it came to getting the coaches, he did everything he could to help me. That's a hard process today, with all the rules that they have in place right now. Then, in free agency, the draft, some of the things we needed in the complex ... there hasn't been one time he has (refused to provide Gibbs with whatever he has wanted to improve the team)."

The minicamp served as a good trial run, because it gave Gibbs his first opportunity to go back to organizing meetings and practices. It felt good for him to explain the complex offensive scheme that no doubt overwhelmed many of the players and put an entire squad through drills again.

"I wouldn't say it was like I never left," Gibbs said. "It's a little bit like having amnesia. Every now and then something flashes, and I go, 'This is what we did.' "

He is likely to have more such moments, just as he is likely to again have occasions when he asks himself, "What am I doing here?"