Former Redskins assistant coach Greg Blache has confirmed the report that he disliked and discontinued the bounties that his old colleague Gregg Williams oversaw in Washington. And Blache also bolstered Joe Gibbs’s claim that he knew nothing about it.
Blache was the Redskins’ defensive line coach from 2004 to 2007, when Gibbs was head coach and Williams was defensive coordinator. Blache then took over as defensive coordinator in 2008, after Gibbs and Williams both left. Blache confirmed to the Washington Post that he was aware of Williams’s actions, but he wouldn’t offer any specific details. He did say, however, that Gibbs knew nothing about it.
“I assure you, he had no idea of what was happening,” Blache said. “If he had, he would have put a stop to it.”
Some might find it hard to believe that Gibbs wouldn’t know this was happening on his team, but Gibbs always put all of his focus on the offense and delegated everything on defense to his assistants. So his plea of ignorance is plausible.
What is harder to understand is that Blache says he didn’t approve of what Williams was doing, and that Gibbs would have stopped it, and yet in four seasons Blache never told Gibbs. Blache hasn’t explained why he sat there and said nothing while Williams was offering money for, in the words of some former Redskins players, “kill shots.”
All Blache wants to say now is that he strongly defends Gibbs’ integrity.
“The only reason I’m talking at all is that I don’t want to see a man like Joe Gibbs get pulled down into the muck of this because Joe Gibbs did not know,” Blache said. “The whole situation, the way this is all coming out, is unfortunate. But to have anyone think Joe Gibbs knew, or to accuse Joe Gibbs to be part and parcel to it, is just totally wrong. People who know me know I don’t put my name on a lot of things. But I know for a fact that he didn’t know, so I’ll put my name to this.”
To the extent that blame for bounties will spread from New Orleans to Washington, it sounds like everyone in Washington will pin all the blame on Williams.