<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Portis both a role player and face of the RedskinsUpdated 8/3/2006 1:18 AM ETBy Chris Colston, USA TODAYASHBURN, Va. — It was something you might expect in a baseball clubhouse, the kind of cut-up antics that get memorialized in books like Ball Four or movies such as Major League. But under the NFL roof of staid, conservative Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, what running back Clinton Portis did Thursday, Oct. 20, 2005, bordered on the bizarre.The Redskins had lost two consecutive games to fall to 3-2, and Portis hadn't scored a touchdown all season. For a man who has worn pink Capri pants in South Beach, the idea came easily.Portis possessed, in his locker, a white wig and a pair of sunglasses that looked borrowed from the X-Man Cyclops."I stuck my hand in the socket when I woke up this morning," he told the media at Redskins Park, "and my hair turned out this way." He called himself "The Mad Scientist" and said he was dissecting the playbook, figuring out how he could get in the end zone.That Sunday, Portis scored three touchdowns in a 52-17 win against the San Francisco 49ers.His success was more likely due to the 49ers' ineptitude than any sort of cosmic force, but now he had no choice. He continued the act with a creative array of characters — Southeast Jerome, Dr. I Don't Know, Sheriff Gonna Getcha and Dolla Bill — but the Redskins lost four of their next five games. Portis thought about bagging the gag for good, but his teammates urged him to continue. "I honestly told him it was something unique, to carry on that way," wide receiver Santana Moss says. "It gave us something to look forward to during the week, just to laugh."So Dec. 1, Portis donned a black-and-white wig, round specs with lenses as thick as magnifying glasses and "some really messed-up teeth." He called himself "Reverend Gonna Change.""We needed something positive and to keep morale up," Portis said. "This week is now or never. We don't win and our season goes tumbling down."Portis ripped off five consecutive 100-yard games and Washington won all five to finish 10-6. The Redskins made the playoffs for the first time since 1999."What (Portis) did took a lot of pressure off the team," Moss says. "We had lost a couple of games, and we bounced out of it."With the start of training camp last Sunday, Redskins fans want to know: Which Portis character will they get now under new offensive coordinator Al Saunders?Gibbs gets the final say, of course, but he's turning the play-calling over to Saunders, who ran the Kansas City Chiefs offense from 2001 to 2005. Over the last four years, no other NFL team scored more points than the Chiefs. Before going to Kansas City, Saunders, 59, helped Dick Vermeil win Super Bowl XXXIV with the St. Louis Rams.Saunders will take what the Redskins did last year and "tweak" it, he says, but there is bound to be a period of adjustment. His first year in Kansas City, Saunders had talents such as running back Priest Holmes, quarterback Trent Green and tight end Tony Gonzalez. The Chiefs averaged 20 first downs, 355.6 yards of offense and 20 points a game that season. Compare that with the last two years of Saunders' system, when the team averaged 23 first downs, 402 total yards and 27.7 points a game."I think the transition here will be a lot quicker than it normally would be," Saunders says. "When I came from St. Louis to Kansas City with Dick, we put in a whole new system. It was so different from what they ran in the past that it took awhile. The language was so new to everybody. But here, Joe and I come from the same background, and we use pretty much the same terminology."Now there are some differences. At midnight in Kansas City, you come up with a different word to describe something than they would at midnight in Washington. But the root of the language is the same. So the adjustments aren't as great as they would be if we were bringing in a whole new system and philosophy."Last year Portis set a Redskins rushing record with 1,516 yards but averaged 4.3 yards a carry. That was up from the 3.8 he averaged in 2004 but down from the 5.5 he had in his first two seasons, both with the Denver Broncos. "I think (in 2004) I just got to the point where I wanted to make a play and I was trying to do it on my own instead of taking the 4 and 5 yards," Portis says.Although he isn't big (5-11, 212), Portis likes to run inside and doesn't mind contact. In a 35-20 win against the New York Giants last Dec. 24, Portis came to the sideline and screamed at Gibbs."You want to win this game?" he said."Yeah, I want to win," Gibbs said."Then run 'gut' and 'power!' "Those are the smash-mouth, up-the-gut plays in the Redskins' playbook. "I do love to run inside because it gives you the opportunity to see everybody," Portis says. "When you're running away at an angle, guys come up and you don't get to see the whole field. When you're running inside, your shoulders are square and you see where the linebackers fill in and you make your read. Sometimes the line is shifting. If you catch them doing that, it's a big play. When everybody crashes to the middle, that gives you the opportunity to make a move inside and break to the outside."Gibbs appreciated Portis' toughness when he was in Denver. The Redskins gave up Pro Bowl cornerback Champ Bailey in 2004 to get Portis. "Even though he's very good on the edge and he's got great speed, he is a physical inside runner," Gibbs says. "Even with the crease plays in Denver, if you watched him, he'd start outside for most of them and slam it back inside. He's a good inside runner, and I think that comes with being tough."Saunders appreciates Portis' tough-nosed attitude, but he also wants to make life easier for him. "Instead of going through nine guys, you'd like to make just one guy miss him," Saunders says. "Everything was more condensed last year; it was a more downhill running game that wasn't complemented by a passing game to spread the defense. What we hope to do with Clinton is give him the same opportunities he had last year as a downhill, insider runner but increase his ability to work the perimeter. We'll hand him the ball, we'll pitch him the ball and we'll throw him the ball. We do have some linemen here who are very athletic. We can take more advantage of the perimeter game."It's not how you get him the ball; it's that you get him the ball. The more you get him in space, the more productive he's going to be."The flamboyant, confident Portis, who thinks nothing of yelling instructions to his Hall of Fame head coach, poses no threat to him, Saunders says. He not only wants feedback from Portis, but he also asks for it."When you're a play-caller, there are two people you have to get in a rhythm early: the quarterback and the running back," Saunders says. "What I've always done with runners, toward the end of the week I ask them what four or five runs they feel most comfortable with. I'll do the same thing with Clinton. On Friday I will always ask him, 'Hey, Clinton, give me your five best runs.' Now it might change week to week, based on our game preparation and film study and practice. But in the NFL, it's all about the players. As coaches, the only thing we should do is facilitate their production. If a guy feels good about what he's asked to do, your ability to produce is at a much higher level."And though backup running back Ladell Betts has impressed Saunders in the offseason workouts, he still wants to get Portis 25 to 30 touches a game. The two backs remind him of the two he had in Kansas City."Betts is better than a lot of people think," Saunders says. "Clinton is more like Larry Johnson, where Ladell is more like Priest Holmes. It will be fun to mix and match those guys."They'll be on the field at the same time. Sure, there are times they won't be, but there will be some down-and-distance circumstances where our best players are those two guys. Both are accomplished receivers and excellent blockers. It adds another dimension to the utilization of our personnel."Portis played at 212 last year. Although he'll be required to do more open-field running and cutting this year, Saunders won't dictate the scales. "I've never thought about what weight a guy should be," Saunders says. "If he feels good at 212, then 212 is great. If he wants to play at 220, then eat some more Twinkies."We all have a weight where we feel good. As long as he feels strong getting 25-30 touches a game, that's the right weight. I'll defer that to Clinton."And as for the Portis personas?"He's a character, but it's good for the game," Saunders says. "We lose sight of the fact, sometimes, that we are in the entertainment business. People look forward to seeing what he's going to do next."Although Portis is primed for a big year, one of his alter egos, Coach Janky Spanky, already has told the world how to stop him."This could cause me to get fired," said Spanky, decked out in an inflatable coach's headset, huge pink-colored false ears, a whistle and an enormous gut. "Most teams have 11 players. I stick two extra Sean Taylors on the field. Get me 13 (players), and Portis is stopped."Quarterback Mark Brunell's favorite Portis incarnation is Kid Bro Sweets, who made his debut Dec. 8. Decked out in a yellow wig and heart-shaped sunglasses, Sweets calls Payday his favorite candy. Brunell liked him because he handed out candy in the huddle."(Portis) did that kind of thing here," University of Miami (Fla.) strength coach Andreu Swasey says. "You have to be yourself and have fun. You're not hurting anybody because life is too short. If I'm worried, 'Oh, if I do this, I don't think they'll like me,' you can't live like that. I credit Coach Gibbs, because I hear the way Clinton and Santana (Moss) talk about him. Not even meeting him, I can see why he's been so successful. He lets guys be themselves."Saunders has known Gibbs since 1970, when they were both on the staff at Southern California. "Joe's personality is diametrically opposite from Clinton's," Saunders says. "Joe is very conservative. Clinton is other side of that, but Joe likes it. You go all the way back to John Riggins. Joe had affection for John, just like he has a tremendous amount of affection for Clinton."Riggins, who sported a Mohawk when he played for the New York Jets, etched his name into the Hell-Raisers Hall of Fame in January 1985 at a Washington Press Club dinner. He told Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, "Come on, Sandy baby, loosen up. You're too tight." Then he proceeded to stretch out on the floor and sleep through a speech by Vice President Bush."If you don't have character on your football team, if you don't have guys that have a funny bone, if you don't have guys that add something to the team, this is going to be a miserable 16 weeks," Gibbs said last year. "I enjoy that part of it, but I think where you draw the line is where it would hurt the football team or if it's something said about somebody else or somebody trying to draw attention to themselves. I think if you do this and you don't have fun, then you're not going to have much of a team."Although his array of characters became a hit last year, there are no guarantees Portis will keep doing the act. "But if he doesn't do that this year, it will be something else," Moss says. "Clinton is one of those guys he always has a trick up his sleeve."</div>http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nf...s-feature_x.htmPortis is THE MAN
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (JHair @ Aug 3 2006, 03:23 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Portis is THE MAN</div>
