So much of an NFL coach’s job is damage control. Injuries, losing streaks, misbehaving players, his own fallibility – a coach spends an awful lot of time trying to keep bad from becoming worse.

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Just look at Mike Shanahan the past few weeks. First there was the discomfiting defeat in Detroit to deal with – along with the fallout from his benching of Donovan McNabb – and now he has to get the train back on the tracks after a 59-28 derailment against the Eagles.

How a coach handles these situations is telling. Managing crises, after all, is as important as managing games. And the Redskins’ sorry display Monday night, on the heels of the Lions debacle and the McNabb controversy, makes you wonder how good Shanny really is at Stopping the Bleeding. Let’s face it, his club needs to pull things together in a hurry – not just to regain its self-respect but to salvage something of the season. Week 11 is way too early to be wheeling in the crash cart.

Joe Gibbs – the coach to whom Shanahan will always be compared – may have been at his best at times like these. When the seas were roughest, Gibbs almost always managed to right the ship. Six days after the infamous Bodybag Game in 1990, another Monday night mauling by the Eagles, he rallied the troops to a clinical 31-17 victory over the Saints. Overall, his teams were 8-4 following a blowout loss (read: 20 points or more). Clearly, the man knew how to apply a tourniquet.

(Let’s give Shanahan his due, though. In Denver, his clubs were 9-4 under the same circumstances – at one point winning six in a row. But it won’t mean a thing to Redskins Nation if he can’t work similar magic here.)

Gibbs’ favorite technique for pulling the Redskins out of the doldrums was to take responsibility for everything. Smart guy, Coach Joe. He knew that in times of duress, the temptation to point fingers is great; so if he pointed the Fickle Finger of Blame at himself, he figured, his players would be shamed into doing the same.

Gibbs also tended to underreact rather than overreact to calamity. He wasn’t a big fan, for instance, of physical punishment (i.e. more bruising practices) as a means of motivation. If players are at all competitive, he realized, they’re already beating themselves up. Why pile on?

We’re still finding out how Shanahan responds to adversity, but the early returns suggest a certain hot-bloodedness. Near the end of the Lions game, he yanked McNabb and threw in stone-cold Rex Grossman – an impulsive decision that quickly turned disastrous. His waffling, multiple-choice approach to explaining the move, moreover, was the antithesis of damage control – more like squirting lighter fluid on flaming coals.