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The night before the Dallas Cowboys scratched and clawed their way to a win over the Carolina Panthers, the team got an unlikely visit from a long-time nemesis.

Via the Associated Press, former two-time Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, who won three Super Bowls in D.C. during the Cowboys’ 16-year title drought from 1976 through 1992, talked to the team at the request of coach Jason Garrett.

“He was saying to us that when they called him and asked him to speak he was like, ‘Are you crazy?.'” Cowboys linebacker Dan Connor said.

“He was talking about different situations he’s been in and how he fought through them,” Connor said. “He said when you’re in a situation, you think it’s the worst thing ever, but you have to have faith in God and push through it. That was the message. He was unbelievable.”

Owner Jerry Jones addressed the situation in a way that threw a passive-aggressive jab at Garrett.

“He came into chapel and talked about some of his low times,” Jones said. “He spoke about some of the coaching errors. He wasn’t directing it to the team at all, relative to our criticism this week of our sideline coaching decisions, but he talked a little about a couple that bit him.”

Though it may not have been enough to nudge the Cowboys to end a 17-year title drought, but Gibbs’ suggestions surely didn’t hurt against a team that was left so perplexed after the game that its quarterback mused about leaving a suggestion box in the media room.