?That?s right, Joe,? Starke said he replied. ?We?re all going out together. And we?ll all come back in together, too.?

Thus was born the Redskins? work-stoppage strategy, a model, perhaps, for current players adrift in labor strife. Locked out of team facilities, they must train for the foreseeable future without any team-related supervision. Teams that stick together, the retired Redskins say, will gain an advantage come next season, if there is one.

In the two previous N.F.L. work stoppages, those Redskins remained unified, held their own practices and stuck to blueprints provided by their coaches before each strike. Strengthened by that solidarity, the Redskins won the Super Bowl after the 1982 and 1987 seasons, and not, they believe, by accident.

?Football players, even though they?re unionized, they?re also independent contractors,? Starke said. ?You have to hold all those agendas together for a single agenda. I?m proud the Redskins always hung tough. It?s difficult.?

Two decades later, the modern-day N.F.L. consumes far more of the calendar. Under normal circumstances, some teams would already have started their conditioning programs. Minicamps would begin in May.

Players must complete such team activities on their own, but most, if not all teams, prepared them ahead of time for what to do during the lockout, said Charley Casserly, a former Redskins general manager and current television analyst. Compared with previous work stoppages, a firm lockout date loomed over last season, giving teams ample time to plan.

?In talking to teams, and I couldn?t give you which, it?s clear that some are following the Redskins? strategy,? he said. ?Before the deadline, you could do anything you wanted with the players. You could meet with them. You could give them playbooks, give them outlines for the off-season. It?s the same stuff we could do back then.?

The Redskins held two common denominators during the strikes in 1982 and 1987: a strong core of veterans and Gibbs as the coach. Casserly said Gibbs preached the same theme in both instances: forget the rhetoric, and concentrate on football and preparation.

The seeds for the Redskins? strategy were sown during the 1974 work stoppage. Starke said players worked out together in Georgetown then, where Coach George Allen would sneak over to supervise, or to hand out workout schedules.

With that in mind, the Redskins were built to withstand the 1982 strike. They played in a strong, pro-union area, and thus became a strong, pro-union team. They leaned on veterans like Starke, quarterback Joe Theismann and linebacker Monte Coleman, who said: ?We weren?t all marquee players. So we had to band together.?

The ?82 strike lasted 57 days, from Sept. 21 to Nov. 16. The Redskins gathered in local parks, at high schools, anywhere with a grass field. They lacked helmets and pads, but they performed drills, like 7-on-7s, ran through plays and conducted workouts, basically the strike equivalent of normal. Coleman said they emerged from the strike rusty, but not as rusty as opponents.

As they captured Super Bowl XVII, the Redskins often looked back on these practices as the impetus.

When players went on strike for 24 days in ?87, Coleman said Redskins veterans knew ?what worked before would work again.? Again, they were prepared.

The former offensive tackle and current ESPN analyst Mark May said recently on ?NFL Live? that the Redskins moved their training room, everything from hot tubs to treadmills to weights, into a warehouse so players had equipment if not supervision. May said there was a place to watch game tape and added, while showing off his championship ring: ?We just would find any way we could to win. It?s not the Golden Rule. It?s the man with the gold that makes the rules.?

Not a single Redskin crossed the picket lines. Todd Bowles, a safety then and now an assistant with Miami, listened daily to impassioned arguments, but never considered crossing. No one did.

The N.F.L. used replacement players that season.