Jim Zorn’s job is safe for the rest of the season. Redskins executive vice president Vinny Cerrato said on his radio show on ESPN 980 this morning that Zorn will not be fired. There had been intense speculation that Zorn’s job was on the line based on the poor start and sputtering offense — Zorn’s specialty.
“Let me start by making a few things very perfectly clear: Jim Zorn is the head coach of the Washington Redskins, and will be for the rest of this season, and hopefully into the future,” Cerrato said on Inside the Red Zone.
Reports have surfaced that former Denver coach Mike Shanahan already had rejected an overture from owner Dan Snyder about taking over during the season. A source close to Snyder would only say that Shanahan did not want to take over during the season.
The Redskins stripped Zorn of his play-calling duties following Sunday’s 14-6 loss to Kansas City. A team source said the organization was not pleased with Zorn’s honesty about the situation and what he felt about no longer calling plays. The source said the move was designed to help Zorn keep his job. Though Cerrato said the decision was his, a source close to the organization said owner Dan Snyder was involved in the decision to make Lewis the play-caller.
While the move was highly unusual, there is little doubt that the offense has not worked. Multiple sources, both on the team and in the league, have said that defenses often know what play is being run because the Redskins have strong tendencies.
“The team is tight, the relationships are tight, and we’re just trying to prepare to win a game Monday Night AND excite the fans and get the fans back excited about this football team,” Cerrato said. “We just want to beat the Philadelphia Eagles Monday night. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish through all these other things that are going on….Everybody’s frustrated. The owner’s frustrated. He wants nothing more than to win for the fans. For the fans. He wants to please these fans, and he’s SO frustrated because of the struggles.”
The organization, until now, had declined to say anything about Zorn’s future. Cerrato was asked to give him a vote of confidence in a conference call on Oct. 6, the day Sherman Lewis was hired as an offensive consultant. Cerrato would only say that Zorn was the coach.
Since then, numerous rumors have spread, in part because the organization said nothing. The latest involved Joe Gibbs returning in a role similar to Bill Parcells in Miami; Gibbs, according to multiple people close to him, had no interest in returning to the NFL.
But the Redskins stayed silent, until this morning.
“There’s been a lot of false rumors, media speculation, unnamed sources out there all the time,” Cerrato said. “I hired Jim, along with Dan Snyder. And obviously, OBVIOUSLY we’re all very disappointed by the season performance thus far. In fact, Dan constantly talks about how disappointed he is for the fans. And we’ve got great fans. We feel the frustration for the fans, and we need the fans big-time Monday night. We want to entertain them, we want to make them proud, we want to make them happy [for] this football team.
“And there’s a lot of media people like you and everybody else out there that says Dan Snyder needs to come out and talk, Dan needs to say this, do that. Dan has never spoken to the media during the season for over a decade now. And Dan’s thing is, he feels that during the season, the stage belongs to the head of football operations, the coaching staff, the players. That’s why he doesn’t talk, all right?”
Snyder has attended practice this week, as he often does. He has been quick to sour on coaches in the past, with the exception of Gibbs, a history even the players know, which is why after last season some wondered if this would be Zorn’s last season (given the big coaching names who would be available). But Snyder took a bigger gamble on Zorn than he has with bigger names such as Steve Spurrier and Marty Schottenheimer. Cerrato said there’s no friction in this current setup.
“The frustration is very high, everywhere around here, but the relationships internally within this organization quite frankly remain the same. Later today Dan and I and Jim have our weekly Friday lunch, like we always do, and like Dan’s done forever with the head coach, to go over the upcoming game. You know, we’ll sit there, we’ll have lunch, we’ll bring in our pizza or Dan’s health food and all this, and chitchat about, you know, ‘All right Jim, tell us about the game, what do you think about Philly, what are we gonna do, how are we gonna do this?’ You know, and that’s what we’ve always done over time.”
Wednesday, Zorn’s best friend, Steve Largent, went on a Seattle radio station and ripped the Redskins organization. His comments regarding the talent level have been echoed by numerous experts and league sources. Regardless, Snyder and Cerrato thought they were turning over a solid playoff team to Zorn after the 2008 season.
“Maybe his friend thought that he was protecting Jim because he thought something was going to happen to his career for whatever [reason], but I think his friend forgets this: that we were a top 5 defense [when Zorn was hired],” Cerrato said. “We had just been to the playoffs. Last year we had four Pro Bowlers on offense. And in Jim’s contract, he controls everything over his staff. And the thing about it is, the other thing is that his friend doesn’t mention was that Jim worked with all these coaches for a week prior to becoming the head coach, and he said during the interview, ‘Those are my guys, I want those guys, those are the guys I want, I don’t want to go hire anybody else.’ ”
Next came a defense of Lewis, the new play-caller. Though some NFL sources have called him a failure as a play-caller in previous stops, most say he has a deep knowledge of the West Coast offense. Largent, a Hall of Fame receiver, said what many have said, that it’s difficult to come in during the season and start calling plays for a new team. Cerrato clearly disagreed.
“You know what, you don’t forget all the things that you’ve learned over 20-some years of experience in the same offense,” Cerrato said. “And those four Super Bowl rings are very pretty on his [fingers], and I don’t think [Largent] has a one. So the guy has a ton of experience, he’s been in battles, so it upsets me very much that [Largent] wants to attack what this guy has done in the past. What he’s been doing now compared to what he’s done in the past. You don’t forget how to ride a bike if you hadn’t rode your bike in four years. So that was very, very frustrating, some of those comments, because it’s to me off-the-wall comments.”
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