The worst time of his career taught him all he needed to know. And it made him want to be a coach. Jim Zorn had just been benched and batted around all the ways he could handle the demotion. They ranged from demanding a trade, to making it tough for his replacement, Dave Krieg.
After sleeping on it, he opted to throw his support behind Krieg.
“That was the start of my coaching career,” said Zorn whose first game of his head coaching career will come Aug. 3 against Indianapolis in the Hall of Fame Game.
From that start, he learned how to empathize with players in a similar situation, which, he hopes, helps him in his new role. And, after never being anything more than a quarterbacks coach in the NFL, he’ll need as much help as he can get. He even needed help to learn the Redskins team colors, at one point referring to them as maroon and black.
There aren’t many examples of current coaches who rose to the head position this way. Philadelphia’s Andy Reid is one but was 38 years old compared to Zorn’s 54. Reid was also considered more organized than Zorn, a league source said.
For Zorn, he’ll have to rely on an experienced coaching staff and the guidance of the front office.
Zorn will have to get used to addressing the whole team rather than three quarterbacks, as he did when he coached that unit in Seattle. There’s also draft preparations and free agency.
“And there’s time management because you can get overwhelmed with a million things,” one league source said. “He won’t be Steve Spurrier, but he’ll be going through all this for the first time.”
He’ll also have to impress players who were hoping Gregg Williams would have gotten the job.
“It was shocking,” Redskins running back/returner Rock Cartwright said. “I talked to Khary [Campbell] and he was with London [Fletcher] and Rocky [McIntosh] at a restaurant and people kept coming up to them and asked, ‘What are we doing as a franchise? Why did we make that decision? They were shocked as well.”
But those who know him best say Zorn is up to the task.
“He’s a teacher and a communicator,” said Redskins special teams coach Danny Smith, who worked with Zorn for two years in Detroit. “He’ll do a great job.”
“Awesome, awesome,” defensive coordinator Greg Blache said. “Everyone I talked to about him doesn’t say good guy; they say great guy. They don’t say good coach; they say great coach.”
