Skins coach maintains a consistent approach
The questions remained dormant for much of the preseason, until two exhibition clunkers preceded an ugly opener. Then Jim Zorn’s readiness to be a head coach became a heated topic for debate. Again.
Not that Zorn altered his approach. He preached the same thing after the loss to the New York Giants loss that he did after the Dallas win: stay medium. And it’s why the Redskins responded to a season-opening loss with four straight wins, including two at division rivals Dallas and Philadelphia, a 23-17 win Sunday.
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And those doubts about Zorn? Those voices have been silenced. The Redskins are winning and having fun.
“It comes from up top,” Redskins receiver Antwaan Randle El said. “That’s where the head coach comes in. When he speaks, he gets us to zone in.”
He’s mixed goofy — the hip, hip hooray chants after the past two wins — with other qualities such as honesty that make him a good story. But the players like his approach and passion.
“He has a fire about him,” Randle El said. “It’s amazing. It’s hard to explain. He has this fire and this commitment like, We’re gonna do it this way because I know this will be best for us and if you buy into it — and everyone has — it will be successful. I don’t know how he’s gotten us to do that, but he has.”
Zorn is only five games into his NFL head coaching career. He’s the same guy who never even had a sniff as an offensive coordinator until the Redskins called in January. So there’s many chapters to be written in his tale.
But his demeanor is praised by the players. Redskins right tackle Jon Jansen said the way Zorn handles winning and losing is comparable to ex-coach Marty Schottenheimer.
“Marty would come in and say the same things,” Jansen said. “He wouldn’t get down or high, he would just say this is what we’ve got to do.”
Zorn doesn’t always appear to be acting medium on the sidelines, showing a fiery side.
“When we’re on offense we’re attacking,” he said. “Acting medium is when we got sacked and it’s second and 19 and on the next play we run a tight end screen and get eight yards back. No one is freaking out here because it’s second and 19. That’s acting medium. You can’t flinch.”
Players like that he’ll go for it on fourth downs late in the game. The receivers and backs publicly and privately praise the way they’ve been used.
“For what we went through with coach [Joe] Gibbs and knowing we would miss him,” receiver Santana Moss said, “there couldn’t be a better [coach] to come in. He played the game, he knows the game and he knows players and he talks to us as if he knows what we’re going through and he knows what he wants.
“We can sit around one minute and goof off with him and the next minute that’s behind us and it’s, ‘Let’s go play some good football.’”
