Jim Zorn Needs to Get Introspective on His First Year Introspection

Memory can be a funny thing.  Weak offense cannot.

With a hat tip to Jimmy Shapiro at Zucker Media Group, last Wednesday Redskins head coach Jim Zorn did an interview with Chris Myers and Steve Hartman on radio station KLAC in Los Angeles, a Fox Sports affiliate, coach Zorn discussed a wide range of topics in this one segment piece, head back through the link above for the audio.

After white gloving the controversy over trying real hard to replace quarterback Jason Campbell, Steve Hartman asked about the Jekyll and Hyde 2008 season, the key exchange is as follows:

Steve Hartman:  ...Why was it so difficult for your team to score last year?

Jim Zorn:  well we had a big problem during the season, almost every game from the plus fifty to the plus twenty.  When we got inside the red zone, we could score.  Our problem was maintaining the, er, sustaining those drives to get us into that area.  Now when we did get into field goal range, many times we missed a field goal.  When get a third down situation in that area, we would fail to convert.  It was a big frustration, but that was part of the problem.  We had our struggles, everyone tries to put out their best guys and we got a little banged up.  We played four very tough defenses in the third quarter of our season and it hurt us, it really hurt us.

The numbers unfortunately do not agree with coach Zorn and his assessment of the team's ability to score if they could just dagnabbit get into the red zone.  And I am not going to go all Greg Trippiedi or Cold Hard Football Facts here, this is easy stuff to find with the Google, thanks to Pro Football Weekly and the NFL.com weekly box scores.

In 2008 the Redskins had 48 red zone possessions.  NFL rank:  19th, a number that would to support coach Zorn's position that the team had a hard time getting into scoring position.

Of those 48 red zone possessions, the Redskins scored 23 touchdowns, or 47.9%.  NFL rank:  24th, a number indicating the team did even less with the fewer opportunities the team had relative to others.

Of those 48 red zone possessions, the Redskins scored either a touchdown or a field goal 38 times, a scoring percentage of 79.2%.  NFL rank:  29th, a number that says at least when they couldn't score six they couldn't not not score three.  More underperformance.

So coach was half right.  In 2008 the team did have a hard time getting into the red zone.  About the other half, the scoring once the team got there, coach Zorn needs to go back and look at the tape, even adjusting for the hard time the team had getting into scoring position, the team was down in the bottom quartile.

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Some other tidbits from the interview:

Jim Zorn's biggest challenge of his first year:  being able to talk to the media in an honest way and keep his stories straight, so many media outlets, fans want more and more Redskins football.

Curly R quicktake:  I would have thought coach Zorn's biggest challenge of the year would have been trying to figure a way out of what became a 2-6 downward spiral but that is just me.

Jim Zorn also addressed the question, can the media get a coach fired?  Jim said he did not know, media wants answers, they want to find out the truth, they want the story.

The real problem, as asserted by coach Zorn, is when the media gives opinions they have not researched on a daily basis out on the field and know all elements involved; people want to state opinions about a guy, something they want to believe but may not be true; deriving opinions without knowing facts is the thing that pisses off coaches and players.

Curly R quicktake:  this peurile assumption among players, coaches, owners and elite commentators that it is not possible to look from the outside and see what is happening on a team is complete bullshit.  I am not concerned with whether, say Devin Thomas had a great day of practice and whether coach is planning on getting the guy looks this Sunday, what I see is what I see on the field, if Devin appears in few plays and is not a factor in those plays then I know all I need to know about Devin.  Sorry Devin, I did not mean to pick on you.

On to Dan Snyder, as a set up to a question about the kind of owner he is co host Steve Hartman said the following:

Now your owner is one of those front and center guys, that can be good and bad, at least you know where he is at all times, but at the same time he's shown some patience with coaches, I think Norv Turner all those years, he only made the playoffs one time and got plenty of opportunuties, so when you're talking to Daniel Snyder after the season, was there a sense of urgency, is there sort of a blueprint, a gameplan for the years ahead?  How exactly does he approach it?

If coach Zorn knows the gaping fallacy in this statement he was a gentleman not to regulate Steve for it on the air, and if coach Zorn does not know the story of Dan Snyder, Norval Turner and patience then allow me to share the Cliff's Notes:

In fact Dan Synder was not patient with Norval Turner, in Norval's last full season of 1999 Washington made the playoffs, the year Dan Snyder took over and inherited Jack Kent Cooke's last coach.  In 2000 with the league's first 100 million dollar team mired in mediocrity Dan Snyder made his first big move with the help of Pepper Rodgers, firing Norval after thirteen games with the team at 7-6 and still alive for the playoffs.

After that dreadful week fourteen 9-7 loss to the Giants Dan parked Norval in his Redskins Stadium office for more than two hours before Norval finally got sick of being treated like a child and went home.  He was fired the next day.

All of that notwithstanding, according to coach Zorn, Dan Snyder is patient, he showed patience, the big post season question by the owner was, what happened.  And coach Zorn said all the right things about Dan's passion for the game, his passion for the Redskins and how as an owner he wants to know where are the failures as well as the successes.

I also noted coach Zorn referred to the owner as quote Dan unquote, not quote mister Snyder unquote.  There was quite a bit of buzz when Jor Gibbs took the podium in 2004 upon his return to the Redskins and called the owner Dan, he had only ever been known publicly by team personnel prior to that as mister Snyder.

And Jim Zorn thinks Holmgren will be back in the coaching 

Jim Zorn:  AP photo from here.