but I agree. We need some kind of consistency, and no matter what you say or think about him, he is always classy. He has been shit all over this season and yet he stands in front of cameras and gives honest, thoughtful answers. We have a guy that is up to the challenge. He is willing to drag his name through the mud, stick up for these players, and coach with the same passion we cheer with! To me, Zorn is a Redskin! Good post Sugar……I just barely squeeked by you on fantasy last night!!!! Thank goodness for Roethlisberger and the Steelers defense!

I do agree on Zorn, as it appears:

I believe that Jim Zorn is the kind of man that is worth giving every chance

the ability to stay with the organization is one thing to remain the head coach is another, he is in over his head.

It is not Jim Zorn’s fault that Dan Snyder hired a guy who may have been a little raw to be the head coach here. In fact, the one thing everyone knew was that Jim Zorn was raw. If Dan Snyder saw something in Jim Zorn that made him think Zorn could be a future successful head coach, then he simply has to be patient.

And yes he was offered the job and he took the job knowing he was in over his head. He is not a leader, He is not a coach who inspires greatness, he is a coach who is a coach in teaching…a great positional coach, could be an ok coordinator but will not be and should no longer be a head coach IMO

With you on the Saints…

Sunday (finally). At some point, if you are the leader of this mess you have to put your foot down, stop being the nice guy, and tell it like it is. Maybe now this team will start playing more disciplined football.

You want Cerrato gone, but you want Zorn to stay? So you’re saying you want the Skins to bring in a new GM, but he has to be forced to live with Zorn and the WCO? That limits who you can bring in as a GM a bit. The other thing is Zorn was very much in the draft process, and it shows his skills of assessing WRs aren’t too high either.

Theismann said in Riggo’s latest video post that Zorn is an excellent QB coach and should stick with that. Zorn obviously improved JC and correctly assessed Cutler and Sanchez. I think leaving Zorn in place to run a WCO off with a bad QB and no offensive line only sets this franchise back more. Blow it up and do it right.

Skins need to re-load and bring in a guy that’s a no non-sense disciplinary.

He has made unacceptable mistakes at various points in the last two seasons. But when you bring somebody in with zero experience, that is what you get. Firing him now just reeks of quitting on a guy with potential. And we can’t afford to quit on potential right now. We are not one player away from a Super Bowl. We are not one coach away from a Super Bowl. Until we are either of those things, we can’t just be jettisoning guys over the side of this ship.
On top of that, firing Zorn is way to close to being a reason to retain Cerrato. And that would be the biggest mistake of all. If we fire Cerrato this year and keep Zorn, I’ll grant you that Zorn probably only has a 50/50 chance (at best) to get a new contract with the new de facto GM. But at least the guy would have a fighting chance. In the situation we find ourselves in, we need guys who want to fight for their jobs and future opportunities. That includes Zorn.

that our #1 PROBLEM is our lack of a bona fide GM. I don’t care who the coach is. If you don’t have the RIGHT talent, the coach is meaningless. And by RIGHT talent, I mean a team that meshes, or has chemistry. We started to see some chemistry with Gibbs, but Snyder chucked that out the window after the Gregg Williams debacle. Not only does this team not have chemistry, I’m not sure they even like each other. That Deangelo Hall incident proves it once and for all as far as I’m concerned. Like Lavar said on his show, “fine be damned, if my guy is getting roughed up on the other teams sideline, I’m going over there to hit someone.” Unfortunately, Big Al was the only one who had this mentality. Funny, isn’t it, that the 2 “new guys” on the team are the only ones fighting? Says a lot to me.
Now, to tie the fight into Sugar’s Zorn discussion, I think this incident also proved that Zorn is not the right coach for this team. On one side, you have Mike Smith, breaking the rules to stick up for his players. On the other side, you have Zorn, admittedly, keeping his team from going over there to help Hall. Now I KNOW that “fighting is not the answer”, and that it’s frowned upon, and that the HC can NOT condone the behavior. All that is fine. Makes for something to debate AFTER the melee. However, in the meantime, your team is getting embarrassed, your QB is getting beaten worse than Apollo Creed against Drago, and now your starting CB is getting passed around on the opposing teams sideline like a drunk floozie. So, tell me, exactly WHEN does your MANHOOD kick in? Like I said – a telling sign. Starting with the coach.

Also, another reason I am even MORE disappointed in Zorn than I have been all season is Jason Campbells testament that Zorn “raised his voice and yelled” at the guys at halftime. Nope, I’m not upset about that. What upsets me is that Campbell said this is the first time he’s “really heard Coach raise his voice.” REALLY? We’re 4-12 over the last 16 games, and you’re JUST NOW raising your voice at these underachieving, soft-hearted, bunch of ninnies? What does he think he’s gonna bruise their egos? HAH!! These guys NEED their egos bruised. They STILL think they’re good. WTF?? Do you really think any REAL head coach worth his weight, with an ounce of pride, would let this crap continue? I don’t. So, no, I don’t think Zorn is “the Answer.” Not unless the question is who’s the most clueless farce of a coach in the league right now?

Is this really the topic of the day ?

Sugar before i say anything, and I promise this is completely unrelated to my opinions, yours, and any clash in re, i think the titles of these posts are kind of creepy. “Pour some Sugar on Me”? It just strikes me as really, really creepy. Anyway, I will cut to the chase. Keeping Zorn? That is patently the worst suggestion I have read so far since I began reading this blog. And I feel compelled to rebut your argument to keep Zorn because I think it sits on an irrational foundation, and is wrong factually.

1) “It is not Jim Zorn’s fault that Dan Snyder hired a guy who may have been a little raw to be the head coach here. In fact, the one thing everyone knew was that Jim Zorn was raw. If Dan Snyder saw something in Jim Zorn that made him think Zorn could be a future successful head coach, then he simply has to be patient. You can’t be right about something like that immediately every time.”
…
My response: Just because you disclaim the fact that Zorn was a “raw” head coach coming in to the organization repeatedly does not mean that he has some hidden potential that’s going to be unearthed if we just wait for him to finish learning on the job. I think it’s idiotic to talk about the NFC East like it’s Triple-A & our head coach is analogous to grooming a raw minor-league baseball player. If you even attempt to name a head coach in the NFC East who has been a success by “grooming”, we’d wait all day until the end of our lives, because there has never been one for a very good reason: You simply don’t “groom” head coaches, because while they’re busy sucking for years or demonstrating for a protracted time that they aren’t going to pan out, your franchise tanks, your players lose faith and don’t give play inspired & the organization swiftly becomes a notoriously unattractive place for players to go. I’ll break it down for you and anyone else who thinks this awful idea is a good one. First, the level of competition is simply far too intense and destructive for any coach to “learn on the job”, facing Andy Reid’s Eagles, Jerry Jones’s talented teams (as much as it disgusts me to admit it), and the Giants under Coughlin. I think you’re confusedly substituting the patience Snyder & Cerrato should have for player development for some bizarre theory of “coach development”. Your intense disgust is predictable and shared by I’m guessing 99% of us here, but there is no room to “develop” a head coach in the NFC East no matter how hard you want to tell Snyder & Cerrato to shove it and just not treat the players like they are playing fantasy football. And no number of disclaimers mitigates the absolutely horrendous shi*job that Zorn has done this year.

2) “We have come to know since he was hired that Jim Zorn is a man of character and integrity. If Snyder learned anything from Joe Gibbs, it is that character and integrity are the most important things to build a team around. It is what a man does when things aren’t going his way that you learn the most about him. To put it mildly, things aren’t going his way these days. Zorn is not running from the challenge. Do any of us honestly blame Zorn for the offensive line problems? Cerrato rolled the dice big time and it cost Zorn any chance to get his offense going. Finally, we have fired coach after coach after coach. At some point it is not the coach (although at multiple points in our past…it was the coach…hehehe.)”
…
My response: First, this reads initially like you are campaigning for the man, and given that most of us live in a city with the most politicians per-capita, I’d like to cut through the b.s. of advertising the desirability of keeping Zorn on such a mentally-obtuse basis such as “he has character and integrity. Therefore we should keep him on… essentially because, he’s nice and answers to us unlike the owner and his toadie assistant [Cerrato].” Of course Zorn is not ‘running’ from the problem, and this is why: The man is being paid a very handsome sum and if he resigns now, it would be incredibly difficult for him to get any decent job, including even what he was before, a lowly quarterbacks coach. Notwithstanding how yes, he has been treated like dirty by Snyder/Cerrato, he has also called a horrendous game and even with decent personnel shat the bed offensively. Even taking into account our pathetic offensive line, given the record-setting poor defenses we faced for the first 6 weeks aside from the Giants we have the personnel to put up more competitive scores than 9-7, 6-14, and and 14-19 to a team that had not won a game in over a year (and most sports people in the media had sounded the alarm of caution about pre-game).

Yes he has been treated like dirt, but let’s not treat Zorn like he’s sliced bread simply because we assume it’s simply another way of contrasting & contravening the confusing and shitty job Snyder & Cerrato have done. Zorn sucks too. He’s just nicer and more direct, that is all. There is no way he can parlay his godawful game-calling and timeout management into an offensive coordinator’s post after this, so of course he will stay, nobody would want to forfeit that money and (even though he’s been stripped of his authority here) step down two rungs of the ladder into a quarterbacks coach gig for an even shittier team. And simply because he’s nicer than that as*hole Spurrier doesn’t mean he’s a better coach. He’s nicer. But he still sucks something awful, isn’t a tremendously special ‘stand-up’ guy if you analyze his professional situation from afar, and deserves to be fired more than any other coach in the NFC.

My point being, we do have some decent personnel. Our O-line is godawful compared to the average NFL team, but we faced nothing short of embarrassingly terrible defenses during these first 6+ weeks outside of the Giants. Decent personnel = Decent personnel relative to the caliber of teams we faced. Their defenses were abominations and despite a weak O-line relative to the average NFL team, Shaun Suisham should not have been our highest point-totaler & most potent offensive weapon in terms of results. Even with a poor O-line, facing equally if not more poor defenses during these 6 weeks, the scores we achieved against those teams are patently inexcusable.

I find that our disgust for Snyder & Cerrato (which is completely founded) has become so irrepressive that almost any time the few of us who point out that Zorn in his capacity as coach has done as horrible a job as is possible with the unquestionably bad team Snyder & Cerrato have impetuously assembled like children with a combination of fantasy players and erector-sets, many persons’ reflex is to mitigate Zorn’s equally humiliating shortcomings because he is the polar opposite of what Snyder & Cerrato are to all of us – he has to speak to us post-game in conference & has to face public scrutiny face-to-face rather than through the tinted space of the luxury box. My point is that as godawful a mishmash of free agents and bad picks Snyder & Cerrato have put together, Zorn has done about as horrible as a coach & offensive coordinator could do with the personnel we have against these winless, hapless defenses.

Also, I disagree with "let’s just sit back and let Zorn ‘grow’/he’s a rookie coach & things like that just happen." If that implies that we have to go through rookie motions & mistakes with a coach of all people then I disagree, because we don’t pay & hire head coaches to learn on the job. Zorn has demonstrated a clear ability to commit horrible time-out mistakes single-handedly, which again is inexcusable. With any other team, Zorn wouldn’t make it, simply a glance at his resume is a pretty stark indice that the man was never meant to make this jump, and judging from his results as o-coordinator of the Redskins, he will be extremely lucky to segue his terrible performance here even to a quarterbacks coach of a good organization, i don’t think there is any question he will not become an offensive coordinator anywhere for a long, long time. Let’s just move past all of this "I like Zorn because it’s another way of saying FU Snyder/Cerrato and think with our heads & not with our hearts towards this admittedly nice guy who is so expressly not cut out to be an NFC East head coach and we need to free ourselves of as we start with a bona fide, qualified individual at the helm.

but I think the argument in re: keeping Zorn is as good an idea as keeping on Matt Millen to see if he “pans out”. It’s irrational and factually repulsive.

Sugar before i say anything, and I promise this is completely unrelated to my opinions, yours, and any clash in re, i think the titles of these posts are kind of creepy. "Pour some Sugar on Me"? It just strikes me as really, really creepy. Anyway, I will cut to the chase. Keeping Zorn? That is patently the worst suggestion I have read so far since I began reading this blog. And I feel compelled to rebut your argument to keep Zorn because I think it sits on an irrational foundation, and is wrong factually.

1) "It is not Jim Zorn’s fault that Dan Snyder hired a guy who may have been a little raw to be the head coach here. In fact, the one thing everyone knew was that Jim Zorn was raw. If Dan Snyder saw something in Jim Zorn that made him think Zorn could be a future successful head coach, then he simply has to be patient. You can’t be right about something like that immediately every time."
…
My response: Just because you disclaim the fact that Zorn was a "raw" head coach coming in to the organization repeatedly does not mean that he has some hidden potential that’s going to be unearthed if we just wait for him to finish learning on the job. I think it’s idiotic to talk about the NFC East like it’s Triple-A & our head coach is analogous to grooming a raw minor-league baseball player. If you even attempt to name a head coach in the NFC East who has been a success by "grooming", we’d wait all day until the end of our lives, because there has never been one for a very good reason: You simply don’t "groom" head coaches, because while they’re busy sucking for years or demonstrating for a protracted time that they aren’t going to pan out, your franchise tanks, your players lose faith and don’t give play inspired & the organization swiftly becomes a notoriously unattractive place for players to go. I’ll break it down for you and anyone else who thinks this awful idea is a good one. First, the level of competition is simply far too intense and destructive for any coach to "learn on the job", facing Andy Reid’s Eagles, Jerry Jones’s talented teams (as much as it disgusts me to admit it), and the Giants under Coughlin. I think you’re confusedly substituting the patience Snyder & Cerrato should have for player development for some bizarre theory of "coach development". Your intense disgust is predictable and shared by I’m guessing 99% of us here, but there is no room to "develop" a head coach in the NFC East no matter how hard you want to tell Snyder & Cerrato to shove it and just not treat the players like they are playing fantasy football. And no number of disclaimers mitigates the absolutely horrendous shi*job that Zorn has done this year.

2) "We have come to know since he was hired that Jim Zorn is a man of character and integrity. If Snyder learned anything from Joe Gibbs, it is that character and integrity are the most important things to build a team around. It is what a man does when things aren’t going his way that you learn the most about him. To put it mildly, things aren’t going his way these days. Zorn is not running from the challenge. Do any of us honestly blame Zorn for the offensive line problems? Cerrato rolled the dice big time and it cost Zorn any chance to get his offense going. Finally, we have fired coach after coach after coach. At some point it is not the coach (although at multiple points in our past…it was the coach…hehehe.)"
…
My response: First, this reads initially like you are campaigning for the man, and given that most of us live in a city with the most politicians per-capita, I’d like to cut through the b.s. of advertising the desirability of keeping Zorn on such a mentally-obtuse basis such as "he has character and integrity. Therefore we should keep him on… essentially because, he’s nice and answers to us unlike the owner and his toadie assistant [Cerrato]." Of course Zorn is not ‘running’ from the problem, and this is why: The man is being paid a very handsome sum and if he resigns now, it would be incredibly difficult for him to get any decent job, including even what he was before, a lowly quarterbacks coach. Notwithstanding how yes, he has been treated like dirty by Snyder/Cerrato, he has also called a horrendous game and even with decent personnel shat the bed offensively. Even taking into account our pathetic offensive line, given the record-setting poor defenses we faced for the first 6 weeks aside from the Giants we have the personnel to put up more competitive scores than 9-7, 6-14, and and 14-19 to a team that had not won a game in over a year (and most sports people in the media had sounded the alarm of caution about pre-game).

Yes he has been treated like dirt, but let’s not treat Zorn like he’s sliced bread simply because we assume it’s simply another way of contrasting & contravening the confusing and shitty job Snyder & Cerrato have done. Zorn sucks too. He’s just nicer and more direct, that is all. There is no way he can parlay his godawful game-calling and timeout management into an offensive coordinator’s post after this, so of course he will stay, nobody would want to forfeit that money and (even though he’s been stripped of his authority here) step down two rungs of the ladder into a quarterbacks coach gig for an even shittier team. And simply because he’s nicer than that as*hole Spurrier doesn’t mean he’s a better coach. He’s nicer. But he still sucks something awful, isn’t a tremendously special ‘stand-up’ guy if you analyze his professional situation from afar, and deserves to be fired more than any other coach in the NFC.

My point being, we do have some decent personnel. Our O-line is godawful compared to the average NFL team, but we faced nothing short of embarrassingly terrible defenses during these first 6+ weeks outside of the Giants. Decent personnel = Decent personnel relative to the caliber of teams we faced. Their defenses were abominations and despite a weak O-line relative to the average NFL team, Shaun Suisham should not have been our highest point-totaler & most potent offensive weapon in terms of results. Even with a poor O-line, facing equally if not more poor defenses during these 6 weeks, the scores we achieved against those teams are patently inexcusable.

I find that our disgust for Snyder & Cerrato (which is completely founded) has become so irrepressive that almost any time the few of us who point out that Zorn in his capacity as coach has done as horrible a job as is possible with the unquestionably bad team Snyder & Cerrato have impetuously assembled like children with a combination of fantasy players and erector-sets, many persons’ reflex is to mitigate Zorn’s equally humiliating shortcomings because he is the polar opposite of what Snyder & Cerrato are to all of us – he has to speak to us post-game in conference & has to face public scrutiny face-to-face rather than through the tinted space of the luxury box. My point is that as godawful a mishmash of free agents and bad picks Snyder & Cerrato have put together, Zorn has done about as horrible as a coach & offensive coordinator could do with the personnel we have against these winless, hapless defenses.

Also, I disagree with “let’s just sit back and let Zorn ‘grow’/he’s a rookie coach & things like that just happen.” If that implies that we have to go through rookie motions & mistakes with a coach of all people then I disagree, because we don’t pay & hire head coaches to learn on the job. Zorn has demonstrated a clear ability to commit horrible time-out mistakes single-handedly, which again is inexcusable. With any other team, Zorn wouldn’t make it, simply a glance at his resume is a pretty stark indice that the man was never meant to make this jump, and judging from his results as o-coordinator of the Redskins, he will be extremely lucky to segue his terrible performance here even to a quarterbacks coach of a good organization, i don’t think there is any question he will not become an offensive coordinator anywhere for a long, long time. Let’s just move past all of this "I like Zorn because it’s another way of saying FU Snyder/Cerrato and think with our heads & not with our hearts towards this admittedly nice guy who is so expressly not cut out to be an NFC East head coach and we need to free ourselves of as we start with a bona fide, qualified individual at the helm.

That there is literally no foundation for justifying keeping Jim Zorn on as head coach, aside from the following arguments:
1) He’s nice (insert vague synonyms such as ‘character guy’). Let’s keep him!
2) Snyder & Cerrato need to learn to be patient. Let’s be stupid and not discriminate b/w patience in re player development, a serious approach to the draft & a tremendous investment in the scouting dept, and instead treat the issue these clowns have with patience like we should be patient with everything. Including head coaches.
3) At least he is accountable. Unlike Snyder & Cerrato, whom we hate more than anyone. Therefore let’s keep him on because at least he pays attention to us!

I look forward to a good game at Landover this Sunday and I hope the Broncos come out with a big win to get things back on track. I expect the ‘Skins’ best shot, but we’ll see what happens. We have to turn things around and Orton has to be the quarterback he was early in the season. We’ll see you guys Sunday. GO BRONCOS!!!

Zorn is still here right now is because Snyder doesn’t/didn’t have any better options. With the PROVEN talent level at HC sitting there in this upcoming offseason, I don’t see how anyone can justify risking another lost season in the Zorn experiment. Keeping Zorn another year with the likes of Cowher, Shanahan, Holmgren, Gruden, etc. sitting there available (assuming any one of these would come here) is the fantasy football equivalent of starting Jamarcus Russell at QB for the rest of the season because you hope that he might have a breakout game or two, even though Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady or Phillip Rivers are available in free agency.