The national writers come through Redskins Park and usually hang with the handful of us who have covered the team for years. There are four of us who covered Jack Kent Cooke, two from the Redskins’ last Super Bowl. The rest of the press corps seems to have come aboard in the last year as the media world keeps shedding people.
Anyway, what do we talk about? Anything and everything — practice is two hours twice daily, we have a lot of time to kill. But after catching up about the league overall, the national writers always ask the same thing — will Jim Zorn be here next year.
Personally, I hope so. I greatly enjoy covering him. Maybe the most of any coach I’ve covered in 31 years on sidelines. But my answer has become honed to a simple reply — they need to make the playoffs.
The national guys then say, “What if they’re 9-7 and don’t make the playoffs?” I say then it would depend on two things — how they finish and what’s the offense like. If they go from 6-2 to 9-7, then owner Dan Snyder probably makes a change. If they average 14 points a game, they probably change. But if they go from 3-5 to 9-7 or score 24 a game, then Zorn could return.
Like I said, we have a lot of time on our hands.
The X factor here is that Snyder really stuck his neck out on this hire. He got a ton of flak for the whole hiring process after Gibbs left and if he canned Zorn after a 9-7 record, or even 8-8, he would further add to his reputation for being impatient. When you hire a Jim Zorn you have to give him more than two years.