A Redskins Fan Reflects On A Season Lost Before It Started….

I was going to blog about how well Jason Campbell is playing or how Jim Zorn’s playcalling has contributed to the Redskins woes in the red zone or Zorn’s job security….but what’s the point? This season was over before it started just like every season has been over since Dan Snyder bought the Washington Redskins.

Living in the Bay Area, I was reminded of an column I read by local sports columnist Tim Kawakami at the time of Zorn’s hiring. Kawakami used his one interaction with Zorn to conclude that Zorn to the Redskins was “probably the worst NFL hire of all-time”. That’s quite a statement coming from someone who covers the Al Davis’ Raiders full time.

Kawakami, after his brief interaction with Zorn, described him as:

“over-emotional, antsy, defensive and very short on the ability to communicate general NFL knowledge…”

…and after adding a number of other colorful adjectives summed it all up with:

“Zorn is the worst: Least prepared, worst communicator, most obvious risk for total failure, right from Day 1.”

And that’s certainly consistent with the impression I got based on the NFL Network’s “Sound FX” segment where they mic’ed both Zorn and Jason Campbell. Zorn comes off as a goof-ball who is guessing more than coaching. Feeling more than thinking. Zorn sounded nothing like a Joe Gibbs, Bill Belichick, or Bill Parcells.

And Zorn, who was never a coordinator before, is coaching the quarterbacks, calling the plays and trying to be a head coach at the same time. Having never taken on any of those responsibilities before, expecting Zorn to be able to successfully assume all of them at once seems like a short-sighted decision at best. None of Snyder, Cerrato or Zorn should have been ok with that arrangement.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Jim Zorn the person. He’s absolutely the kind of guy I’d like to have a beer with and watch some football with, but he’s clearly not head coach material (to say nothing of maybe not coordinator material either, considering that’s the role he was originally hired for).

So with Zorn, by all appearances, having lost the team by week 3 of the season, will Dan Snyder and/or Vinny Cerrato accept any responsibility for putting Zorn in a position he clearly isn’t qualified for? We know Zorn will end up a fall guy, but will Cerrato and Snyder accept responsibility for a badly flawed roster?

There is no longer a question as to whether the Redskins unorthodox practices of trading draft picks and overpaying for free agents might work. It hasn’t, and that the strategy is the exact opposite of the strategy employed by consistently strong franchises like Pittsburgh, New York (Giants), New England and Baltimore speaks volumes. Combine the mismanagement of the personnel with the similar complete mismanagement of the front office and coaching staff and you have a season that is over before it started. And now, seasons plural.

It’s an ironic situation when the franchise is pursuing a lawsuit against fans for not upholding their end of the bargain. The Redskins charge some of the highest ticket prices in the NFL and combine a terrible game-day experience with a terrible team which makes it Dan Snyder who isn’t upholding his end of the bargain. For that matter alone he should drop the lawsuits and hire someone else to run the football operation as a positive PR move.

At what point does a man smart enough to make enough money to buy the Redskins figure out where the fault, and accountability, lies. One would think the losing and constant mismanagement would be enough to get rid of the real culprit, Vinny Cerrato. Snyder must bring in a real General Manager and stop playing a billion-dollar game of fantasy football. One wonders whether Dan Snyder the Redskins fan will overcome Dan Snyder the owner.

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