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Blazing New Trails
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"This could come out cheesy," he says.
Because no matter how much Zorn must seem like most to be an iconoclast in the regimented world of pro football, an old left-handed quarterback who never lost his zaniness, he is devoted to this job. And because he never campaigned for such a role or begged for the opportunity, it doesn't mean he never stopped secretly preparing to one day do it.
Which is why he was so ready that afternoon when he was with the Lions and the offensive coordinator, Sylvester Croom, turned up sick just before game time and Detroit's coach, Bobby Ross, gave Zorn a look of panic. Zorn simply sat down right there in the locker room and, for 30 minutes, patiently finalized the team's offense for that game and then guided it with such ease that other coaches on the staff gazed in wonder.
"I don't think I am a goofball, but because I have different interests I might come across as somebody who is not serious," he later says, off the mountain and sitting with Joy outside a coffee shop down the road from his Mercer Island, Wash., home. "I think what I do has meaning, real meaning. We all want to make a mark and I'm serious about making my mark, but I know that I have to do it in a unique way because I've got to be true to who I am."
Not long after quarterback Trent Dilfer came to the Seahawks in 2001, somewhat cynical about a then-seven-year career in which he had received more than his share of blame for seasons gone wrong, Seattle Coach Mike Holmgren came into a quarterbacks meeting and berated Dilfer for a play that didn't work. As Dilfer absorbed Holmgren's wrath, Zorn, new to the Seahawks and to Holmgren, cut his fuming boss off in mid-sentence and said, "I called that play."
"You never see that in a coach," Dilfer later told a friend who asked not to be identified, fearful of incurring Holmgren's rage for revealing the anecdote.
Zorn's words are so true, so honest that any attempt to search for the positive in a player's shoddy performance often draws guffaws from the player himself. "He is the worst liar I have ever met in my life," Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck says.
Zorn, a born-again Christian, also does not swear. Never. Anywhere. Not even in the coaches' booth when the quarterback makes the wrong read and throws an interception that is returned for a touchdown.
At home, he never raises his voice around his four kids. If he does, he has to pay that child $1 and give Joy $20. On the field, he has always played games with his players, throwing passes in practices or organizing competitions in which quarterbacks must throw a ball into a trash can 30 yards away in the corner of the end zone. Currently, he has a running contest with Redskins cornerback Fred Smoot as to how many touchdown passes he can throw to a receiver that Smoot is covering on those days Zorn decides to step in at quarterback.
Too Nice?
There exists in football a notion that such coaches cannot survive. It is, after all, a sport of rules, and most schools of thought demand that head coaches keep a healthy distance from their players. No coach wants to be known as being too close to his team. Those deemed too nice tend not to last.
"How do you know I'm all that nice?" Zorn asks.
Joy insists her husband can be difficult. For instance, she points out that he is an impatient driver who gets frustrated when people don't drive fast enough in front of him.
