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Zorn Takes the Lead

In his first year as a head coach, Jim Zorn has already experienced unexpected highs and difficult lows.

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Then, in an instant, the answer came unexpectedly when the Redskins were asking him to interview for their offensive coordinator job even though they still hadn't hired a head coach. And when Zorn dazzled owner Daniel Snyder and executive vice president of football operations Vinny Cerrato, they wondered if perhaps he was the one they were looking for to be their head coach. So on his second day of work, they pulled Zorn out of a meeting, took him to Snyder's Potomac home and asked him to interview again, with no time to prepare, for the job of a lifetime.

Cerrato sat behind a giant book that contained 150 questions in chronological order, beginning with who Zorn would hire as assistant coaches and continuing through situations that might arise during the year. Zorn's answers were sharp and well thought out. He had a plan even if he hadn't been given time to devise one.

"I think the answer that impressed me the most was when we asked him how he was going to use the extra minicamp this year," Cerrato says, referring to the additional minicamp granted to teams with new head coaches. "He said, 'I'm not going to use it because we have the early preseason [Hall of Fame] game and a longer training camp. I'm not going to have as many [organized team activities] either.'

"It just kind of shocked me that he had thought that far ahead," Cerrato said. "Especially because he had just found out about the interview earlier in the day. It said he had been thinking about this for a long time."

The next afternoon, they offered him the job.

Negotiations did not take long. Without an agent, Zorn cut the deal himself in about an hour, just as he negotiated his offensive coordinator's contract several days before in less than 30 minutes.

"I wasn't trying to be rough and tough, and it wasn't about [Snyder] being rough and tough," Zorn said. "I always tell players not to worry about your first contract, you have to establish yourself. If you are a good enough player, you will be rewarded. And I think Dan Snyder has a reputation for being fair. It wasn't really a matter of seeing how low he could go."

The Conversion

He found God because of a girl. This was in high school in the Los Angeles suburb of Artesia, where Zorn was a surfer and a skateboarder who stumbled into football because it seemed like something fun to try to became the quarterback when the team had no one else to play the position.

Then, in his junior year, his girlfriend dumped him, telling him that she wanted to date a Christian boy. Zorn was perplexed. What was she talking about? He was a Christian. He went to church on Easter. Determined to win her back, he started attending the meetings of the campus Christian group then trying "to act out what Christians are supposed to be like."

"And then it hit me across the side of the head like a big 2-by-4: 'You are not really Christian,' " he said. " 'You have been saying this all your life that you believed in God and that was one thing, but the Bible talks about following Christianity in a different light. It talks about following Christ -- those principles, those teaching and believing that to be true and to be gospel.' "

From then on, religion became the foundation of Zorn's life. He went to church, he prayed, he did Bible study, he formed friendships with Christian players through college at Cal Poly Pomona and in the NFL. When he went undrafted in 1975, he signed with the Dallas Cowboys because he knew Coach Tom Landry was a Christian, and he wanted to know what it was like to play for one.

But as he sits here at the coffee shop on Mercer Island, explaining his beliefs, his brow furrows a bit.