Too Ho-Hum a Day For 'Hip Hip Hooray'

The two dominant themes of this Redskins season have been obvious: "Stay Medium" and "Hip Hip Hooray."

That made Sunday a bad day for dominant themes, win or no win. The victory chant was left unchanted in a drained locker room, where players scarcely responded to Coach Jim Zorn's "VICTORY MON-DAYYYY" proclamation, said in the style of a monster truck announcer.

With three cheers temporarily stifled, the Redskins went with the thoroughly ordinary "Win on Three!" Let's be honest, "Hip Hip Hooray: The Jim Zorn Story" will sell a heckuva lot more season-recap DVDs than would "Win on Three!," which sounds like a guide to roulette strategy. Opinions differed as to whether Sunday's unhipness was intentional.

"It ain't over," Santana Moss said of the cheer. "We just pick and choose when we need it."

"We wanted to do Hip Hip Hooray," Jason Campbell countered. "Randle El's supposed to do it, and he forgot it, so I don't know what happened with that."

As for "Stay Medium," Zorn's homage to even-keel-ness? That was routed in a non-medium barrage of midgame confrontations and postgame lectern thumps from the rookie coach. He offered an extra large dose of context yesterday: that during an NFL game participants are "at war," that he feels like he's playing the game himself, that he still "enjoyed the heck out of" Sunday's game, that the Redskins are "trying to squeeze everything out of the ballgame we can," and that sometimes medium must be grilled over the flame of immediacy.

But still, "I think that I need to speak to myself about acting medium in those kind of situations," Zorn admitted.

Fortunately, there were other diversions on this Victory Monday. Zorn revealed he's learning how to text-message, which has allowed him to communicate with Clinton Portis about the latter's ankle injury.

"My daughter says this is the modern-day phone call," Zorn said, making the universal sign for typing into a mobile device. "I've kind of screwed up the texts, so he doesn't really have an idea what I'm asking."

He discussed defensive coordinator Greg Blache's memorable declaration that the defense played like "the south end of a northbound skunk," with Zorn calling it a "great phrase." And he talked about the easy online access to two-point conversion charts, made available by "football gurus." The 6-2 Zorn, one reporter joked, was one of those gurus himself.

"I'm a Roo," Zorn said, "but I don't know if I'm a Goo."