Redskins Have Their 'Hooray,' and Snyder Has a Ball

Some elements of Sunday's postgame celebration were to be expected. Jim Zorn, despite his dramatic homecoming, "kept it medium," according to Santana Moss. The coach also led a for-old-times-sake rendition of "Hip Hip Hooray," which had been absent from the locker room for the past four weeks.

But both the medium orientation and the self-described "boisterous" three cheers hardly compared to the handing off of a pre-painted commemorative game ball to Daniel Snyder, who celebrated his 44th birthday on Sunday. Zorn had asked the owner last week what he wanted to receive for his birthday, and Snyder requested a seventh win.

"And so we had a game ball already printed, hoping," Zorn explained. "It's like those [world champion] baseball caps, you know? I wonder what they do with those things if you don't" clinch.

Reporters suggested manufacturers ship such items either to thrift stores or to small island nations in the developing world. "Do they?" Zorn asked. "We'd have hid it."

Instead, the ball was unveiled. There was no corresponding "Happy Birthday" refrain, with Casey Rabach explaining, "We're terrible singers, we're not gonna put ourselves through that." Instead, Snyder was treated to the dulcet, or possibly guttural, tones of chanting football players.

"He was pretty short and sweet about it," Mike Sellers said of his coach. "Just, 'Let's get a Hip Hip Hooray!' and everybody was looking around like, okay."

Zorn actually deflected credit for the relaunch of the Hip Hip Hoorayride, pointing a giant foam finger at Antwaan Randle El. The latter apparently agitated for the cheer, which had been replaced by "Win, on Three!" after the team's previous victory against the Lions.

"Oh, I was egged on," Zorn said. "I was egged on by a couple of the players that we had to do that."

"Yeah, we got after it," he continued. "Were you there? Did you hear it through the [doors]? Oh gosh, it was pretty good."

Zorn, though, seemed unusually restrained after the game, and players said the Seattle memories and old-friend hugs and "Zornucopia" signs never turned medium into something darker.

"You know how he is, he just kept it the same," Moss said. "You know, he got his old Hip Hip Hooray in, and other than that, I mean, he's always the same dude. You see him get fiery a little bit every now and then, but he's either fiery or either jolly-go- lucky. And that's what he was, jolly-go-lucky."

Moss also noted Zorn can "turn into a little fireball," which would make him an occasionally jolly-go-lucky little fireball, which is something Joe Gibbs has hardly ever been called. Still, the coach said he made a concerted effort to keep his homecoming from becoming a distraction, to himself or his players. He said he realized he couldn't skip the pregame greetings entirely -- "I was not gonna try to big-time anybody" was the way he put it. But after the small talk was out of the way, it was all football.

"Once the game got started, he got back to his normal self," quarterback Jason Campbell said. "Whatever that is."