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Torn by the Trials, Zorn Still Finds the Joy
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"And so I think it's good to just keep taking it a step further" -- and here, he took his left thumb and pointed it at his own chest -- "and check out what's going on inside of me."
'A Life-Skills Guy'
On Thanksgiving Day, the Redskins moved their normal Thursday afternoon practice to the late morning so the players and coaches could get home to their families. The Zorn house was filled that day, three of the four children; the son and daughter-in-law of Steve Largent, the Hall of Fame wide receiver from Zorn's days with the Seahawks; Zorn's secretary; and a few others. But before he headed to that full house and dinner, Zorn gathered his players after practice. The game against the Giants loomed three days later. Zorn did not speak of football.
"When you go home to your families today," Zorn said to his players, "don't walk in the room and say, 'Here I am!' You need to walk into the room this afternoon and say, 'There you are.' "
"I wanted these guys to be other-oriented, not self-oriented," Zorn said the following day. "I think that is one of the things that these guys get falsely pushed toward."
Most of the angst over Zorn and the Redskins over the second half of this season has centered on his development of Campbell, of the West Coast offense Zorn installed and why it hasn't worked. Few failures rankle Zorn more than his team's inability to reach the end zone, to put up more points, to win games that might have been won with one more touchdown. Those things, of course, are what will determine how long he keeps his job. Football coaches are, after all, judged in football terms.
Yet ever since the days when Zorn would invite players from the team at Boise State, his first assistant coaching stop, over to his house for food and fellowship, he has wanted more from the sport. "He loooooooved those relationships," Joy Zorn said, and it is one reason he keeps in touch with players and coaches from his past.
"He's a life-skills guy," wide receiver Antwaan Randle El said after the Thanksgiving speech. "He'll focus on football, but he's going to make sure you get something about life, too."
Zorn, too, has learned to be far more "other-oriented" than he was in his playing days, he said. His commitment to Joy and the children is largely responsible for that. Joy Zorn was all of 22 when she married the Seahawks quarterback, and she knew little of football. Even after she became accustomed to the rhythms of a player's life, she knew nothing of a coach's. Yet she grew fond of Boise, and when she and Jim took a trip to Logan, Utah, where Jim interviewed to be the offensive coordinator at Utah State, she cried all the way back, to the point that Jim said: "I don't have to do this. I can work at McDonald's."
By the time Jim Zorn became a head coach in February, Joy knew the drill, and the Zorn family had the whole picking-up-your-life-and-moving-on thing down. At each stop, the Zorns have purchased a home, better to feel connected with the community to which they are entering, a mental investment as much as a financial one. This stop, in that sense, has been no different, and the Zorns have hosted friends from nearly all of their previous home towns at their Great Falls home.
"She has made all of these moves," Jim Zorn said. "And she's billed them as an adventure for our family."
The first chapter of the latest adventure is coming to a close, and the Zorns don't know what the next one will bring. Joy Zorn said last week that she has thought frequently of her husband's vow to "stay medium," even though she is now married to the head coach. The risk today, against the Eagles, is the same as it is every week, and Zorn is happy to accept it, even as his responsibilities have grown. Standing against a railing at Redskins Park the other day, his team with but one win since October, Zorn considered his position. He is not, he said, overwhelmed. Far from it. He does, in fact, consider it all joy.
"Here's what I know about being responsible for so much," he said. "I love it."
