Washington Redskins Official Thread

[N51_rob]

Mike Wise wrote an excellent article on this whole thing in the post today. It's worth a read.

Didn't know that Blatch(sp) was held so high in Snydor's eye. Wise states that if the team continues to slide then heading into the bye week, Zorn out as HC, Blatch in as HC. Sherman Lewis will have used the month to get familer with personell and the offensive scheme and will become the OC and call the plays.

Given the oddity of the move, if you are a conspiaracy theorist this makes a lot of sense to you.

No link as I read it in the paper and am too lazy to go to the post's website to find it, but stragely I wasn't lazy enough to tell you why there was no link....

[jdr4693]

WE ARE A LAUGHING STOCK! BRING BACK MARTY!!!!

[Jasong7777]

Here's the article from the Washington Post.

To hear the homespun version, Sherman Lewis was plucked from the retired life of a bingo caller at a senior citizen's home in Detroit on Tuesday -- the land of "N-35" and "B-17" -- to come help Jim Zorn with O-27.
The Redskins have the 27th-ranked scoring offense in the NFL. Daniel Snyder's temper is percolating. Because the owner's diamond-in-the-rough choice as coach 21 months ago has not been able to sufficiently polish quarterback Jason Campbell, his general manager decided to go on a Jurassic dig.
Sherm Lewis has not held an NFL job for almost five years. He is 67. But he has more Super Bowl rings than Joe Gibbs and knows more about an offense dubbed the West Coast than Mississippi's own Campbell knows about the Gulf Coast.
Outside Ashburn, the hiring of Lewis as an offensive consultant is viewed as the beginning of the end for Zorn; consultants are hired all the time by multinational conglomerates seeking "another set of eyes."
By this logic, Zorn and offensive coordinator Sherman Smith, one of the coach's few personal hires after the team chaplain, look mighty expendable. In case you don't know Smith well, he's the guy the owner and general manager avoid like swine flu -- a sure sign of where they believe Zorn's talents lie as a talent evaluator.
He's also the guy who was candid enough to sound like he was not ducky about the new hire when he spoke with reporters Wednesday.
"I don't think he's going to tell us something we don't already know," Smith said, later adding: "We feel we have a handle on the scheme. Z-man has been in the scheme, he knows the scheme, we feel the scheme is good. I don't think he's going to come in and say, 'You need to run this route two yards deeper,' or you need to do this or that. We don't think that's the issue. Our players, we all agree: We just have to do it better, not do anything different."
That doesn't sound like an open-minded coach; it sounds like one guy named Sherman who had another guy named Sherman forced on him.
A conspiracy theorist might connect the dots and the timeline, which appeared fuzzy on Wednesday, like this: Lewis spends time with an old friend, Greg Blache, the Redskins' defensive coordinator whom he worked with for two years in Green Bay, before the Detroit-Washington game at the team hotel. Blache is a motivator of great renown, thought of highly by Snyder. If things go abysmally south the next three weeks, Blache is asked to take bullets as the interim head coach until season's end. At the least, Blache has got a guy he knows with a little play-calling experience to have his back in the event Zorn and Smith can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again by the bye week.
By then, Lewis has almost a month under his belt of learning personnel, plays and players.
Insular Ashburn says that's cynical thinking, jaded even. They say Lewis has worked with Brett Favre, Steve Young, Joe Montana, Bill Walsh and Mike Holmgren -- so why not Campbell and Zorn? Since Zorn is basically a young Jedi learning the ways of the Force, to the point of his light saber needing new D batteries in the red zone, why not bring in Yoda for reinforcement?
Whom do I believe? Charley Casserly, the former general manager of the team, is normally a close-to-the-vest man in his new life as a football analyst on television. In his first thoughts after the hire, he called the addition of Lewis the "kiss of death" for Zorn.

If Charley Casserly says it, that's enough for me. (Full disclosure: I host a radio show for a station that competes with Snyder's sports-talk station.)
Look, both theories have merit. The bottom line: This is a Snyder chess move. He can go either way.
If Zorn wins eight or nine of his last 12 games with Lewis's fresh eyes, the brain trust can be viewed as giving the still-green Z-man the help he needed to thrive and become the franchise's bona fide coach for the long term.
If this team falls off the map in three weeks and the coach is let go, the owner just bought insurance to salvage the season. In gambling and the NFL, this is called hedging your bet.
And that's my main problem with the move. To players, the fans and Zorn himself, it shows little faith in the man Snyder and Vinny Cerrato, the club's executive vice president of football operations, believed wholeheartedly could pick up where Gibbs left off.
Did you know Zorn is a Carolina victory away on Sunday from being the winningest coach, by percentage, in Snyder's 10-year tenure as owner? He's at 10-10 after 20 games, his .500 percentage is tied with Marty Schottenheimer, better than Joe Gibbs II (.469), Norv Turner (.450), Steve Spurrier (.375) and Terry Robiskie (.333).
Somewhere between the guy who bluffed Andy Reid and Wade Phillips out of their headsets almost exactly a year ago and the deer-in-the-headlights guy everybody is trying to portray Zorn as today is probably a better-than-decent coach. When his roster was healthy, did he need help a year ago at 3-1?
For what it's worth, Wednesday in Ashburn did not feel like help had arrived. Zorn and Lewis weren't brought out to speak with members of the media jointly, to talk about how they were going to work together. First, the coach talked. Then his new consultant got before the cameras, smiled, had a few nice quips about coming out of retirement and went back to scouring the halls and reporting his findings to his superiors -- and don't think for one minute that Lewis doesn't represent another direct pipeline to the owner.
Fairly or not, Lewis feels like the cleaner. He's Harvey Keitel in "Pulp Fiction" and "Point of No Return," the guy who destroys or removes any incriminating evidence at the scene of the crime. If needed, that includes the bumbling perpetrators.
To avoid looking in the mirror, Snyder and Cerrato bring in a damage-control guy to ensure the Zorn experiment does not become a referendum on their own talent-evaluation skills. But I've got news for them:
Lewis is not going to save the head coach's job. Cerrato is not going to save Zorn's job; it's too late, the roster is set.
Only Zorn's players can keep him here. And if they can't do it -- if this ultimately isn't about Zorn's motivational qualities or his suspect play-calling -- what does that say about the people who put the team together?
Bingo!

[JBH3]

^Good article^

This really is a laughing stock type move though. It's funny that Zorn, in all of this, is a .500 headcoach. We all know Portis broke down, and there were fundamental problems on defense for the Skins last year. However, Cerrato will likely still have a job, and aside from FA acquisitions and acquisitions from trades there isn't a lot of talent found on this team which was drafted and groomed in-house.

[emalloy3]

Quote: Originally Posted by kgx2thez

He has ties to Gruden so it could be a good move if we ultimately land Chuckie.

He actually has more ties with Mike Holmgren!!! Things that make you go Hmmm.

[Checmate101]

Hope the Defense can get some pressure on Jake this sunday..

[crques]

Quote: Originally Posted by emalloy3

He actually has more ties with Mike Holmgren!!! Things that make you go Hmmm.

I wonder if we'll see Holmgren in D.C. next season? I read that he's ready to coach again. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing Gruden get the job. He could provide some much needed energy and enthusiasm that this team has lacked for a while now under Gibbs, and now Zorn.

[emalloy3]

There's rumors going around that Holmgren has contacted Synder. Remember that this is only a rumor!