Among the things that the Redskins coach said was that he and other team officials, including owner Daniel Snyder, toasted late safety Sean Taylor at dinner here Tuesday night on what would have been Taylor's 25th birthday. Zorn said that he's having a collage of pictures of Taylor assembled to hang in his office at Redskins Park to help ensure that any visitors remember what the organization lost when Taylor was shot and killed last fall.
His playbook is ready for his first offseason practices, he said. He has begun working with quarterback Jason Campbell, doing mostly footwork drills. Zorn said he's been pleased to find that Campbell has good footwork and should be able to move fluidly in the pocket as required by Zorn's version of the West Coast offense.
He said he was in Snyder's office at 1:30 a.m. on the opening day of free agency and the Redskins studied the possibilities in the market as aggressively as the organization had done in the past. But team officials couldn't strike deals that they thought made sense with the players they'd targeted, Zorn said, so they stood pat in free agency and now look to the draft to address a list of needs that still includes a safety, a defensive lineman, a wide receiver and depth on the offensive line.
On readying for the offseason practices: "What encompasses being a head coach, it's a unique and new challenge. I think we could all be further along. But I feel confident in the assistants I have. We're ready for our first minicamp playbook-wise."
On Jason Campbell: "He's just in for a lot of different thoughts of how to get rid of the ball in rhythm, how to understand how fast the game is played. He's got to meet the tempo of the game. We've worked on some footwork drills. A lot of quarterbacking is change of direction."
More Campbell: "Matt [Hasselbeck, Zorn's former pupil in Seattle] developed over several years. I think Jason is going to develop over several years. What we're gonna have to do is not give him so much that he can't function....
On the Redskins' offensive approach: "We'll probably have a run-first philosophy initially because of who we have as a running back and how developed our running game is. [But] I want to create balance as long as I'm here."
On the team's aging offensive line: "It's what we have. It's a good group of guys and they're tight-knit.... If we can stay injury-free with those guys and keep them together, I think we're all right."
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/nflinsider/2008/04/zorn_at_the_league_meeting.html
