Jim Zorn Has Guts

The man with the moxie. (By Toni L. Sandys - TWP)

When you're sitting there watching Jim Zorn go for yet another fourth-quarter fourth down--this one a fourth-and-a-long-one at the Philly 38 with the two-minute warning approaching--there's only one word that enters your mind. It's not, sadly, a word that the Washington Post is fond of using in this particular context.

Some might call it guts. Some might call it intestinal fortitude. Some might call it Chutzpah. I figured I should ask the players what THEY call it, figuring they know the euphemisms better than I would.

"Oh man, coach showed he had a big [rack of shawls] right there," Fred Smoot said, although the phrase actually rhymed with [rack of shawls]. In other words, so much for that theory. I asked a few more players to describe Zorn's moxie, and, like me, they struggled to find the properly appropriate word.

"For print you want me to tell you, or you want me to tell you my honest feeling?" Casey Rabach asked. I asked for his honest feeling. "[Palsy]," he said, although the word he used actually rhymed with [palsy].

"Dude, that was a [fall's-doubt] move," Chris Cooley said, although the phrase he used actually rhymed with [fall's-route].

Can't anyone talk about that call without going below the belt? Well, sure. And the players, overwhelmingly, liked the call. Obviously it's easy to like a call when it succeeds, but they also liked the swagger that decision displayed.

"I think it was the right move," Cooley said. "I think a lot of guys don't [go for it there], but I think obviously with what we've seen with Z-Man, I think you gotta know he's going for it there."

"It was great, a great call," Carlos Rogers said. "That's the play of the game. Why not? We had momentum. And it worked."

"Clinton called that play, he wanted that play so bad," Rabach said. "He asked [Zorn] to give it to him and it's the same play we scored that four-yard touchdown on. He had faith in us, we had faith in him and he ran his [behind] off."

"Big play, big play," Demetric Evans said. "Zorn is a guy that's got everything rolling, so you know, why not? That was a perfect opportunity to take that shot, and for us it worked out. That was a heck of a call....We had the momentum, they didn't have any more time-outs, and being an aggressive coach like Zorn is, you have to make those calls when you're playing to win."

"I'm glad he gets paid to make the decisions," Kedric Golston said. "It was a great call, for him to have the faith in the offense to get those yards, and it was great execution."

"It just shows a lot about our coach," Chris Samuels said. "He believes in us, and he's a gutsy guy, and we like that,"

I told Samuels what Smoot had said, and he laughed. Apparently Smoot had already tried out the "big [rack of shawls]" line in the locker room, more than once.

"You know what, I didn't want to say that," Samuels said, "but Fred did say that and I thought it was so funny. In the locker room, he said [Zorn] had....man, I ain't gonna say that."

Finally, someone has a little respect for the language. But it all does bring to mind Les Miles, who was depicted in this famous X-ray, which might be in poor taste but does get the point across.