The Official Blog of The Washington Redskins

Jim Zorn has established himself here in D.C. not only as a talented young football coach, but also as a seemingly endless source of entertaining stories and quirky turns of phrase. Today’s post-practice press conference was relatively mild from that perspective — an “ab-so-LOOT-ley,” the observation that moving Sunday’s game to prime time means “We’re a team that’s still worth watching. At least we didn’t get bumped,” and that was about it.

He also seems to have been fairly laid back in his conference call with the Baltimore media, pretty much giving the expected answers to the questions he was asked. Here are his answers to the questions about fellow rookie head coach, Baltimore’s John Harbaugh.

On when he had the chance to speak with coach Harbaugh: “It was more in preseason. It was kind of like, ‘Here we go. I wish you the best.’ When we were at the NFL owners’ meetings late in the spring, we talked, we visited and we just called each other and exchanged encouragement, and then we were off and running. There’s not a lot of time to visit between games. You just have to get on to the next game. So that hasn’t been the case during the season.”

On the type of things they shared in their conversation in preseason: “It was more personal, just pleasantries, really. A lot of just encouragement because it’s pretty exciting to be starting your program. There’s a lot of optimism; you haven’t lost a game yet. So there’s kind of all positive encouragement between each other.”

Nothing too outre or amusing there. Fortunately, Harbaugh seems to have picked up that slack at his own media session today when answering the opposite question

On his thoughts on how Redskins head coach Jim Zorn has begun: “They’ve done great. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Jim Zorn. Obviously, as a player, watching him over the years, and as a coach, what he’s done with the Seahawks.

[Harbaugh swats a fly out of the air]

“That was impressive. Did you just see that? That was a fly. (Laughing) Could coach Zorn do that?”

Okay, so Harbaugh wins the fly-swatting portion of the competition. But just wait until we move to the coyote-skinning and metallurgy events, and Zorn will put him away.