Fassel jilted, but ends up better off

Snyder makes as much money as any owner in the league. He's a master at it, in fact. For that, he should be lauded.

But football-wise, he should be shredded.

He is the knee-jerk, react owner who spends lavishly and most of the time it's foolishly. Look at his track record. Take a look at his coaches. How'd that Steve Spurrier work out? How about bringing back Joe Gibbs? Wasn't exactly worth it, was it? Snyder's free agency and trade scoreboard is littered with failure.

Paging Adam Archuleta. Paging Antwaan Randle El. Paging Brandon Lloyd.

The problem is Snyder thinks he knows football just because he collected football cards years ago and wore Redskins colors to school. But he doesn't.

It's clear that Snyder went for a coach who would listen to him. He picked Zorn. That's after several others backed away, including New York Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, who was told by confidants around the league to pass. Why did Spags and others pass? They didn't want to inherit two coordinators, Zorn on offense and Greg Blache on defense, already hired by Snyder.

Talk about troubles. How can you expect a new head coach to take two guys the owner hired onto his staff as his closest confidants? Doesn't Snyder watch mob shows? Even if they weren't rats, they'd both be perceived as such.

Zorn has never been a head coach. Heck, he's never been a coordinator. But he's probably open to Snyder's meddling. It is one of 32 jobs of its kind, which does mean something, even when the owner is calling you to the office two and three times a day.

When Gibbs was around, Snyder idolized him. He was a fan. He wasn't going to interfere with the legend. But with Gibbs gone, Snyder is back to his old ways, ways that his previous coaches hated.

Zorn might turn out to be a heck of a coach. I loved the way he played the game. He was daring and he might be that way as a coach. That's always a good thing.

But the perception with his players will be that he is Danny's Boy. That's never a good thing. It could make for some real problems.

There's a theory making the rounds in league circles that the promotion of offensive coordinator Jim Zorn to head coach in Washington has more to do with Vinny Cerrato than it did with Zorn.

As the theory goes, Zorn was deemed to be the least likely of the candidates to challenge Cerrato's authority as the new Executive V.P. of Football Operations.