Smoke Signals: Zorn sheds no tears for Campbell

Jason Campbell finally said what many of us have been thinking: That he’s getting hit too much this season. His coach,Jim Zorn, doesn’t want to hear about it.

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“I’m very worried about the situation I’ve been put in,” Campbell said. “I’ve been hit so much, it’s not even fair. I just call it like it is.” Here he paused, and then the old Campbell returned. “I’m just gonna leave it alone.”

Those three sentences are the closest Campbell has come to whining about the pummeling he’s taken this season. For Coach Jim Zorn — a former NFL quarterback who was twice sacked 44 times in a single season — that might have been three sentences too many.

“No player in the NFL is guaranteed the comfort and cush of anything,” Zorn said Monday. “It’s a hard game. . . . Is he getting hit more than other QBs? A lot of them. I think he’s a tough human being. It’s part of the nature of the game. He’s got to move in the pocket and throw the ball.”

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Zorn is talking like a man who was an NFL quarterback and knows what it is like to get knocked around a lot — he played for the expansion Seattle Seahawks, remember. It’s certain that Campbell holds on to the ball too long at times, something many quarterbacks do — most notably 2-time Super Bowl champ Ben Roethlisberger. The fact is, though, that the Redskins royally screwed up their entire offense this year by neglecting to stock the line with depth even though they knew several starters were old and injury-prone and others, like RT Stephon Heyer, were completely unproven. [Heyer is now proven -- to be nothing like what a starting NFL tackle should be.] Nobody should cry for Jason Campbell, but there should be an acknowledgement that the problems with this offense, including the quarterback pressure, are largely the result of mistakes by coaches and the front office.

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Smoke Signals: Zorn sheds no tears for Campbell