Redskins: Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Five out of Six, Shame on Me

It seems like only weeks ago Redskins fans were proudly parading their "Horny for Zorny" t-shirts and blathering on local radio stations about how the first-year coach was the new George Allen who would lead the Skins to the promised land in his first year.

To quote President Bill Pullman in Independence Day: "It's amazing how quickly everyone can turn against you."

Unlike Pullman, Zorn has something more terrifying to answer to than alien invaders. He has Dan Snyder. Now, I know the prevailing sentiment amongst newspaper writers and esteemed bloggers is that Snyder has his finger on the trigger and is just itching at the chance to blow Zorn all the way back to Seattle. I, however, think that Zorn's future is safe.

For some reason I can't explain, I truly, firmly, honestly believe that Dan Snyder is a changed man. He's way too smart, and I mean wicked smart, to keep making the same mistake of making a splash hiring, only to oust the guy when he loses four in a row or, in Zorn's case, five of six.

Snyder has tried numerous methods of motivating his team. First, the "my team needs some hard knocks discipline" method with Marty Schottenheimer. After that one-year plan failed to yield any improvement, he moved on to the "hire away the most talented college ball coach" routine with Steve Spurrier.

After that two-year failed disaster, which left images of Danny Wuerfull trying to gut out the 40 yard deep ball imprinted in my brain, he wizened up...or so he thought. This time it was the "resurrect the old legend from the retired world" super plan.

Four years later, Snyder tried to shed his image of making the headline-worthy coaching hire and went with his gut. He picked Jim Zorn as the guy.

Here we are, 14 games into the Jim Zorn era, and the Redskins are where most teams predicted them to be, at or around .500. Just because they got there with a promising 6-2 start followed by a dismal 1-5 stretch shouldn't diminish or glorify their season. They are a team of old cranky vets led by a rookie head coach and an (mentally) unproven rookie quarterback.

Frankly, looking back, we should be happy with the progress made in a 9-7 or even a 8-8 season.

So, let's cool our jets here and give Zorn a chance to show us all that he's not in over his head, and that he can right the ship after five or six game losing streaks. After all, we gave Joe Gibbs that same chance after he came out of retirement to a 6-10 finish.

I remember a couple years ago the Patriots gave a second chance to some loser named Bill Belichick after he stumbled to a 5-11 finish in his first year with the team.