Quote:I'll give you that. I'm not convinced that Snyder ever wanted Zorn to be his head coach in the first place. Zorn was, as I recall, something of a Plan Z after Snyder decided that he didn't want Gregg Williams running the show and couldn't get significant interest from anyone more appealing (because, really, who wants to follow Joe Gibbs and work for Dan Snyder?). Zorn's "gutless puppet" image wasn't helped by the fact that Snyder and Vinny Cerrato basically hired all of his assistants for him, without much input from Zorn, and ultimately made him choose between giving up playcalling to a guy who'd been there all of two weeks or be fired with cause.

 

Gruden has a slight advantage in that it seems Snyder actually wanted him, or at least didn't not want him. It is similar, though, in that Snyder has hired a young offensive coach without much of a resume after a couple of higher-profile coaches spurned him. Even more telling, though, is that Gruden will reportedly be keeping Jim Haslett as the offensive coordinator, and promoting an existing offensive assistant to offensive coordinator. Would a new coach who truly has the authority to hire his own assistants make holdovers from an abject failure of a regime into his coordinators?