Zornometer midterm grade

[calia]

Tough audience out there -- the only way he has your complete confidence is to win a SB? There are many excellent coaches who haven't.

For me, the metric is threefold: (1) has he got his guys playing as well as they're capable of playing, (2) does he call a good game, and (3) does he make sound personnel decisions. So far, I think he has done each of those things quite well and will only get better.

Inheriting a team from a coaching legend the year after one of its stars is murdered has got to be as tough a challenge coming into coaching as anyone has ever faced. Zorn has not only handled it with great passion and smarts, but displays guts in play calling that is reminiscent of Gibbs v. 1.0. And he's done it withouth going out and buying a bunch of guys he knows -- the only real FAs are Jason Taylor, Plackenmeyer, and now Shaun Alexander (who is a temp for Betts). The rest of the new players are rookies. So he's been able to do better than last year with largely the same talent. And it would be hard to identify the guys who are underperforming this season. Portis, Moss, Campbell, Rogers, Cooley -- a number of guys are having terrific seasons. We haven't been finishing drives (especially in the red zone) as we should, which is troubling, and much of that is small lapses and some penalties. But with greater familiarity with the new system (which is still only about 3 months old), I have confidence that they'll work out the kinks. I think Zorn is going to turn out to be a terrific hire, and whatever faults The Danny has (and there are many), this was a good decision.