Just so you’ll know, my Redskins story for Thursday is on the language of the plays in Jim Zorn’s offense. A lot is being made of that, but then, it’s the Redskins, with a fairly large press corps, so a lot gets made of almost everything.

I was talking to Skip Wood the other day. Skip does an outstanding job of covering the NFL for USA Today, and is a former Times-Dispatch staffer. He had been to St. Louis’ training camp in Wisconsin, and was telling me about the fabulous access he had to players there. Of course, Skip said, I was one of about five reporters in the media contingent. That’s pretty sweet.

Anyway, back to Zorn and his plays. Zorn’s plays have a lot of words to them. The players have said it’s different from the offense of Al Saunders and Joe Gibbs.

But I wonder just how different it is. True, Gibbs was a big adherent of the “passing tree.“ That’s when all the routes are numbered and the quarterback can quickly say something along the lines of “Jazzman 953” and each receiver immediately knows his route.

But years ago, after a practice, Gibbs was going through some give and take with the reporters, and we might have mentioned something about the plays that were being called and how they weren’t working so well. You could do that with Gibbs, and he’d laugh and say something about how every time he sees a shot of the press box, guys are eating hot dogs.

Anyway, Gibbs turned to a reporter—no, it wasn’t me. It was Vito Stellino, then with the Baltimore Sun. Gibbs and Vito used to go back and forth on a lot of things. Gibbs likes Vito. Yes, he does, Vito. And he respected him. Yes, he did, Vito.

Vito, by the way, is an NFL legend. He’s in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That’s a fact. You can look it up. There’s a media section, and Vito was inducted years ago. Vito now covers the Jacksonville Jaguars for The Florida Times Union.

Anyway, Gibbs turns to Vito, shows him the piece of paper he’s holding, which contained about five plays, and tells Vito to pick one for the Redskins to run to open the next game. I don’t remember all the plays, but one of them had the words “Lightening Pivot” in it. Vito picked that one, I think.

Gibbs wouldn’t tell us what “Lightening Pivot” meant. He also never told us if he actually used that play to open the game.

I mention this because Zorn likes to use action words in his plays. I’m willing to bet “lightening” in in the playbook somewhere. So, I’m not so sure the Zorn vocabulary for plays and the Gibbs vocabulary for plays is all that different.
It’s football. There are only so many ways a receiver can run a deep route and only so many ways you can describe an off-tackle slant.