Jim Zorn, the first quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks, stopped by the Probus Club last week to talk about his career, philosophy and of course, the final ill-fated play of Super Bowl XLIX.
Mercer Island Probus, a club for retired and semi-retired business and professional people, meets monthly at the Presbyterian Church. Many members remember the inaugural seasons for both the Seahawks and Zorn in 1976, and brought friends from out-of-town to come see the Seahawks legend.
The audience was a full house of football fans, and included one special member: Zorn’s mother-in-law.
Zorn brought souvenirs – his 2005 NFC Championship ring and an official game ball. He passed both around, asking people to guess the number of pounds of pressure. Many guessed somewhere in the official, legal range – 12.5 to 13.5. One guessed 18. The answer was 11.
“You came from New England,” one man joked, before getting a lesson from Zorn on how the age, shape and amount of “Mississippi mud” can affect the grip and feel of a ball.
The audience loved Zorn’s self-deprecating humor and football insight. All raised their hands when asked if they had watched the Super Bowl.
“It was a pretty good game,” Zorn said. “Except for one play.”
Many fans questioned the final offensive play of the game for the Hawks, which was a pass that resulted in a Patriots interception.
Zorn said it’s easy to second guess decisions, but difficult to call plays at the time.
After 16 years of coaching experience, he would know. He said he made similar ‘gutsy’ calls as the head coach of the Washington Redskins in 2008 and 2009.
Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t; all you can do is “plan your work and work your plan.”
“That play probably could have been executed a little better. Isn’t it great to have this hindsight?” he said. “Since we all know now that it wasn’t going to be completed, we all would have run the ball. But that doesn’t guarantee a touchdown.”
Zorn played 11 NFL seasons, including nine with the Seattle, before transitioning into coaching.
He was the Seahawks quarterback coach from 2001 to 2007. His ‘05 Hawks also lost the Super Bowl, though he helped quarterback Matt Hasselbeck to three Pro Bowl nominations. He said he’s currently looking to get back into coaching, but that there will never be anything like the intensity of playing a football game.
Zorn was inducted into the Seahawks ‘Ring of Honor’ in 1991, though he came from an unlikely sports background.
“I never played organized sports growing up, not like kids do today, especially on Mercer Island,” he said. “We would play football in the street … Nobody really taught me how to play [until high school]. I had no idea there were four downs.”
Since then, he said he’s devoted his life and his family’s life to football, focusing on teaching discipline, efficiency and a delicate balance of confidence and humility to young quarterbacks.
“I love the way Russell Wilson plays, because he’s so free,” he said, mentioning that the Super Bowl was a game between two great quarterbacks, though Tom Brady “threw some awful footballs, just not enough.”