Kawakami Might Be the Smartest NFL Writer In America

You can file this one under "Prediction of the Decade."

Rarely to you find sportswriters who quickly, and definitively crush a new NFL coaching hire. For one, writers always want to preserve some shred of access in case the guy is good. For another, who the hell knows if a guy can do the job? (I remember distinctly the mocking of Andy Reid when he was hired by Philly. That seems to have worked out pretty well.)

Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News, authored this column on the Skins hiring of Zorn back in February of 2008. It's so dead on, it reads like he filed the column yesterday from the back seat of Dan Snyder's limo.

Wrote Kawakami....

I talked to Zorn when he was first getting into coaching on the Seahawks staff and I can tell you that, if first impressions mean anything–and they do–I walked away from that interview thinking, This guy shouldn’t be anywhere near an NFL sideline.

He was a very good QB, undoubtedly. But he was known as a non-thinking QB even when he played. Total instinct. He never was considered a coach-candidate.

He took a bunch of years away from football when he retired… then he got back with the Seahawks and apparently became buddy-buddy with Matt Hasselbeck.

But who do you think coaches the QBs, really, in Seattle? Zorn or Mike Holmgren? Come on. The Zorn I talked to was over-emotional, antsy, defensive and very short on the ability to communicate general NFL knowledge–and I was just doing a soft story on the Seahawks during the off-season, so it wasn’t like I was plumbing the depths of intricate analysis.

REACT: Good, gawd. "Over-emotional, antsy, and defensive" are dead on. The phrase "shouldn't be anywhere near a sideline" is chilling. Because he's not just near our sideline, HE'S ON IT!!!