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"I don't think we saw ourselves as an elite team, strutting ourselves, walking in and saying 'We are so awesome,"' Zorn said. "I just think we tried to win the game. We played hard. ... I don't think we overlooked this team at all, and I don't think we're going to overlook any team."
Zorn was responding to comments from running back Clinton Portis, who said the Redskins "overlooked" the St. Louis Rams. Kick returner Rock Cartwright added that the Redskins "relaxed" against the two-touchdown underdogs.
As Zorn indicated, those feelings weren't unanimous. As players and coaches met Monday to dissect what went wrong in Sunday's 19-17 loss to a winless team, the focus was more on a perfect storm of unusual turnovers and a precious few plays that didn't go as choreographed.
"I disagree with Clinton, but whose to say who's right," left guard Pete Kendall said. "It was my opinion that we'd had a good week of practice, that we had the right amount of focus.
"I really don't think you can tell by how a locker room is what the product is going to be on Sunday. Sometimes the locker room is loose and you think, 'Boy, these guys aren't taking it seriously,' and you go out and play great. And sometimes it's loose and you play terrible. My opinion is that we were doing the right things and preparing the right way, but it didn't come out right on Sunday, so you could make the argument that I'm wrong."
In the days leading up to the game, the Redskins (4-2) openly discussed the need not to overlook the Rams, even as conventional wisdom had Washington easily beating St. Louis, Cleveland and Detroit in a row to get to 7-1. Impressive road wins over Dallas and Philadelphia had made Zorn's team the flavor of the month.
"We talked about all week how this was going to be a tough game, how those guys were going to come in here at us, so it wasn't like it was a surprise," linebacker Marcus Washington said. "We felt we should have been victorious, just from the way we've been playing. But those guys made plays, too."
One by one, the culprits of the first-half turnovers - the first three committed by the offense all season - stood in front of their respective lockers and were asked to give a play-by-play of what happened. None shirked from taking responsibility.
"I was in a crowd. To tell you the truth, I felt like I was protecting the ball," said usually sure-handed tight end Chris Cooley, who was hit from multiple sides at once and had the ball jarred loose after a reception. "I felt like I had it wrapped up. It's football. It happens."
Center Casey Rabach, reliable as they come, used an unprintable word to describe his bad snap in a shotgun formation.
"When it rains, it pours," Rabach said, "and that definitely happened to us with the turnovers."
And Kendall still hasn't forgiven himself for catching a tipped pass instead of knocking it down. Unaccustomed to handling the ball, the big offensive lineman was stripped, and the fumble was returned for the Rams' only touchdown.
"It's a team game, and there were other opportunities for the team to get me off the hook," Kendall said. "But the problem is I put the team on the hook."
Those three plays, however, weren't at the top of Zorn's frustration list. The innovator of offbeat practice drills said he isn't going to make the linemen "work on batting a ball down."
"I just feel like that would be foolishness," Zorn said.
Zorn then rattled off four offensive plays that were killed by false starts committed by four different players.
"THAT I'm going to address," said Zorn, showing serious frustration for the only time in the news conference. "It's those concentration things, that's really irritating. We had a couple of really big plays that we couldn't execute. They were 'no plays' because of lack of concentration. That's inexcusable."
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