updated 3:39 a.m. ET July 19, 2008

LEESBURG, Va. - There were already streaks of mud on Jim Zorn’s white socks and silver cycling shoes when he rounded a curve on his Dean Titanium mountain bike and called out a warning: “More water ahead.”

The Washington Redskins coach plowed through the large puddle without slowing down a bit, and the unspoken challenge was to keep up with him. The 55-year-old father of four who routinely tackles double-black diamond trails at Whistler Mountain in British Columbia wasn’t about to be intimidated by a simple first ride near his new home in northern Virginia, accompanied by an Associated Press reporter.

“That was fun,” he said with a huff and a puff as he exited the bumpy trail and turned onto a paved path. “Really fun.”

Dive right in and plow through the mud? You bet. That’s how it’s always been for the adventurous, flaky left-hander who unexpectedly landed the job as on-field leader of one of the NFL’s most storied franchises. He’s a longtime position coach following a Hall of Famer, a candidate so obscure he wasn’t even on owner Dan Snyder’s original list after Joe Gibbs resigned in January.

Yet he’s the one who will be in charge Sunday when the Redskins open training camp.

“We both laughed about it. ’Can you believe it, man? I’m a head coach,”’ said longtime friend and new Redskins offensive coordinator Sherman Smith, recalling their phone conversation when Zorn was hired. “I said, ’Yes, it’s funny. But it’s not unbelievable that you are a head coach. It’s just great that it happened this way.”’

So, yes, the former Seattle Seahawks star took the plunge, as he has so many times before.

Burn the mold, because Zorn doesn’t quite fit it. He makes his quarterbacks play Slip ’n Slide and dodgeball. He once took up boxing to kill time while playing third string. He’s already told Chris Cooley to stop wearing short shorts to practice and Clinton Portis to stop playing coach by taking himself out of games.

He’s told reporters to stop interviewing players in the parking lot and the rookies that they’ll have to earn the Redskins logo on their helmets. He’d love to pedal to work every day but can’t because he opted for a house in a bike-unfriendly area, where he’s closer to best friend Steve Largent. In some ways, he is Gibbs’ polar opposite: a perpetual optimist instead of a worrywart, an early bird who doesn’t believe in spending the night on a couch in the office.

“I won’t be here until 2 o’clock in the morning,” Zorn said. “I guarantee you that. Unless the floor drops out.”

Three-word definition of Zorn: fun with boundaries.

“Jim fits that description well,” said Largent, the Hall of Fame receiver and former congressman. “And unlike a lot of flaky left-handers that I can think of, Jim has been able to organize his life and his thoughts in a way that’s really constructive, and yet it’s still kind of on the edge.”

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Sometimes, diving right in has its consequences. At Zorn’s introductory news conference on Feb. 10, he infamously recited the Redskins’ colors as “maroon and black” instead of burgundy and gold, and mistakenly credited Gibbs when discussing a Sean Taylor tribute. It was part of an overall nervous first impression that fed the fans’ worst fear: This guy is in over his head.

Zorn has since used humor to get over the color gaffe, but he’s heard about the doubters. The intense media glare of the nation’s capital captures all miscues and magnifies them, and Largent was quick to warn his friend that the fans back in Seattle “don’t turn negative on you like they do here” in Washington.

“What Steve doesn’t remember,” Zorn said as he picked up speed along the path, “is that I was booed in Seattle at the end of my career.”

Zorn says he does not feel overwhelmed. The first few months were extremely busy, but he felt prepared because he had been envisioning himself as a head coach for several years.

“The thing that really stimulates me is that things do change about every 45 minutes,” Zorn said. “I like that.”

As for the lower expectations he might face as Gibbs’ successor? He doesn’t buy it.

“He’s won three Super Bowls; that’s a feat in itself,” Zorn said. “So I’m not going to create the pressure of ’As fast as I can, get to three Super Bowls.’ There’s enough expectations of winning a football game, getting a division championship, getting into the playoffs, making it to one Super Bowl. Believe me, my expectations aren’t lower, knowing what Joe has done. It’s just a different time, and it’s a time when I’ve got to do my job.”

It’s hard not to give Zorn the benefit of the doubt, given his history of overcoming odds. The Cal Poly-Ponoma quarterback wasn’t chosen in any of the 17 rounds of the 1975 draft and went to training camp with the Dallas Cowboys. Motivated by Roger Staubach — who would run wind sprints with him every day after practice — the long shot survived a camp with more than 120 players to move up to third string.

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