Sucked Into the NFL's Black Hole, Week 15

Everything on this planet is soon going to disappear into a massive black hole. Each Monday, we’ll present those football-related elements that have already been swallowed into the abyss.

The Players Deciding the AFC North. I feel like it was a touchdown, certainly many others (most of whom are likely wearing purple urban camo and downing Natty Boh right now) would disagree. Either way, it was the wrong decision in the Steelers-Ravens game for referee Walt Coleman to overturn the ruling on the field that Santonio Holmes caught the ball out of the endzone.
To me, it appeared that Holmes tapped his toes and possessed the ball with the nose of it over the line, but certainly there wasn’t enough to overturn the call. It’s a shame that Coleman did -- we were robbed of seeing what Mike Tomlin and the Steelers would do on fourth down and an inch for the division.

Jim Zorn’s Tenure in D.C. The hiring of a quarterbacks coach to be Washington’s head coach was received with much skepticism over the offseason. After all, Jim Zorn was somewhere around 22nd on Dan Snyder’s list of options. For the first half of the season, it seemed as if Snyder & Co. had struck gold with Zorn after a 6-2 start. Since then, the collapse has been swift and painful, as the team has dropped five of its last six. The collapse has reached epic proportions with a loss to the one (and a half)-win Bengals yesterday. It’s an embarrassing, inexcusable loss that could very well be the final straw for Zorn in his first season as an NFL head coach.

Firing Zorn would obviously be an overreaction, but ill-informed, knee-jerk decision making is the hallmark of the Skins’ front office. There is plenty of blame to go around Redskins Park right now -- special teams coach Danny Smith, an offensive line that can’t pass protect, Vinny Cerrato still making personnel decisions, a front four, or seven, that gets zero pressure on the quarterback -- but when a team goes from a shoe-in to make the playoffs to .500 (and ultimately, it seems they’ll end up with a losing record), the blame always falls on the head coach.

As a Redskins fan, I’m torn on the Zorn issue. Given the wealth of other problem areas on this team, it would seem that he deserves at least one more season to prove himself. But that’s not the way Snyder and Cerrato will look at the situation, especially if they can pry Bill Cowher away from the CBS studios.

Ed Werder’s Cowboys Press Pass. Things are about to get pretty awkward for ESPN’s Ed Werder around Valley Ranch. He’s stationed there for the Worldwide Leader to report all things Cowboys, but after citing anonymous sources in last week’s T.O. vs. Witten article, he’s being heckled by the locals and blasted on national television by the players:

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.