**The Official San Diego Chargers 2011 Season Thread**
- Thread starter Jaysav
- Start date
The "Raider Nation" should disown you if you'd rather Norv and A.J. stay with the Chargers than the Raiders go to the playoffs.....or even entertain that thought lol.
I would much rather had a new head coach but I'm not trippin all that much about this. I think it goes deeper than just coaching. We need to sign some big name free agents, and from what I hear, A.J. is probably going to do that this offseason. Apparently there are a lot of them out there.
I would much rather had a new head coach but I'm not trippin all that much about this. I think it goes deeper than just coaching. We need to sign some big name free agents, and from what I hear, A.J. is probably going to do that this offseason. Apparently there are a lot of them out there.
I'm not bitter towards the Chargers for winning. I'm bitter towards the Raiders defense for not being able to force a single punt in the entire fucking game.
I'm just saying as a Raiders fan I'm happy Norv is coming back, because that team has mostly under performed with Norv as a head coach. With Norv coming back, the division will be wide open again, IMO
I'm just saying as a Raiders fan I'm happy Norv is coming back, because that team has mostly under performed with Norv as a head coach. With Norv coming back, the division will be wide open again, IMO
Canepa: Spanos made right call on coach, GM
It may turn out to be a bad business decision. What Chargers boss Dean Spanos did Tuesday was impossible. He made the angry villagers — the vocal minority — even angrier. And he may feel it in his wallet, at the gate, at the polls, and in perception, where he’s being viewed as a spineless Mr. Lubner for not erasing the canvas and making a bold stroke.
But keeping General Manager A.J. Smith and head coach Norv Turner on the payroll after a second consecutive flop was bold, a solid, thought-out football decision. If anything, it proved Spanos is very much his own man, a vertebrate, who runs his company as he sees fit, consulting with people who know football, not the haters who rule cyberspace.
As Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote: “When people have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.”
Spanos will be shoved in the shredder for this. Call me anything you want — you already have — but the owner would have been wrong to tear up this football operation, because it’s not dead and he’s seen it dead. There were circumstances why this team lost six straight — and Smith probably saved Turner’s job when he brought in mammoth left tackle Jared Gaither off the street — but everyone knows another non-playoff year isn’t going to be acceptable.
“Obviously, I’m very sensitive to what the fans have to say,” Spanos said. “I’ve come to the conclusion that I can talk until I’m blue in the face that this is the right thing to do, but until we go out and change the course of where this team has been heading, get back into the playoffs and make a serious run for the Super Bowl, anything short of that isn’t going to change their minds.”
I think Turner is a good coach. Always have. I can’t believe a bad coach can win 11 straight games in the NFL. But he has shortcomings. Because he calls his own plays, there have been game and clock management problems.
He pointed out Tuesday: “Coaches who’ve won the last two Super Bowls (the Saints’ Sean Payton and the Packers’ Mike McCarthy) call their own plays.” True, but that doesn’t mean everybody can do both successfully, and Turner has been unable to do both successfully. He says he has help, but he needs more than that. He needs somebody who knows every aspect of this game nearby giving advice on the sidelines. He has to put ego aside.
Turner is a great football mind. His players — listen to Philip Rivers — like him and play for him. But I don’t believe he’s ever going to win a Super Bowl on his own, because something is going to happen to stop him if he tries. As Lou Holtz once said: “Moses died leaning on his staff, and so will I.”
My guess is Turner has been told change is needed.
“You’ve got to have help and I’ve got good coaches,” Turner said, adding, however, that, “At times I’ve been too trusting.”
Norv has to do more leaning. He doesn’t have be something he’s not, an animated screamer. That doesn’t win football games any more than Smith not talking to the media this season made the team 8-8 (although Spanos has informed him he has to come out of his bunker).
“I made a mistake dropping out,” admitted Smith, although he fully intends to continue to ignore the few media people he can’t stand. “I’ve made a mistake in that area — and it’s not football.”
Thing is, the outside perception of Turner is wrong. They don’t know him any more than they know Vladimir Putin.
Did Rivers’ passionate Sunday defense of Turner save his job? “If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you,” Rivers said. “If I believe in something, I wouldn’t feel good if I didn’t (say it). I didn’t do it to just defend the coach.”
Said Turner: “There’s a lot of ways to motivate people without standing in front of a TV cameras and yelling and screaming at ’em.”
As for Smith, he, too, has to change, and I’m not talking about his dealing with the media, which is nonsense. He has to draft better. He has to make better personnel decisions. He has to listen more to his trusted players. Think Rivers would have given him the OK to get rid of Darren Sproles? Smith has missed some. And he must take a stronger look at marquee free agents, especially on defense, because there isn’t one impact player on it and this team isn’t likely to win a Super Bowl standing pat on that side of the ball.
“We’re always open to free agency,” Smith said. “My philosophy has not changed. I don’t believe in going out and grabbing all these guys, but I am not against getting a marquee guy or two, and we may have to take a look at that this year. We need a dictating, dominating defense, or we’re not going where we want to go. And not in spurts. We haven’t been able to get that done.
“And although I’m not a one-man band — I consult with a lot of people — I take full responsibility. I need to do a better job in a number of areas, but in our structure, it’s me.”
This was a flawed team that came within a fumbled Rivers snap of making the playoffs. To me, that’s not a fireable offense.