Norv Turner Era: Success or Failure?

[jacobyfan]

Ok, I usually just lurk, but I'll weigh in on this. Norv is not as bad as we make him out to be. Our team was in disaster immediately following the beginning of the salary cap era and free agency. Pettibone was absolutely terrible and our defense was mediocre and offense totally predictable. It was like we were running out of a tecmo super bowl playbook.

Along comes Norv to try to fix the mess. We end up with Heath Shuler, who although he can throw the ball through the goalposts on his knees at the 50 (he reportedly did this while visiting the skins before the draft), was less than capable of leading a team. Continue the John Friez/Gus Ferrote show. Gus wins the job and then it looks like we're headed to the playoffs when he head butts a wall after a touchdown on purpose and puts himself out for the whole season. Lets not forget that we had a parade of who's nobodies (opposite of who's whos) at DC.

Then we get Brad Johnson, we have Stephen Davis and decent receivers and a decent O-line. We make the playoffs. We have the top offense in the NFC (if I recall correctly). We lose because we have not one, but TWO of the damn Turk brothers on out team. New owner Dan Snyder decides to screw around with the team. I'm going to put this in caps. NORV WANTED TO KEEP BUILDING THROUGH THE DRAFT. We get deion, we get bruce, we get mark carrier. We go 8-8 that year and Norv gets fired.

Now, I will say that Norv started here with a crappy terrible defunct operation. Maybe he didn't build it up fast enough. To his credit. He had us pointed in the right direction and wanted to continue building long term. Losing Westbrook for the year had hurt us.

In argument against him, and the one I made at the time that year which I still think is valid. With Westbrook out, Johnson couldn't seem to get his groove back and Norv (who is supposed to be a QB wizard) couldn't fix the problem. With (Albeit aging) pro-bowlers everywhere, here was our record.


5-3 against playoff teams
3-5 against non-playoff teams

I think you get rid of your coach for that. However, since he had built it up to the point it was at and Dan arguably was the one that derailed it, maybe he should have been given another year.