Goodbye Marvelous Norv Turner
In a move pretty much expected by everyone, the Rai-duhs today fired head coach Norv Turner. Turner was the coach for only two seasons, but managed to suck in both of them. Well, okay, that's a little harsh. Let's just say the team sucked in both of them, going 9-23 over the past two years. And it might not have been all of Norv's fault as already, the stories are being leaked about Al constantly looking over his shoulder and telling him what to do. This year was an even bigger disappointment as the team was expected to maybe not get to the playoffs but to at least be fairly entertaining when they signed both Randy Moss and LaMont Jordan in the off-season. They were neither. In fact, from an offensive standpoint, they were pretty awful, coming in as only the 21st ranked offense in the NFL.
SFist wasn't around when Marvelous Norv Turner was hired, but if we were, we would have said he was an uninspired pick that pretty much summed up the word "retread." Which turned out to be true. His hiring was something that showed all the flaws of Seamhead thinking-- he was considered a great football guy and a great offensive mind despite the fact there was absolutely no evidence of it in his previous stint as Head Coach of the Redskins.
What happens now is always half the fun, especially when the Raiders are concerned, because trying to read Al's mind is like trying to guess who the new Pope will be. The question is as it always is, will Al hire somebody with enough power to do what they need to do or will they hire some nice guy toady that does what Al wants him to do? This has been the central drama for the Raiders since even back to L.A. Al, whose pinky knows more football than we'll ever hope to know, sometimes shows he's still got it and hires some up-and-coming whipper snapper who goes onto be hailed as a genius and wins the Superbowl. With other teams. In both cases, the coaches (Mike Shanahan and Jon Gruden) became successful with the Raiders but left because they got tired of all the chafing they had to endure in power struggles with the boss. Then Al went the opposite way and hired someone like Turner or Joe Bugel, coaches whose main qualification is they did whatever Al told them to do.
Whatever way Al goes should pretty much determine how the Raiders go.