Norv Turner Era: Success or Failure?

[mike340]

Good OC, lousy coach. I remember wondering every week how we were going to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

[Hail2theskins]

Being a younger skins fan on this forum all i can say is terrible. When i first started really caring about football at about 9 or 10, right when norv became the head coach. It was tough to be a young skins fan at that time, as most little kids jump on a bandwagon team. But my dad raised me right damnit, I can still remember sittin there watchin them play sundays with my old man and he was just disgusted to watch this team play after having seen the entire gibbs era.

[vaoutlaws2006]

i better hold a little something back. it took turner a while to put results on the field...playoff wins but we went to the playoffs and won here at fedex and then went to tampa and lost on a botched snap and low and behold our owner who some call smart...who i call a moron put his hands on this team...brought in some has beens jeff george, bruce smith and deion and wrecked what turner struggled to build. I blame Mr Snyder for Norv's undoing here. PERIOD.

[celts32]

Originally Posted by vaoutlaws2006

i better hold a little something back. it took turner a while to put results on the field...playoff wins but we went to the playoffs and won here at fedex and then went to tampa and lost on a botched snap and low and behold our owner who some call smart...who i call a moron put his hands on this team...brought in some has beens jeff george, bruce smith and deion and wrecked what turner struggled to build. I blame Mr Snyder for Norv's undoing here. PERIOD.

You can certainly blame Snyder for Norv's last season but what about the other 5 awful seasons? Most teams would have fired Norv in year 3...John Cooke was a very patient owner.

[SmootSmack]

Originally Posted by celts32

You can certainly blame Snyder for Norv's last season but what about the other 5 awful seasons? Most teams would have fired Norv in year 3...John Cooke was a very patient owner.

When Norv Turner was hired, Jack Kent Cooke was just focused on getting his stadium built, then when he passed away John Kent Cooke was just focused on keeping the team under his ownership.

I don't think it was until Snyder came along that anyone in that front office was even really paying attention to the team. There was just so much else going on at the time.

[skinsfan69]

Originally Posted by TAFKAS

When Norv Turner was hired, Jack Kent Cooke was just focused on getting his stadium built, then when he passed away John Kent Cooke was just focused on keeping the team under his ownership.

I don't think it was until Snyder came along that anyone in that front office was even really paying attention to the team. There was just so much else going on at the time.

Huh? Not true at all. At the time we had a GM named Charley Casserly and a assistant GM Bobby Mitchell. When Snyder came in the team was in great shape thanks to Casserly. We had draft picks, a proven QB and were under the cap. The team was ready to win. Things went down hill when Deion Sanders and co. were signed. Snyder and Vinny f--ked everything up. Why would you bring in Jeff George? Why would you bring in Bruce Smith? Why would you fire Marty after one year? Why would you hire a college coach with a gimmick offense? Danny Boi wants to win but he just has NO CLUE how to win. Always after a quick fix. You just can't buy team chemistry. It's not for sale. I bet John Cooke is sitting back on an island somewhere laughing his ass off.

[SmootSmack]

Originally Posted by skinsfan69

Huh? Not true at all. At the time we had a GM named Charley Casserly and a assistant GM Bobby Mitchell. When Snyder came in the team was in great shape thanks to Casserly. We had draft picks, a proven QB and were under the cap. The team was ready to win. Things went down hill when Deion Sanders and co. were signed. Snyder and Vinny f--ked everything up. Why would you bring in Jeff George? Why would you bring in Bruce Smith? Why would you fire Marty after one year? Why would you hire a college coach with a gimmick offense? Danny Boi wants to win but he just has NO CLUE how to win. Always after a quick fix. You just can't buy team chemistry. It's not for sale. I bet John Cooke is sitting back on an island somewhere laughing his ass off.

I think John Cooke runs a vineyard in Virginia. He was, according to several sources, completely clueless while running the Redskins and while his dad was there.

[MTK]

I think it's funny that some seem to be letting Norv off the hook because of his last year here with Snyder. Like that somehow absolves him for the prior 6 years of mediocrity.

[irish]

If you look at Norv's record from a rest of the league perspective he was not a failure but not really successful either which means he was an average coach with the Redskins.

Looking at Norv's recored from a Redskin perspective he would have to be listed as a mild success in comparison with all the coaches that have followed him.

[freddyg12]

Check out this summary of 1998, a year full of hope after signing D. Stubblefield & Big Daddy Wilkinson. Norv would've been fired if not for the unsettled ownership situation, though the team did put together some wins at the end.

Washingtonpost.com: Washington Redskins 1998 Season Recap

[vaoutlaws2006]

Originally Posted by freddyg12

Check out this summary of 1998, a year full of hope after signing D. Stubblefield & Big Daddy Wilkinson. Norv would've been fired if not for the unsettled ownership situation, though the team did put together some wins at the end.

Washingtonpost.com: Washington Redskins 1998 Season Recap

Washingtonpost.com:

check out 1999 these are the results i speak of.

[freddyg12]

Originally Posted by vaoutlaws2006

Washingtonpost.com:

check out 1999 these are the results i speak of.

I remember that season well, it was our best till 05. Norv got things in order when Danny said playoffs or done.
I put the link to the 98 season cause I think it better shows the ups & downs of Norv's teams. we started 98 0-7 yet managed to finish 6-10.
The 2000 team beat the best teams in football including both super bowl teams, but we couldn't beat dallas & we lost one to the cards.
I also put up the 98 season cause as dismal as we were early on a lot of owners would've fired the coach by then.
Norv had some success & gave us hope for a while. I would've liked to have seen what he could've done in 2000 if Danny hadn't gone on that spending spree. At the same time, that spree was all on D & the D did improve greatly. Was Norv to blame for that team going 8-8?
That's a tough call, but I think Norv has shown that he's not as suited to being a head coach as an OC. just my opinion.

[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.

[sportscurmudgeon]

Here's a comment I made in my Internet column today about the Cowboys' coaching search:



With all the attention and focus on the Cowboys’ coaching search, there is an obvious solution to filling their vacancy – but it is one fraught with danger for the league. Jerry Jones could name himself as the coach of the Cowboys. Hey, George Halas and Paul Brown were rather successful “owner/coaches”; Al Davis coached the Raiders for a while and he’s the moral equivalent of an “owner”. Jones is already the Cowboys’ owner, CEO, President and GM; he spends half the game on the sidelines anyway; he played college football; he can certainly do well in the job interview event. It’s a way to increase the team’s profitability since he won’t need to pay a head coach something in the neighborhood of $4-5M per year. And can he really do that much worse than Dave Campo did?

Here’s the danger for the league… If he does this and the team breaks even next year, it will set up a grand machismo situation for other owners. Follow this line of thought. Hey, if JJ can do it – and Al Davis did it before – why can’t I do it too? It’ll mean more face time for me on TV and if the team wins I won’t have to share the spotlight with some flunky that I was smart enough to hire in the first place; all that jamoke did was do what I paid him millions of dollars to do. And with that thinking – I can’t bring myself to call it reasoning – you could see Danny Boy Snyder prowling the sidelines for the Washington Redskins. Talk about putting one of the longstanding franchises into a tailspin…

[ncskinsfanec]

Originally Posted by sportscurmudgeon

Here's a comment I made in my Internet column today about the Cowboys' coaching search:



With all the attention and focus on the Cowboys’ coaching search, there is an obvious solution to filling their vacancy – but it is one fraught with danger for the league. Jerry Jones could name himself as the coach of the Cowboys. Hey, George Halas and Paul Brown were rather successful “owner/coaches”; Al Davis coached the Raiders for a while and he’s the moral equivalent of an “owner”. Jones is already the Cowboys’ owner, CEO, President and GM; he spends half the game on the sidelines anyway; he played college football; he can certainly do well in the job interview event. It’s a way to increase the team’s profitability since he won’t need to pay a head coach something in the neighborhood of $4-5M per year. And can he really do that much worse than Dave Campo did?

Here’s the danger for the league… If he does this and the team breaks even next year, it will set up a grand machismo situation for other owners. Follow this line of thought. Hey, if JJ can do it – and Al Davis did it before – why can’t I do it too? It’ll mean more face time for me on TV and if the team wins I won’t have to share the spotlight with some flunky that I was smart enough to hire in the first place; all that jamoke did was do what I paid him millions of dollars to do. And with that thinking – I can’t bring myself to call it reasoning – you could see Danny Boy Snyder prowling the sidelines for the Washington Redskins. Talk about putting one of the longstanding franchises into a tailspin…

I really don't see any of that happening. It's quite a hypothetical scenario, though, although I wouldn't put it past the egotistical Jones. Al Davis coached in a much different era than the one we have today.