Turner Won't Take the Last Laugh

Chargers Coach Keeps Even Keel In Playoff Run

SAN DIEGO -- Revenge does not seem to become him, so Norv Turner only let a slight smirk slide across his face the day after he had won yet another playoff game for the San Diego Chargers. He would not boast. He would not mock the men who had fired him as football buffoons. He would not say those things a man in his position -- as a twice-dismissed head coach in the midst of a winning run -- was well within reason to scream.

Instead, with the buzz of a first-round playoff victory over the Indianapolis Colts still ringing around the room, he was, well, the same old Norv, as droll and stoic as ever. On the day he could have said anything about anyone who has mocked his ability to be a head coach -- and there are plenty who have -- he did what he always does, regardless of the current state of public opinion.

He read the injury report. Then he talked about the weather.

"That 10-day report doesn't tell you a lot," he said.

But the fact is if there is a case to be made for Turner as a head coach, despite his 77-95-1 record in the regular season and his firings by the Washington Redskins and the Oakland Raiders, that case has made itself in the last month, during which his Chargers not only salvaged a season that looked lost with four straight wins but also won a first-round playoff game no one expected them to take.

And if Turner's Chargers can beat the Steelers on Sunday in Pittsburgh, he will have won four playoff games with the franchise, more than any other San Diego coach. It is not the standard of failure by which he has been measured for years, especially when you consider that in his two seasons here, the Chargers are 12-1 in December and January -- the games that supposedly matter the most.

So surely he must feel vindicated.

"No," he said. "I really believe that it is always about next week. For me it's always going to be about what happened in this game and now what's going to happen in the next game. That's not a bad thing because it does help motivate you."

Chargers General Manager A.J. Smith fired Marty Schottenheimer as coach after a 2006 season in which Schottenheimer led the team to a 14-2 record but made a series of blunders in a first-round playoff loss to New England. People openly laughed when Smith started talking to Turner about the job.

No one has doubted Turner's genius as an offensive coordinator, designing the offense that took the Dallas Cowboys of Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin to two straight Super Bowl titles. He had even installed the very offense the Chargers were running with Schottenheimer six seasons before when he was San Diego's offensive coordinator in 2001. But his record as a head coach was so unappealing it seemed to make little sense.

Still, Smith promised Turner would be better in San Diego. Just watch, he said. Smith never warmed to Schottenheimer's controlling methods. They clashed over personnel. They clashed over philosophies. They clashed, period. Schottenheimer lost both the playoff games he coached in San Diego. Smith blamed him fully, questioning the way the team's best players, such as running back LaDainian Tomlinson, were deployed in those games. Turner, Smith said, understood how to use his best players.

"Game day, in the playoffs, when it's turned up a notch big-time, there are critical, critical [coaching] decisions that must be made," Smith said before last season. "I'll just say four, five or six decisions that take place in a game, critical decisions made by the head coach. Consult with the coordinators, yes, but you still have to make the call. The strategies, the chess game, it's all very important. You have to make the right call.