The Chargers beat the Colts 23-21 Sunday night to take sole control of the AFC West lead, so you would think the Chargers might at least be somewhat happy. Not really. Norv Turner has failed the Chargers in his play calling, motivation, and overall coaching, and the players are starting to complain.

LaDainian Tomlinson said after the game, “At some point things have got to change for us, because what we’re doing now is not good enough. The way we’re going, we’re not going to be able to beat the elite teams in the league. I mean, we beat one tonight, and we’re happy. But it has to get better.”

He should be mad. The Chargers are running the ball less than last season, and LT’s carries are down 1 per game from what they were last year. One veteran told Yahoo!:

“We have the best running back in football, and yet we don’t sense a commitment to the running game. Last year, teams put eight in the box against us, and we ran anyway – and found a way to be successful. That set up the play action, which fueled our passing game. This year, it seems like we run because we’re supposed to; it balances out our passing attack. But it’s not like being physical at the point of attack and running the ball is our personality.”

But it’s not only Turner’s celebrated play calling that is faltering. His not-so-celebrated leadership is also being called into question. Michael Silver, Yahoo! Sports columnist, paraphrasedTurner’s speech following the win Sunday night down to: This could be the game that gives us the momentum we need to do something special. Even though we did a lot of things wrong, we still found a way to win, and we can build on that.

At 5-4, the Chargers have a lot of building to do to get back to where they were last year.

Then again, they did win…

I’d be pretty apathetic too, if my team needed Peyton Manning to throw six interception, allow two special teams touchdowns, and miss two field goals, just to win by three. Now abut those Colts…

Peyton Manning lost one playoff game two years ago in part because of a missed Mike Vanderjagt field goal. The Patriots won a lot of playoff games because of Adam Vinatieri field goals in the past few years. The Colts won the Super Bowl last year against a Chicago Bears team led by “Wrecks” Grossman who was responsible for four turnovers in the big game.

Everything flip-flopped Sunday. Vinatieri was 0-for-2 on field goals. Manning threw six picks. And Rex Grossman led a comeback win for the Bears.

Where to get started?

Peyton Manning

The Reaction, a liberal blogger, has come up with 10 politically-charged reasons Manning threw six interceptions. Despite his obvious lack of common sense, I must say that some of his reasons were pretty funny. However, I think it was because Peyton had a bet going with Nancy Pelosi to see who could get a lower rating.

(For the record, Pelosi and the Democrats won the bet, having a Congressional approval rating of 29% to Manning’s passer rating of 49 for the game.)

Adam Vinatieri

Missing big field goals is Scott Norwood’s job. But, without Norwood, Vinatieri did the best he could, going 0-for-2, including a 29-yard game-winner. We Suck at Sports made a really good post on that topic.

Special Teams Defense

Well, they did about as well as the Colts special teams offense…

So, who should I be mad at? No one, I guess, cause I don’t really like the Colts, but I hate Norv Turner, so I’ll just be mad at him.

When the Arizona Cardinals fired Dennis Green last January, the team said they were rebuilding. So what were the San Diego Chargers doing when they fired Marty Schottenheimer? Deconstructing?

Schottenheimer, coming off a 14-2 season, has a 200-136-1 career record. In the past five years, he has coached the Chargers to a 47-33 mark. The only knock on him is that he can’t win playoff games. In fact, the last time he recorded a playoff victory, the President was contemplating what to do about the attack on the World Trade Center. Keep in mind that the president then was Clinton.

So if Schottenheimer’s 5-13 playoff record was the reason that the Chargers fired him, they did the right thing. Because, if you can be sure of one thing about their new coach, it’s this: He certainly won’t lose any playoff games.

Norv Turner is their new coach, and while he might not have the career accolades that Schottenheimer does, there are many things impressive about him, too. For instance, no one else has ever been rewarded with such a highly coveted job after coaching as poorly as he has for so many years.

Of course with a team like the Chargers, an average coach could get them into the playoffs no problem and win at least one game, so what’s the worry? See, Turner isn’t exactly average. Average is 50%. Turner is 38% (58-82-1 career record).

Turner’s favorite pose: disappointment.

I have a hard time seeing how this coaching change will work. After all, Schottenheimer did go 12-4 in 2004 and 9-7 in ’05 with Drew Brees at quarterback, then 14-2 in his first season with Phillip Rivers starting. General Manager A.J. Smith must have liked what he saw, because he gave Marty a quick Schott in the back and boot out the door following the season—well, not quick exactly; he waited until every other head coaching vacancy was filled and until the Chargers had lost their two coordinators and two assistants to other teams.

Then he used the fact that all the assistants left against Schottenheimer in the press conference. (Take a break here because the lack of logic coming up might get confusing.) The general manager is mad at the coach because four assistants left the coaching staff. The GM is in charge of hiring all the coaches and giving them permission to seek jobs with other teams. He’s also apparently in charge of finding scapegoats.

Now after blaming his mistake on Schottenheimer, A.J. Smith proposes a pragmatic solution to the problem. If four assistant coaches left, the best way to combat the problem is to fire another coach. I’ll let John Madden explain the logic behind that because I sure can’t.

The questions at the beginning of Smith’s press conference on the firing started off kind of tame, like, “What kind of an idiot are you, firing Schottenheimer after a 14-2 season?” but by the time Smith had explained his reasoning, they changed to “How does an idiot like you get a general manager job? Can I get one?”

Allow me to cut through the rhetoric. Schottenheimer was fired for the same reason that Jerry Jones fired Jimmy Johnson after two Super Bowl wins in 1993. Ever since Smith took the job in ’03 Schottenheimer there was always tension between the two because both were so power hungry. As Schotty said after the affair, “We’ve never been on speaking terms.”

Turner is most effective when he has his headset off and isn’t able to get his worthless play calls to the QB.

If Smith had a good candidate in mind for head coach and had reason to believe that his strained relationship with Schott was hurting the team, than it would make sense to fire him, but I can hardly see how a 35-13 record over three years is evidence of chemistry problems. They had been winning together for three years, then, after the hiring season had ended, no less, Smith decided to pull the plug. He could have at least fired him early so that he could have promoted offensive coordinator Cam Cameron to the head job.

Cameron has helped turn the voltage up for this Chargers offense that has ranked among the top five in each of the last three seasons. He and Schottenheimer turned Phillip Rivers into a top ten quarterback in just his first year starting. Schotteneheimer has a long history of QB success including Bernie Kosar and Rich Gannon, along with Brees and Rivers. (Heck, he even got good quarterback play out of the running back position with Ladainian Tomlinson.)

Turner, on the other hand, can’t tell a quarterback from loose change. When someone mentions the hail mary to him, he goes to church. That is, until he realizes that it involves a deep bomb then he runs for cover. He once joined the NRA to improve his shotgun formation. The alleged “quarterbacks” he has produced include Alex Smith, Jay Fiedler, Gus Frerote, and Jeff George. Donovan McNabb’s projectile vomit looks prettier than those guys’ passes.

You have to cut the guy some slack, though. The Chargers weren’t that great of a team is 2001 when he helped them finish 5-11 as offensive coordinator. He wasn’t the one who signed a near-retirement Doug Flutie onto the team, who combined with a young Brees, to throw 16 touchdowns and 18 interceptions. He did inherit a pretty bad Raiders team in 2004, and after the job he did with them, he has some hope that the Chargers don’t finish dead last in the division next season.

This is the first year that he has taken over a team that was already good, and you can be sure it will be the last year that they are good.

What do you think? Post your opinion in the comment section.

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