A.J. Smith won the war. Now let's see if he can keep the peace.
The San Diego Chargers' general manager is the clear-cut winner in a turbulent week that began with the firing of Marty Schottenheimer and ended Monday with the hiring of Norv Turner and Ted Cottrell.
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| General manager A.J. Smith gets his way. Now, will it work out? (Getty Images) |
That sounds pretty basic, except it's not the script that was followed last year when the Chargers were a league-best 14-2. Schottenheimer and Smith barely acknowledged each other as San Diego won its second division title in three seasons, and Schottenheimer ran his three-year record to 35-13 -- a mark bettered only by Tony Dungy and Bill Belichick.
When their differences spilled over into the postseason, with Smith vetoing Schottenheimer's proposal to hire brother Kurt as the team's defensive coordinator, team president Dean Spanos intervened. Tired of mediating conflicts between the two, he decided it was time to choose between his general manager and his head coach.
And he chose his general manager.
Which is fine because Smith is one of the league's pre-eminent talent scouts. When you look up and down the San Diego roster you find reams of talent that lead directly to Smith. In fact, of the 53 players on the Chargers roster 46 of them can be traced to Smith.
He's the guy who swung the Eli Manning deal that netted the club Philip Rivers, Shawne Merriman, Nate Kaeding and Roman Oben. He's the guy who had the guts to stick with Rivers over Drew Brees. He's the guy who took a chance on linebacker Shaun Phillips and drafted tackle Marcus McNeill despite public concerns about his back.
OK, so we determined Smith knows how to find talent. What we haven't determined is if he knows how to find a head coach who can win for him. Remember, Schottenheimer wasn't his choice. He was picked by John Butler, Smith's predecessor.
Now, five years later, Smith swaps Schottenheimer for Turner and Cottrell, and, on the surface, it looks like another Manhattan purchase for the team's GM. In Turner he has the offensive coordinator who, in 2001, installed the offense that successor Cam Cameron perfected over the next five years. And in Cottrell, he has a coach he knows and likes -- someone who ran Wade Phillips' 3-4 defense in Buffalo and coached it to the playoffs.
But there are caution flags there, and I ask you to turn your history books to 1997. That's the last time Spanos was forced to intervene in a dispute between his head coach and general manager, and, just as he did here, he sided with his GM.
At that time the GM was Bobby Beathard, and his ability to find talent where others could not was so well documented that Sports Illustrated labeled him "The Smartest Man in the NFL." But it wasn't talent that got him in trouble in 1997; it was his frosty relationship with then-head coach Bobby Ross.
The situation boiled over when Beathard insisted Ross fire his offensive coordinator after the 1996 season, and the head coach refused. Enter Spanos. Exit Ross.
