Once criticized, Turner now getting critical acclaim
That's another way of saying he had to win, and Turner won his last eight starts before succumbing to New England in the AFC Championship Game. That's called momentum, and it's how playoff teams are made. It's also how coaches' reputations are -- shall we say -- modified.
"With his approach, he had the respect and trust of the guys in the locker room," quarterback Philip Rivers said. "Guys saw the way he approached things and the way he came to team meetings when we were 1-3, and it wasn't any different than when we were 0-0.
"He never blinked, and that's big for guys to see. They saw that he wasn't panicking. It wasn't like, 'Man we have to get this figured out; we have problems here; let's do this and get this guy out.' Nothing ever got in disarray.
"Yeah, there were guys saying we should be doing this or that, but you're going to get a little bit of that with any team that's 1-3. With everything that went on here, I think he handled it really well."
Now Turner handles a team that is a trendy Super Bowl favorite, and where are his critics? Maybe they think he's changed, but they should know better. He found a team that gives him a chance to excel.
And maybe, just maybe, it's vice versa.
"It's easy to jump to generalizations and conclusions," Turner said. "You have to analyze why things happen or didn't happen. And I laugh because we're backed up against Indianapolis, and there's something like a minute-and-a-half, a minute-fifty left, and we had a lot of guys out. So we run it three times, and say, 'Let's punt, get it off and see if we can win this game doing that.'
"We were in a game like that in 1997 against Dallas, and if we had won we would've made the playoffs. We punted, got off a 23-yard punt and two plays later they score. (Against the Colts) we punted, and Mike (Scifres) hits a 63-yard punt.
"So if a guy gets off a great punt you're a smart coach; if a guy gets off a bad punt you screwed the thing up. You have to accept that."
Maybe. But if you believe Smith gambled on his head coach, you also have to accept that he won.
For once, Norv Turner does not have to prove himself.
