Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 20, 1994 TAG: 9501170105
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TONY KORNHEISER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It's after the 10th game.
They're 2-8.
How much better are the Redskins?
Turner considered the question. He took off his glasses and briefly rubbed his eyes.
``It's hard to build a case off the last game [San Francisco built a 37-6 lead en route to a 37-22 victory on Nov.6] that we're a great deal better. I believe we're better, but for me to make a case on wins and losses would take a lot of time.'' Turner said, smiling and embarrassed. ``You'd like it to show up in the games. It hasn't.''
How do you measure ``better'' anyway? With a couple of breaks - an interception instead of a tip, for example - the Redskins could be 4-6, maybe even 5-5. ``You would feel better,'' Turner said, ``but you wouldn't necessarily be better.''
He reviewed the season, pulling it apart like knots on an old pair of shoelaces.
``We lead the league in interceptions, with 19,'' Turner said. ``You can attribute that to young players, but I've probably been too ambitious offensively. I want to be aggressive and wide-open. I want us to be fun to watch.'' (He's an old West Coast quarterback; the first words he ever spoke probably were, ``Go long!'')
``I could have been more conservative - we've had 12 interceptions on first-and-10. But if we only had two interceptions, Henry Ellard might not have 900 yards receiving. I haven't backed off because I think in the long run this is the best thing for us.''
This is Turner's first year as a head coach anywhere. So his lifetime line reads: 2-8. For the first time in his career it's personal, it's not like being somebody else's assistant and standing off to the side like a sergeant-at-arms. It's Turner's 2-8. Even if he inherited the players, even if they're not the players he would choose, they're his players now.
``In this profession there isn't a lot of regard for the fact that last year you coached in the Super Bowl,'' Turner said. ``It's: What are you doing now?''
``So far this season has been a real test for our players,'' Turner said. ``Each one wants to say: `Hey, I'm better than that.'''
It wouldn't just be the players who want to say that, would it?
Turner smiled. ``To keep my sanity, I think back to people in the same situation. Jimmy Johnson: 1-15; his second year, after major changes, he was 3-7, then he won four in a row,'' he said. ``I remember reading Bill Walsh's book, and he talked about going 3-13 his first year and trying to find the good things. One of the things they found was Joe Montana.''
Turner isn't likely to find anything good today when the Redskins meet Dallas at Texas Stadium - the last of the unwinnable games on a front-loaded schedule. Talk about stepping in bad luck: Dallas has lost only twice this year. Both times its next opponent was Washington.
It's a homecoming of sorts for Turner, and you couldn't blame him if he was envious of Barry Switzer, getting to coach such a loaded team.
``I'd be a liar if I said no; nobody's that strong,'' Turner said. ``But I was as excited about coming to Washington as I've been my whole life, and I still am.''
Even at the bottom of the NFC. Even bogged down in quarterback quicksand. Had you asked Turner in July what he thought the state of his quarterbacking would be by the 10th game of the season, he'd have said, ``Heath Shuler would have a pretty good grasp on the job, and hopefully he'd be playing like Rick Mirer and Drew Bledsoe did in 1993.''
Turner didn't anticipate this muddle, where a nowhere man has outshone his million-dollar baby. ``You wouldn't expect it, and you wouldn't want it. But you can't hide from it,'' he said.
So Turner is making the best of it, telling people he's just as high on Shuler as ever, and chipperly adding, ``Gus Frerotte will be an outstanding player.'' Turner's in Washington 10 months, and already he's a veteran at spin-doctoring.
Norv Turner is instantly likable in an accessible, regular-guy way. He's not a zealot or a condescending pill who thinks being a football coach isn't a profession but a calling.
His office is roomy, and stuffed with plants, and decorated restfully in dark reds and plaids and plants. It looks more suited to a psychiatrist than a football coach. There's a pull-down movie screen where Turner watches game films, but you can easily imagine him screening some Kevin Costner movie instead.
(I asked about the plants, since there were so many; I thought if Turner were a serious gardener I could write some sort of stupid extended metaphor about ``cultivating'' a team. It turns out the plants were gifts after the Redskins beat New Orleans. ``People kept putting them in here,'' Turner said. When the Redskins beat Indianapolis, he had a momentary fear his office might turn into Sherwood Forest, but no new plants showed up. ``I figure I'm safe now,'' he said.)
There's a big picture window behind Turner's desk, and it looks out onto the lush, green practice field. It's a seductive view; even if every NFL head coach had it, there's only 28 of them. There probably are times when a young man - and Turner is only 42 - leans back in his chair and looks out that window and thinks to himself: ``Not bad for a kid from Martinez, Calif.; can you believe what's happened to me?''
When those moments of satisfaction hit, Turner shoos them away, because now isn't the time to feel any of those things. ``I'll sit back and say, `Can you believe this?' after we've won a lot of games and been real successful,'' he said. ``My goal isn't just to be a head coach - my goal is to be real good at being a head coach.''
Turner cleaned the lenses on his glasses, so nothing would cloud his vision when he looked out that window and said, ``I don't intend to be the guy who got the Redskins job and didn't get it done.''
Tony Kornheiser is a columnist for The Washington Post.
by CNB