Charger Fans Wrath Needs to Aim Higher

Aim the wrath higher. Not Norv. AJ. Or, higher still, Dean.

Listening to the radio a day after the Chargers latest debacle, this one a 34-23 Monday Night Football home loss to the undefeated Broncos, makes it seem like 80 percent of fans believe the Bolts are in deep doo-doo, and the other 20 see a team with only three losses so why not go out and win the other 10 games. Of that pessimistic four-fifths, perhaps 90 percent want head coach Norv Turner to be fired.

That just shows a misunderstanding of how the Chargers leadership functions. After Turner's predecessor, Marty Schottenheimer, was fired, the brass hired Turner to be part of a more cohesive, integrated decision-making team. You remember that press conference. There would be no more separation between what the front office wanted and what the coaching staff desired.

The skeptical saw it as Turner being hired to be General Manager AJ Smith's lap dog, a coach with a losing career record who would wag without question as his boss' yes-man.

No matter which situation is true, Turner does not have quite the same portfolio as a typical NFL head coach, who wields the true power in most franchises. So if we want to start throwing blame around, we have to move up the ladder, to Smith or to Dean Spanos, the team president.

I assign blame to Smith, myself, for ignoring the line of scrimmage. Yeah, you know. It's been my rant for years that he gets his offensive linemen off the scrap heap and expects them to perform as well as the others, and it never works. There's no question now that I've been right about this all along. Smith, remember, nearly let the Chargers' only quality offensive lineman, Kris Dielman, get away as a free agent a couple years ago before cooler heads prevailed. Speaking of blockers, where's Lorenzo Neal? Oh, yeah, not here.

The bottom line is if you get rid of Norv Turner, you're just going to get a replacement who will be a less-than-one-third part of a triumvirate. Much-more-than-one-third Smith will still rule the roost, so who knows if LT will have anyone who can pave a path through a line of scrimmage or if there will be anyone on defense to tie up an opposing lineman.

This is no call to fire Smith or anyone else. It is a desire to put some realism back into the debate, so people can understand the ramifications, or lack thereof, for the moves they advocate.

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If anything, this slow start will hopefully get Smith off his butt to acquire some decent linemen on both sides of the ball via free agency and maybe to draft a trench player before the third round.

By the way, call me a pessimist. Unlike the slow starts of previous years, I don't see much chance to improve during the course of the season. The losses of NT Jamal Williams and C Nick Hardwick are proving to be potentially fatal for playoff hopes.