Few fanbases in this country have had their hearts wrenched more often and more cruelly than that of the city of Cleveland, Ohio. Whether it be Major League Baseball’s Indians, who haven’t won a championship since 1948 or the National Basketball Association’s Cavaliers, who are still reeling from LeBron James’ announcement in the summer of 2010 that he was taking his talents to South Beach, hometown diehards from northeast Ohio have endured more anguish from their teams than they’d ever care to revisit. However, the one Cleveland team that has won a championship in the last 50 years may be the one that has crushed the local spirit more than any other.



The Cleveland Browns, who were on the wrong end of “The Drive”, “The Fumble”, and who were unceremoniously uprooted to Baltimore nearly two decades ago, have experienced one nightmare after another since returning to the NFL in 1999. Not since 2002 have the Brownies reached the postseason. The one winning season the Browns have amassed in that time, a 10-6 campaign in 2007, turned out to be a fleeting mirage rather than a promise of better times to come.

A New Dawg Pound

Now, a new era has been ushered in for fans of the Dawg Pound with a new owner (albeit one who is currently being investigated for fraud), a new CEO, a new general manager, and a new head coach. However, neither Jimmy Haslam, Joe Banner, Mike Lombardi, nor Rob Chudzinski present the biggest reason for optimism, as to why this current Browns regime will be more successful than so many others that have preceded it. The greatest organizational acquisition of the Cleveland Browns over the past twelve months has been that of their new offensive coordinator Norv Turner. Yes, Turner only reached the postseason 4 times in 15 years as an NFL head coach, with the Washington Redskins, Oakland Raiders, and San Diego Chargers. Of all the head coaches in NFL history with a losing record in their respective careers, Turner has coached the most games. As a head coach, he has been criticized for lacking motivational and emotional leadership skills, exhibiting poor clock management, and being responsible for a series of poor drafts, most notably over his last several years in San Diego. However, his credentials as an offensive coordinator are impeccable.

A Historical Look at Norv

Let’s go back to Turner’s first job as an NFL offensive coordinator, when he was hired by the Dallas Cowboys in 1991. At the time, the Cowboys hadn’t reached the postseason since 1985. Quarterback Troy Aikman, the 1st overall pick in the 1989 NFL Draft, had thrown 20 touchdown passes to 36 interceptions over his first two seasons in the league, while having been sacked 58 times in 26 games, while leading Dallas to a putrid 7-19 record over that span.

In Turner’s first year at Valley Ranch, Aikman completed 65.3% of his passes, for 229.5 passing yards per game, with more touchdown passes (11) than interceptions (10) for the first time in his career. Aikman only played 12 games that season, but the Cowboys still went 11-5 and reached the divisional round of the playoffs.





The last two years Turner was in Big D, the Cowboys won consecutive Super Bowls, with Aikman reaching a Pro Bowl in 1992 and an All-Pro selection in 1993. Running back Emmitt Smith also won the first three of his four career rushing titles in the years in which Turner was his offensive coordinator.

Turner parlayed his success as OC in Dallas into a seven-year stint as head coach of the NFC East rival Washington Redskins, before returning to the coordinator ranks in 2001 with the San Diego Chargers. The ’01 Chargers went 5-11, but on the heels of a 1-15 season in San Diego the year before Turner’s arrival, his reputation for improving the offenses he coordinated was still intact, particularly as that year’s fifth overall pick, LaDainian Tomlinson, won the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year award.

Short stint as Dolphins OC

The one time Turner arrived as offensive coordinator of a team and was not able to improve its record was in his first year as OC for the Miami Dolphins in 2002. The ’01 Dolphins had achieved an 11-5 record, only to go 9-7 in Turner’s first year in south Florida the following season. However, the main reason for this was that starting quarterback Jay Fiedler had a career year in 2001; setting career highs in passing yards (3,290), touchdown passes (20), rushing yards (321), and rushing touchdowns (4), while starting all 16 regular season games for the only time in his career. In that 2002 season, Turner fortified his reputation for getting the most out of his starting tailback and the running game, as Ricky Williams won the only rushing title of his career.

The 49er Era

After leaving Miami at the end of the 2003 season, Turner jumped back into the head coaching ranks for a two-year stint with the Oakland Raiders from 2004 to 2005. He followed his time with the Silver and Black by spending a year coordinating the offense on the other side of the Bay Area, for one year with the San Francisco 49ers, in 2006, before spending the past six seasons as head coach of the San Diego Chargers. With the ’06 Niners, Turner was able to reinforce his reputation for improving teams and offenses as San Francisco followed up a dreadful 4-12 season in 2005 with a somewhat respectable 7-9 campaign.

Turner’s impact, particularly on quarterback Alex Smith and running back Frank Gore, was similar to what he had accomplished in Dallas in 1991, with Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith. Alex Smith, like Aikman, had been a first overall pick who struggled mightily in his first year in the pros. In 9 games of his 2005 rookie campaign, 7 of which he started, Smith threw for just 875 yards and 1 touchdown pass to 11 interceptions. In 2006, Smith started every game, completed 58.1% of his passes, and threw 5 more interceptions than the previous year, but 15 more touchdown passes. In Gore’s ’05 rookie season, he rushed for 608 yards and 3 touchdowns on 4.8 yards per carry, while being behind Kevan Barlow on the depth chart. While that’s not a bad rookie season by any stretch, Gore’s 2006 season put his rookie year to shame, as Gore started all 16 games for the first of just two times in his career, and reached career highs in carries (312), rushing yards (1,695), yards per carry (5.4), and his 8 rushing touchdowns on the season were surpassed only by the 10 touchdowns Gore rushed for in 2009.

Cleveland's gain

What’s obvious is that Cleveland’s Brandon Weeden and Trent Richardson have a long way to go before they can be adequately compared to Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith or, for that matter, Alex Smith and Frank Gore. But what’s also clear is that Weeden and Richardson were first-round picks for a reason and they certainly have the right man coaching them.