HENDERSON, Nev. — Twenty years before he became the Las Vegas Raiders’ interim offensive coordinator, Scott Turner was the backup quarterback at UNLV and finalizing plans to pursue a coaching career.
His father, Norv Turner, had just gotten his second job as an NFL head coach with the Oakland Raiders that year. The younger Turner had long planned on getting into the family business, and the time to do so was closing in.
“I wasn’t a great player,” Turner said this summer. “I knew college football was probably my last stop. … I always knew I wanted to coach. My dad was a coach. I just love football, and I wanted to be around the game.”
Turner played at UNLV for the late John Robinson, who died Monday. Robinson, a College Football Hall of Famer who won a national title at USC and had a successful run with the Los Angeles Rams, imparted a lasting takeaway about how to treat people.
“He truly cared about all of the players on the team,” Turner said. “That’s what coaching is about.”
Turner began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Oregon State in 2005. His first NFL job came as an offensive quality control coach for the Carolina Panthers in 2011, and after bouncing around for several years, he was hired as the Washington Commanders’ offensive coordinator in 2020.
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During Turner’s three years in Washington, the Commanders shuffled through starting quarterbacks Dwayne Haskins, Alex Smith, Taylor Heinicke and Carson Wentz. They averaged just 19.8 points per game (27th), and he was fired after the 2022 season. Turner said the failure in Washington taught him that he had to do a better job of adapting his scheme to the strengths and weaknesses of the personnel.
“Really, it’s just dealing with the people,” Turner said. “This is a relationship business. You got to understand what your guys on your team do the best and then try to find a way to get that out of them and then get them to perform at the highest level every single week.”
That’s something recent Raiders offensive play callers — Josh McDaniels, Bo Hardegree and Luke Getsy — have struggled to do.
Turner, initially hired to the Raiders’ staff by McDaniels in 2023 as the pass game coordinator, will have an eight-game stint to show he can be different. And he’ll have some help from his father, whom the Raiders hired as a senior advisor last week.
“He has such a wealth of knowledge,” Turner said of his father. “He called offensive plays in the NFL from 1991 to 2019, and he missed one year in 2017. … He had No. 1 offenses in three different decades. And he’s my dad, so we like being around each other. We lost some coaches on offense, so he just brings another set of eyes.”
The Raiders are hopeful Norv’s experience will give Scott a big lift as he gets a second chance.
“He watches football constantly,” the younger Turner said. “He knows what we’ve done on offense. Obviously, the verbiage is totally foreign to him, but I just translate it. He just says what he thinks, and I know, ‘Oh, yeah, we call it this.’ It’s really not that hard. And then just fundamentals. He has tidbits for the quarterbacks. He’s sitting in a lot of the quarterback meetings. Just stuff that you don’t even think of. I can only see so much. We have a great coaching staff, and those guys are doing a great job, too, but it’s just another set of eyes. … And also, he’s not afraid to tell me what he really thinks.”
During his time as pass game coordinator, Turner wore a lot of hats. His responsibilities included leading meetings with position groups, researching other offenses and helping install the scheme. As his duties expand to calling plays and coaching the quarterbacks, that diverse experience could be beneficial.
It’s never ideal to make an in-season scheme change, but for what it’s worth, Turner said in the summer that Getsy’s offense was “a little bit more towards what I’ve been a part of in the past.” There will still be differences, of course, and there’s no shortcut to teaching those.
“You’re not going to go in and put a brand-new offense in,” Turner said. “Maybe some things that I’m a little bit more comfortable with or I feel like will help us be successful, we have it. And then it’s just about getting it communicated to our players in a way that makes sense to them. There might be a couple of new things here and there, and we’ll see how that grows as the season goes on.”
New OC Scott Turner said there will be tweaks in the offense and players have to believe in the play calls. pic.twitter.com/jnUY4iGE7n
— Vic Tafur (@VicTafur) November 14, 2024
The Raiders’ offense is in a bad place. It’s averaging 18.7 points per game (25th) and isn’t doing anything well. It’s unrealistic to expect Turner to suddenly turn the offense into The Greatest Show on Turf, but there is room for improvement.
“The key word for us going forward, especially this week, is improvement,” head coach Antonio Pierce said. “And it’s not going to be all in one week.”
That effort starts with the offensive line, which has been suspect in pass protection and horrid at run blocking. Center Andre James will miss his second straight game because of an ankle injury, so rookie Jackson Powers-Johnson will start at center again. Left tackle Kolton Miller and right tackle DJ Glaze will start, but both guard spots are up in the air. Whoever makes up the O-line, Turner will work in concert with interim offensive line coach Joe Philbin, who’s been a head coach, an offensive coordinator and an offensive line coach, to attempt to turn things around up front.
“Fundamentals and technique, man. That’s what I was looking for with our O-line, right?” Pierce said Wednesday. “Pad level, eyes down, striking, physicality up front, getting off the rock, hand placement, that’s where it’s supposed to be. Joe Philbin has been around this game a long time, coached some really good offensive lines and been around some good offenses as well. … His forte is O-line play. And the one thing we talked about was just purely how we look off the offensive line. What does it look like physically from a technique standpoint, from a fundamental standpoint? So, I’m excited to see what these guys do.”
The Raiders need Turner and Philbin to find a way to unlock the run game. Turner highlighted communication among the offensive line as the primary issue that has prevented that from happening.
“We’re trying to just make sure that the communication is great up front so, No. 1, we know who we’re getting to,” Turner said. “Coach Philbin, he’s going to do a great job. … We’re just really focusing on the fundamentals of hat placement, understanding what we’re trying to get out of every run, and hopefully we can stay a little healthier and have some continuity. And then the backs just need to be decisive. Don’t worry about making a mistake or putting the ball in the wrong place. Just go hit it and run and get your pads going forward.”
If that comes to fruition, it’ll take pressure off a quarterbacks room that has struggled mightily. Starter Gardner Minshew II has been benched three times, Aidan O’Connell is on injured reserve with a broken thumb, and there’s little reason to believe Desmond Ridder can be an upgrade. Despite benching Minshew against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 9, the Raiders decided to stick with him as the starter.
“At some point, you got to give a guy confidence,” Pierce said. “And there’s been times, obviously, with turnovers and other things that have taken place, where we made decisions to either put him on the bench or go to another quarterback. But this week, I felt like Gardner gives us the best opportunity to move forward.”
Without better quarterback play, the passing offense will always be held back despite having receiving options such as Brock Bowers, Jakobi Meyers, Tre Tucker and Michael Mayer. Realistically, though, the Raiders probably aren’t getting anything better than below-average quarterback play this season. For the Raiders to find consistent success offensively, they have to establish the ground game.
The same thing could be said about the Raiders’ turnover problem, poor third-down offense and overall lack of execution. The list of solutions Turner is tasked with finding is long, but he feels up for it.
“A lot of it is about the plays,” Turner said, “but it’s also about the players believing in the plays and knowing exactly what to do so that they can play fast all the time and then reach their capabilities.”
(Top photo: Chris Unger / Getty Images)
