San Diego Chargers 2011: Can Norv Turner Avoid Trademark Slow Start to Season?

In the modern NFL, where parity is king, a team with championship aspirations can ill afford to dig themselves out of a whole at the midway point of each and every season. Nevertheless, such has been the case for the San Diego Chargers, year after year, under the perpetually stoic command of head coach Norv Turner.

In fact, starting slow has become a veritable trademark of Turner-coached teams, one that has been unquestionably well earned. In what is now his thirteenth season employed as an NFL head coach, Turner's teams have been at or below the .500 mark by Week 8 on nine different occasions.

Heading into Turner's fifth season in San Diego, he has done so in three out of four seasons, finishing 4-4, 3-5, 5-3, and 3-5, respectively. In fact, under Turner, the Chargers have never been better than 2-2 after four games. This may be the reason San Diego has needed late-season runs in order to make the playoffs in two of its three most recent postseason appearances. The Chargers' 3-5 start in 2010 ultimately cost San Diego the division title, not to mention caused them to miss the playoffs for the first time in six years.

Moreover, Turner coached team's propensity towards crawling, staggering or stumbling out of the gate seems entirely uninfluenced by either the caliber of player coached, or the quality of opponent faced. At the start of the 2010 season, San Diego's path to the playoffs seemed paved in gold. But even though the Chargers strength of schedule was ranked the 29th-easiest in the league last year, and despite the fact that the Chargers have sent an average of 6.6 players to the Pro Bowl a year since 2006, the 3-5 start proved too much to overcome.

Adding to the sting of unmet expectations is the fact that 3 of those 5 losses came against teams that did not make the playoffs in either 2009 or 2010. Loosing to inferior opponents, especially when everything is on the line, has also been a trademark of Norv Turner coached teams.

None of this is to say, necessarily, that Turner cannot coach at this level. He's 41-23 overall with San Diego and is tied for the franchise record for playoff victories with three. A victory over the Vikings this coming Sunday would put Turner in a very elite group of coaches who can boast 100 career wins.

But it seems logical that, if Turner ever hopes to solidify his legacy by bringing the Lombardi Trophy to San Diego for the first time in franchise history, he'll need to find a way to shed his team's tendencies of coming out flat and flaccid early on.

This season, Turner's Chargers do not have the luxury of what was effectively a fifth place schedule last year. No less than five of the Chargers' first nine opponents in 2011 went to the playoffs in 2010. And while Turner has made getting off to a fast start the theme of Chargers camp this year, it remains to be seen if this old dog has it in him to learn any new tricks.