Tale of two Turners
It's not like the San Diego Chargers haven't already played with fire once this offseason by canning Marty Schottenheimer and replacing him with Norv Turner.
Juggling head coaches can be tempered, somewhat, by surrounding the new guy with quality assistants, as the Chargers wisely did with Turner, who has had very limited success in multiple opportunities as a head coach.
But playing with the team's safety net -- not to mention future -- at running back is something completely different.
LaDainian Tomlinson, for all his greatness, is, sadly, only human. Tomlinson has 2,050 carries in six NFL seasons. That's 341.6 per season and that is A LOT at a position where the average NFL career is something like 2.5 seasons. There's only so much pounding any man, Superman or not, can take.
Michael Turner, frankly, was underused by the Schottenheimer staff that opted instead to grind on LT. Turner is poised to gain more carries under the Norv staff and the Chargers are foolish to even entertain trade offers for the restricted free agent. (Seriously, what could Tennessee possibly offer as acceptable compensation for Burner Turner?)
To their credit, the Chargers did make Turner -- a resticted free agent -- the highest possible tender offer allowing them control over matching another team's contract offer or receiving a ransom in draft picks as compensation.
Draft picks in '08 and '09 is all well and good but if I'm a Chargers fan, I don't want to go into a possible Super Bowl run without a quality backup behind LT. And after watching the running back roulette around the league during the first few weeks of free agency and looking at a very thin draft group, it is clear there is no replacing a Michael Turner in 2007 if the Chargers were to let him go.