The San Diego Chargers yesterday hired Norv Turner as head coach, giving a third chance to a man whose stints leading the Washington Redskins and Oakland Raiders proved unsuccessful.

Turner’s teams have made the playoffs just once in his nine years as a head coach, but the Chargers’ front office nevertheless may have viewed Turner’s prior experience in a positive light. To the Chargers, the most attractive part of Turner’s résumé could be that after working for two domineering owners, Daniel Snyder in Washington and Al Davis in Oakland, he understands what it’s like to be a head coach who doesn’t control much beyond the sidelines.

Turner’s willingness to defer to the team’s management will contrast sharply with the stance of the previous coach, Marty Schottenheimer, who was fired last week after a long power struggle with General Manager A.J. Smith. The final straw was reportedly Schottenheimer’s desire to hire his brother, Kurt Schottenheimer, a Green Bay Packers assistant, as the team’s defensive coordinator, while Smith wanted him to hire longtime assistant Ted Cottrell.

It’s telling, then, that at the same press conference at which Turner was introduced as San Diego’s head coach, Cottrell was introduced as defensive coordinator.

Assistant coaches weren’t the only issue on which Smith and Schottenheimer couldn’t see eye to eye. A year ago, Schottenheimer wanted to keep quarterback Drew Brees in San Diego, but Smith decided to let him leave as a free agent and turn over the job to Philip Rivers, who spent his first two seasons languishing on the bench behind Brees.

Although that worked well for all parties — Rivers led the Chargers to a 14–2 record while Brees had an all-pro season with the New Orleans Saints — San Diego’s decision to fire Schottenheimer after a 14–2 season shows just how far apart the coach and the general manager were on major decisions. That the general manager won the tug-of-war with the coach shows how, even though head coaches are the most visible figures within every team’s management, the majority of NFL owners aren’t willing to give total control of their franchises to one person. Although a few NFL head coaches — including the Denver Broncos’ Mike Shanahan and the New England Patriots’ Bill Belichick — have final say over personnel decisions, coaches with all-encompassing power are a vanishing breed.

Broncos owner Pat Bowlen and Patriots owner Robert Kraft are willing to give Shanahan and Belichick that kind of power because they’ve earned it— they have a combined five Super Bowl rings as head coaches. Elsewhere in the league, coaches have to accept that they’re not at the top of the organizational flowchart.

Just two weeks ago, Turner was widely considered the front-runner for the Dallas Cowboys head coaching job. But Cowboys owner Jerry Jones instead chose Wade Phillips, who spent last year as the Chargers’ defensive coordinator. Philips leaving San Diegoled to the showdown between Smith and Schottenheimer over Phillips’s replacement. So missing out on the Dallas job indirectly opened the San Diego job for Turner.

That was a net gain for Turner: when Las Vegas casinos first set their odds for the 2007 NFL season, they made the Chargers the favorites to win the Super Bowl. But that was before San Diego replaced Schottenheimer, who is 66 games over .500 in his coaching career, with Turner who is 24 games under. Given that it’s hard to see how Turner is the best coach for the team, but it’s easy to see how he’s the best coach for the owner and the general manager.

Mr. Smith is a contributing editor for FootballOutsiders.com.