"Public persona aside — which in this case is where it should be — Norv Turner is a brilliant football mind. Not a genius. Coaches don't always mix well in the intellectual cocktail. They're running sports teams, not nuclear reactors.

But Norv has some absent-minded professor in him. He says "obviously" a lot, so we'll say he obviously needs help. He can do it alone, he just can't do it well enough alone to finish the job he's been hired to complete.

Holmes had his Watson, Lewis had his Clark, Fred had his Ginger, Parcells had his Belichick, Frick had his Frack, and now Norv has his Steve, as in Steve Fairchild.

Everyone needs help and the Chargers head coach certainly does. In Fairchild — I covered him when he quarterbacked Patrick Henry High in the mid-1970s — Norv may have hired his Watson."