Raiders coaching staff: Can new lead offensive coaches Scott Turner and Joe Philbin shore up inefficiencies and miscues?

Norv Turner join his son in Las Vegas as senior advisor

The time for speculation is over.

Head coach Antonio Pierce made his decision on who will be his Las Vegas Raiders offensive coordinator and offensive line coach: Scott Turner and Joe Philbin, respectively. The pair are now the interim play caller and trench teacher the team announced on Tuesday.

The restructuring of the coaching staff is a result of Pierce dismissing former offensive coordinator Luke Getsy, offensive line coach James Cregg, and quarterbacks coach Rich Scangarello late Sunday night — after the team’s 41-24 Week 9 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.

The moves allow Turner and Philbin to absorb the roles and the bye week gives the duo ample time to get settled.

The key question with Turner and Philbin: Can the new lead offensive coaches shore up the Raiders’ inefficiencies and miscues?

While Pierce has no choice but to find out, don’t set expectations too high for either Turner or Philbin.

Let’s start with the obvious: Both Turner and Philbin were already on staff and have a hand in Las Vegas’ 2-7 overall record. Turner was the pass game coordinator while Philbin as a senior offensive assistant before landing their new roles. Pierce could’ve just easily made the pair the respective offensive coordinator and offensive line coach long before he tabbed Getsy and Cregg to do those same jobs.

The Raiders lack of offensive success is well documented and the bar is low for the new interim play caller and trench boss — Las Vegas boasts the 26th-ranked scoring offense at 18.7 points per game (168 total) and the dead-last ground game (a meager 692 yards rushing) — just how much Turner and Philbin move the needle is debatable.

Take Turner, for example.

His last stint orchestrating an offense was for the Washington Football Team (eventually Washington Commanders) from 2020-22. In his final season as offensive coordinator, Washington finished with 18.9 points per game (321 total). The previous season, Turner’s offense finished 23rd scoring 19.7 points per game (335) total and in his first season with the play book in 2020, Washington was 25th scoring at a 20.9 per game clip (335 total).

A lot was said about Turner lacking quality personnel at his disposal during his tenure in Washington, when referring to overall league rankings, but now he takes over play calling duties for a Las Vegas squad which has talent at certain spots, but is undoubtedly in shambles due to injury which has exposed the lack of quality depth. Just look at the quarterback position for starters.

Gardner Minshew was benched — again — during the blowout to the Bengals. And Desmond Ridder, who replaced Minshew this past Sunday, was signed off the Atlanta Falcons practice squad after Aidan O’Connell was placed on injured reserve after suffering a broken thumb on his throwing hand against the Los Angeles Rams three weeks ago.

Jason Parkhurst-Imagn Images

Philbin, on the other hand, takes control of an offensive line that’s had its moments but struggled overall to assimilate to the implemented zone blocking scheme. But here’s the rub with Philbin: He’s a disciple of Alex Gibbs’ zone blocking scheme, too.

Like Tom Cable, Mike McCarthy, Mike and Kyle Shanahan, Philbin is cut from that same Gibbs cloth where zone is king. And you got to see a lot of it during Philbin’s pairing with McCarthy with the Green Bay Packers and later when the duo reunited with the Dallas Cowboys from 2020-22.

The outside zone is long a Philbin staple, and perhaps, with his voice being the lone one in the offensive line room without Cregg there, Las Vegas whips the blocking into shape.

But, then again, Cregg did come from the Kyle Shanahan tree having served as the assistant offensive line boss with the San Francisco 49ers before coming to join Pierce in Las Vegas this season.

Philbin is known to stress fundamentals and focus on that before diving into scheme and maybe that’s just what the Raiders offensive linemen need: Attention to detail and communication.

With Philbin guiding the offensive line, the Cowboys did finish in the top 10 in rushing yards in 2022 and 2021 (ninth in yards gained in both years). Dallas was also top 10 in passing yards in 2020 and 2021 (eighth and second).

Flip it to Turner and Washington’s ground game finished 12th in terms of yards gained in 2022 and 2021.

For a Las Vegas team at the bottom of the NFL rankings in terms of rushing production, anything would be an improvement, and that’s what Philbin and Turner can bring — in theory. In practice will be a different beast altogether.

And unfortunately for the Raiders, we may have seen all they can muster.

Even More Old-School Flavor

Joining the newly minted duo is former Raiders head coach Norv Turner, Scott’s father, as a senior advisor for the offense.

So, out with the old and in with the … old?

That’s certainly the case for Philbin and the elder Turner. The former is a 63-year-old coaching veteran while the latter is a 72-year-old who last held an NFL role in 2019 as the Carolina Panthers special assistant to the head coach (to then-head man Ron Rivera).

This isn’t the first time the Turners served on the same staff together. The father-and-son combo were on that same Panthers staff in 2019 with Scott serving as interim offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Coincidentally, that post as special assistant to Rivera was the last NFL role Norv before joining Las Vegas.

That 2019 Carolina squad finished 20th in scoring at 21.3 points per game (340 total) while ranking 20th in passing yards (3,650) and 14th in rushing yards (1,819).

This isn’t Norv Turner’s first stint in Silver & Black. He was the Raiders head coach in 2004 and 2005 compiling a 9-23 overall record in that two-season span.