How do you wreck a top-three draft pick and a potential franchise quarterback in five easy steps or less?
With a little bit of rephrasing, that could be the title for an autobiography of either Norv Turner or Heath Shuler, the former head coach and quarterback duo in Washington, who became a test case for how not to develop talent at football's most important position.
Turner was hailed as the next great darling of NFL coaching circles when he was hired by Washington in 1994. His task was no small one, sifting through the wreckage of Richie Petitbon's lone season in charge, a 4-12 campaign that proved the death rattle of a dynasty.
What made Turner a smart choice was his perceived ability to fix Washington's biggest problem, the lack of a credible quarterback. Mark Rypien had gone from league and Super Bowl MVP to, well, Mark Rypien, in the space of two seasons.
Turner was uniquely qualified to find an elite signal-caller because he'd helped transform Troy Aikman from a raw, athletic, but injury-prone former No. 1 overall pick to a two-time Super Bowl champion with the Dallas Cowboys.
Aikman had matured into arguably the most accurate passer of his generation on Turner's watch. The latter took his first job as a head coach ahead of the 1994 draft, headlined by two stellar quarterbacks ready to make a similar journey, Shuler and a certain Trent Dilfer.
Choosing between the two was just the start of Turner's problems in Washington.
Choosing Heath Shuler quickly became a nightmare for Washington
Said aloud now, Washington faced a no-win situation and nightmare choice between Shuler and Dilfer.
It's important to remember both were considered can't-miss prospects at the time, albeit for different reasons. Dilfer was the bigger, statuesque pocket-based passer, while University of Tennessee star Shuler was a useful runner with a taste for freelancing.
The Silver Anniversary Award annually recognizes distinguished inidividuals on the 25th anniversary of the conclusion of their college athletics careers.
Heath Shuler could spin it! 🏈 #VFLVault📽 // #PoweredByTheT pic.twitter.com/ZYE7SMLKcC
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) January 23, 2019
This stylistic contrast would come back to haunt Turner and Washington.
Failure was inevitable when there was a difference of opinion about the pivotal pick of this rebuild:
"Washington had been leaning toward Dilfer, but when Turner got hired, he had his sights set on Shuler. Turner said the staff in Dallas believed Shuler could be as good as Troy Aikman, then in the midst of putting together a Hall of Fame career."
Thom Loverro of The Washington Times
Shuler immediately walked into an environment with less than 100 percent backing. A situation the 20-something with the world at his feet soon made worse, according to Loverro: "In the days before the players union agreed to a rookie wage scale, Shuler held out for two weeks in a contract dispute before finally reporting after signing an eight-year, $19.25 million contract, which was the richest in franchise history and the biggest rookie deal in NFL history."
This brief holdout was a double whammy for Shuler and Washington. First, it led to the team green-lighting a contract that only heightened expectations on a player already expected to produce minor miracles.
The weight of expectation was enough to crush Shuler's development. Especially when those two weeks cost him precious time adjusting to a more complex, pro-style offense than he'd been used to with the Volunteers.
Struggles bridging this gap would become Shuler's biggest problem.
Scheme and style were never right for Heath Shuler, Norv Turner
Shuler and Turner always looked like a curious fit, despite the latter using Aikman as a comparison. While Aikman had been a mobile playmaker for UCLA, he wasn't a winner in the pros until he became married to the pocket in Turner's system.
It was a system built on precepts of the famed 'Air Coryell' offense, best practiced by the great Dan Fouts, the classic stand-tall-and-throw-from-the-pocket quarterback. Turner's time coaching wide receivers and tight ends with the Los Angeles Rams in the 1980s also exposed him to Jim Everett, a towering, rocket-armed thrower who found his rhythm launching passes from a secure platform.
Shuler, by contrast, looked best throwing on the run and making plays off-script. Those things didn't fit with Turner's nuanced and regimented play designs.
The difference was summed up in detail by Peter King, writing for Sports Illustrated:
"A typical play for Shuler at Tennessee was Twins Right, 65 HBO. Twins Right meant two receivers lined up with specific pattern assignments outside the right tackles; 65 was the blocking assignment for the offensive linemen and tight end. And HBO meant halfback option, which gave Shuler the option of throwing the ball to his running back."
Peter King
Contrast that concise call with this bloated concept Shuler was expected to execute for Turner:
"With Washington, a typical play is Shift, Twins Right Motion,Scat Right, 525, F Post Swing. Shift means the play starts witha formation disguise, so the defense has to hustle to match upafter the shift. Twins Right Motion is the final formation, within a regular pro set except that two wideouts instead of one are split right. Scat Right is the protection scheme for the linemen and backs, telling each of them which defender to block, and 525 signifies, in order, what each receiver should do. The progression of receivers in the Washington scheme is split end,tight end and flanker. The 5 means the split end runs a 5 (or comeback) route, which has him sprinting out 18 yards and
turning back toward the quarterback. Unless, of course, the receiver and quarterback see a defensive coverage that means the split end would be blanketed in the 15- to 18-yard range, in which case he runs a 7 route, a post pattern."
Peter King
The challenge of mastering a step up in scheme sophistication was compounded by the state of the offense around Shuler. There was no 'posse' of Gary Clark, Art Monk and Ricky Sanders to throw to, while the 'Hogs' were a thing of the past along a line now consistently crumbling under pressure.
Writing was on the wall as early as Week 5, when the Cowboys visited RFK Stadium. Dallas boasted the No. 1 defense in the league that year, and their feared defensive line rotation had Shuler frightened out of his skin, enough to miss on 19 of 30 passes, take two sacks, and post a 43.2 rating.
The Cowboys exposed what would become a defining problem for Shuler. Namely, how jittery he was amid heat on the pocket.
Having his scrambling and ad-libbing instincts reined in by Turner didn't help. Neither did Shuler's honest desire to learn the playbook and quiet the critics. Shuler soon wilted under an avalanche of mostly mediocre skill players, a coach who didn't understand him, and an unforgiving fanbase only too willing to voice their disappointment.
A five-interception game against an Arizona Cardinals defense representing Buddy Ryan's last hurrah with the blitz-crazed 46 scheme, sealed Shuler's fate. In came seventh-rounder Gus Frerotte, a taller signal-caller more willing to remain in the pocket and throw on time the way Turner wanted.
Shuler never got the job back on a full-time basis. Making the ultimate return for the No. 3 pick a mere 13 starts, as many touchdown passes, and 19 interceptions. One season with the New Orleans Saints only added 14 more interceptions to the roll call of shame for a quarterback who finished his career with an 8-21 record.
Frerotte had some success, but Turner's offense didn't click until Brad Johnson took the reins in 1999, behind a line bolstered by Keith Sims and Jon Jansen. Shuler was already out of the league by then, but ready to embark on a career in politics.
He reinvented himself, but Shuler remains associated with arguably the biggest draft misstep in franchise history.
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