National Football League

Report: Turner on way out of San Diego

Published Dec. 31, 2011 12:00 a.m. ET

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Chargers head coach Norv Turner will be fired sometime next week, meaning Sunday's game in Oakland will be his last with the team, the San Diego Union Tribune reported Saturday.

Sources familiar with team president Dean Spanos' thinking told the newspaper that Spanos feels he has no choice but to make a change after the team lost six games in a row midseason.

"There reaches a point of no return," a person in the Chargers' organization said.

The ax will fall despite Turner's reign at the Chargers being as successful as any of the team's previous coaches.

He will enter Sunday's game with a 48-31 win-loss record — the second best regular-season winning percentage of any Chargers head coach. If the team beats the Raiders on Sunday, and his postseason record is added to the equation, Turner will top the list of Chargers coaches.

Turner's dismissal will not be unexpected, with the coach being told in November that he quickly needed positive results to save his job. Four more defeats that month left San Diego fourth in the AFC West standings. They have since climbed to third, one game ahead of Kansas City.

But the firing is not likely to be well supported by Chargers players.

"It's really a shame . . ." quarterback Philip Rivers told the Union Tribune. "It hasn't been great [the past two seasons], but he's the winningest coach in the history of this place.

"That's all I know. Are we satisfied at 8-8? Absolutely not. Did the Giants go 8-8 before they won the Super Bowl? Yeah. Pittsburgh? Yeah. Teams go 8-8. I mean, teams that are in a funk, they're 4-12 and 3-13 and they're 2-14, they're 5-11. If this is the rough stretch here — 9-7, 8-8 — that's pretty good."