Coming off a 5–11 finish in 2004, Norv Turner was expected to take a step forward in his second year with the Oakland Raiders. But he went backwards. Oakland finished 4–12, somehow worse than the year before. Plenty went wrong, but Turner has always believed one factor overshadowed everything else: the schedule.

“Unfortunately, the division was very good. And the out-of-division schedule wasn’t the easiest either. But we were a competitive football team. And the guys, they did everything they could to give us a chance to win. That’s all you can ask for,” Turner recalled in The Family Business Podcast with Norv and Steph.

That might even be understating it. The AFC West at the time was unforgiving. In 2004, the San Diego Chargers went 12–4, the Denver Broncos finished 10–6, and the Kansas City Chiefs finished 7–9. Every one of them was ahead of Oakland, both on paper and on the field.

Still, there was real optimism entering the season. That offseason, the Minnesota Vikings decided to trade All-Pro wide receiver Randy Moss to the Raiders. It was supposed to change everything. A few other additions followed, and suddenly, Oakland looked like a team capable of climbing back into relevance.

But the division wasn’t the biggest obstacle. The road they were asked to walk was.

The 2005 season opened in Foxborough against the defending champions, the New England Patriots, who were still in the middle of their dynasty run. Oakland lost 30–20 in Week 1. A week later, they lost 23–17 at home to Kansas City, a game defined by a late goal-line stand by the Chiefs’ defense.

Week 3 followed the same script. On the road in Philadelphia, the Raiders lost 23–20 to the Philadelphia Eagles, again within a single score.

The wins, when they came, felt hard-earned. In Week 4, Oakland beat the Dallas Cowboys 19–13 for its first victory. After the bye, they dropped another divisional game to the Chargers, then bounced back with a convincing 38–17 win over the Buffalo Bills and a 34–25 road win against the Tennessee Titans.

But consistency was never there. The losses kept stacking up.

Quarterback Kerry Collins threw for 3,759 yards. Moss cleared 1,000 receiving yards. And yet, Oakland managed just 290 points all season. The year ended with a 30–21 loss to the New York Giants, sealing the Raiders’ 12th defeat. Many of those losses were by one score, which only added to the frustration. As a result, it cost Turner his job.

Al Davis fired Norv Turner after reaching the breaking point

Not long after the regular season wrapped up, Norv Turner sat down with Al Davis and heard what everyone around the league already assumed was coming. The 4–12 finish sealed it. Davis had made similar calls before, firing Joe Bugel and Bill Callahan after identical records in 1997 and 2003. Turner fell into that same category.

It was a rough stretch across the league, too. Turner became the sixth NFL head coach fired within a three-day span in early 2006. In Oakland, it barely registered as shocking. Davis wasn’t wired to tolerate mediocrity, and three straight losing seasons were uncharted territory for him.

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What complicated the picture was how the locker room felt. Despite the lack of wins, Turner hadn’t lost his players. After the season-ending 30–21 home loss to the Giants, several Raiders stepped forward publicly to defend their head coach and his staff.

“You fire Norv, and boom…you bring in a whole new staff, a whole new system, and I don’t know if that’s the best thing,” safety Stuart Schweigert said.

“I think it would be a waste. Why would you do that? The coach had nothing to do with dropped balls, missed tackles or nothing like that,” fellow safety Jarrod Cooper echoed his sentiment.

Cooper went further, stressing that alignment mattered more than turnover. He said the biggest issue was everyone being on the same page, and called it the best team he’d ever been part of. In his view, you could bring in 10 different head coaches, and nothing would change if the players weren’t pulling together.

There’s truth in that. But expectations don’t live in theory. Turner was brought in to win, and the roster suggested he should have. Oakland had invested heavily at key positions, quarterback Kerry Collins, wide receivers Randy Moss and Jerry Porter, and running back LaMont Jordan. On paper, it looked like a group that should compete.

But it didn’t. You could point to the schedule. You could blame the division. You could chalk it up to bad breaks. But none of that was ever going to satisfy the fan base or Al Davis.