Scott Turner, Ken Zampese bring a sense of Déjà vu to the Redskins

Coaching Progeny: Scott Turner’s results

Scott Turner has a smaller body of work to measure, and his career has, at times, followed the same path as his father. He got his start in coaching in Carolina under Rivera in 2011 as a quality control coach and was the wide receivers coach in Cleveland in 2013.

Norv took a job as offensive coordinator in Minnesota in 2014 and Scott was hired as quarterbacks coach there too. He notably groomed Teddy Bridgewater there; a year later Bridgewater led the Vikings to a division title and logged a 57.5 QBR.

Scott was let go in Minnesota shortly after his father abruptly resigned in 2016, and he took a job as an offensive analyst for Jim Harbaugh at the University of Michigan. He returned to Carolina in 2018 as quarterbacks coach, and Panthers quarterback Cam Newton logged a pedestrian 55 QBR. He was promoted to offensive coordinator after Rivera was fired late in the year.

Both new coaches come from a strong coaching lineage. Can they reproduce the high-flying offenses that their fathers developed in teams across the NFL? Turner said on NBC Sports Washington’s show “Redskins Nation” that he learned a lot from his father about offensive strategy, how to attack a defense and evaluating players. His approach, he said, was “more cerebral.”

Oddly, Zampese’s father wasn’t keen on him being an NFL coach because the pay wasn’t good during his career. Still, Ken liked working in the NFL and pursued a career in it anyway. And the offensive lessons that Ken learned came largely from the Rams’ Mike Martz, which was a yet different branch from the same Coryell coaching tree.

We’ll see how Turner and Zampese pan out. But surely, their connection to their famous fathers will make their names recognizable in Washington.