Ron Turner

Ronald David Turner (born December 5, 1953) is a former American football coach and player.

Turner played college football as a wide receiver for Diablo Valley College from 1973 to 1974, and the University of the Pacific from 1975 to 1976.

He earned a scholarship to the University of the Pacific, where he led the Tigers in receiving in 1975 and 1976 and totaled 40 receptions for 666 yards with three touchdowns.

Turner began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Pacific before earning his first full-time college job coaching running backs and receivers at University of Arizona (1978–1980).

He moved on to be an assistant at Northwestern University (1981–1982), the University of Pittsburgh (1983–1984), the University of Southern California (1985–1987), Texas A&M University (1988), and Stanford University (1989–1991), before earning his first head coaching job at San Jose State University in 1992.

Turner was the head coach at San Jose State for one season before being hired by Dave Wannstedt in the first of his two stints as the Bears offensive coordinator.

Between his two stints with the Bears, Turner spent eight years as head coach at the University of Illinois.

His overall record at Illinois was 35 wins and 57 losses, for a winning percentage of .380.

The 2,099 rushing yards totaled by the Bears were the franchise's most in a season since 1990 when the team rushed for 2,436 yards.

Turner served as the head football coach at San Jose State University in 1992, and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1997 to 2004.

Coincidentally, Turner had also replaced Shea as head coach at San Jose State in 1992.

He also had two separate stints as the offensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL), the first from 1993 to 1996, and most recently from 2005 to 2009.

The Bears team completion percentages in 1994 (61.4%) and 1995 (60.2%) rank as the highest in team history.

Chicago's net passing yard total of 3,743 in 1995 ranks second in team annals while the total of 3,185 in 1996 was pushed to sixth in team history by the team's totals from 2006 and 2007.

With Erik Kramer at quarterback in 1995, the Bears set a team record for passing yards per game with 233.9 while compiling the fifth-most points in team history with 392.

Kramer set club records with 29 touchdown passes and 10 interceptions (least among 16-game starters).

The 1995 squad produced the third-most total net yards (5,673) and the second-most first downs (340) in team history.

The offense also featured a 1,000-yard rusher and two 1,000-yard receivers in 1995, the only such season in team history.

During his earlier four years with the Bears as offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach under head coach Dave Wannstedt, Turner guided some of the most prolific offenses in club history.

Two of his teams were winless in the Big Ten, going 0–8 in 1997 and again in 2003.

Turner is the only coach in the more than 100-year history of Illinois football to lose 11 games in a season, which he also accomplished in those same two seasons.

His 1997 team was only the third in school history not to win a single game, going 0–11.

His only other winning season was in 1999, when he led the Illini to the MicronPC Bowl, which the Illini won by a 63–21 scoreline—at the time the second-highest points ever scored by a team in a collegiate bowl game.

The highlight of his tenure came in 2001 when he guided the Illini to a 10–2 record, the Big Ten Conference title, and an appearance in the Sugar Bowl, which Illinois lost to LSU.

That season, Turner was named the Big Ten Coach of the Year.

Turner followed up the successful 2001 campaign with three consecutive losing seasons and was fired.

Turner presided over three of the top six offenses in Illini history in terms of total yards, while four of his eight Illinois squads currently rank in the school's top 11 for scoring, including the 2001 team that scored a school-record 390 points.

Three of the top six all-time leading rushers at Illinois and three of the school's top ten all-time leading receivers played during the Turner era.

Turner was hired for his second stint with Chicago on January 9, 2005, replacing Terry Shea as Bears offensive coordinator.

In the 2005 season, Chicago started a rookie a quarterback, Kyle Orton, who was a fourth-round draft pick, and compiled a 10–5 record.

Chicago featured the eighth-ranked running game in the NFL in 2005.

Chicago also tied for the NFL-lead with 19 runs of 20 or more yards in 2005 after recording just seven such rushing gains in 2004.

On the season, the Bears rushed for over 100 yards in 13 of 16 regular season games featuring six individual 100-yard rushing performances.

Turner contributed to Chicago's appearance in Super Bowl XLI by coordinating an offense that ranked 15th in the NFL in total yards in 2006.

He has coordinated the team's offense in each of its last six playoff games with Chicago owning a 3–3 record in those contests while averaging 25.7 points per game.

There were over 20 former Illini who played under Turner on NFL rosters at the end of the 2007 season.

He was inducted into Pacific's Athletic Hall of Fame in 2009.

He was head coach of the Florida International University (FIU) Panthers football team from 2013 to 2016.

One of Turner's former players at Illinois who also went on to the NFL, Josh Whitman, was named director of athletics at the university on February 26, 2016.

Turner was most recently an offensive consultant with the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) in 2017.