Chargers make right move, but will it work?
The Spanoses ripped San Diego’s heart out once.
A Super Bowl victory by the Los Angeles Chargers would make it twice.
Implausible? Yes, but given what happened Monday in Orange County, where Anthony Lynn was fired after four seasons as head coach, the hypothetical scenario of Dean Spanos and sons raising the Lombardi Trophy in L.A. strains the imagination less.
The Chargers seem to have a Super Bowl quarterback in Justin Herbert.
They didn’t seem to have a Super Bowl head coach in Lynn.
A team with the right coach and right quarterback will contend for the Super Bowl in most years.
While Lynn, 52, had done good things for the club, not just on the football scene but also as a Chargers ambassador in Greater Los
Angeles, keeping him around would’ve made little sense given the pattern of glaring miscues Lynn himself described as “embarrassing” and not OK.
The Super Bowl should be the standard, unless the team’s owner is content to gorge on the huge slice of NFL pie every club gets no matter how many games it wins.
How did Lynn fare when he went against the coach with the most Super Bowl victories?
Not good. That alone would’ve been excusable, because Bill Belichick gets the better of most coaches including those who preceded Lynn with the Chargers.
But this was alarming. Twice in recent games against Belichick’s Patriots, the deficit was 28 points at halftime.
It was less difficult to justify the first of those performances.
After all, when Lynn’s third team rolled into New England’s stadium for the divisional playoff game on Jan. 13, 2019, it had lived up to Lynn’s stated goal to mold a program whose No. 1 trait was toughness. Under Lynn, who’d lasted six years in the NFL as an undrafted running back, the 2018 Chargers had won road games against the Seahawks, Chiefs and Steelers en route to the franchise’s best record (12-4) in nine years.
They’d seized their playoff opener, upending the Ravens in Baltimore on the strength of Gus Bradley’s defense.
Mild New England weather greeted the Chargers. Amid pregame festivities, not one but two groups of Spanoses and friends separately filled a large stadium elevator, whose operator suggested that was an unusually large turnout.
The Spanoses and guests witnessed a buttkicking, the Chargers falling behind 35-7 and looking anything but tough.
Unfortunately for Lynn and staff, the rematch last month was a mess.
The Chargers fell apart as a two-point favorite, losing 45-0 inside the Kroenke Dome to a Patriots team that brought in a 5-6 record and lacked even a decent passing game. Chargers special teams, whose bad performances had become routine since Tom Telesco and John Spanos took over football operations eight years earlier, plumbed new depths opposite Belichick, a special teams master.
If Spanos and Telesco were looking for a final reason to move on from Lynn, that amateurish showing, on the heels of 17 losses in 21 contests decided by one score, provided them the cover to do it.
Winning the final four games, as Lynn’s program did to lift his record to 33-31 across the coach’s four seasons, didn’t inspire confidence that errors in game management could be overcome in the Super Bowl pursuit.
Don’t blame only Lynn
Special teams blunders, which often ref lect poor roster depth, have been a near constant under Telesco, who picks the players.
Telesco provided Philip Rivers just one solid line in seven years. The rest were subpar, as was the unit that tried to protect Herbert.
In nearly four decades of team ownership, the Spanoses have bungled several coaching moves and non-moves.
Selecting the final coach of the San Diego era, it was Dean Spanos who hired Mike McCoy, a former Broncos offensive coordinator who took over in 2013. At the same time, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt paid top dollar to hire Andy Reid, who said his relationship with the Hunt family drove his decision.
McCoy’s four teams went a combined 27-37, while Reid built a program that has won the past five West titles and given the Chiefs their first Super Bowl victory in 50 years.
After he was fired, McCoy didn’t get through either of the next two NFL seasons as a coordinator.
John Spanos and Telesco had a bigger say in naming McCoy’s successor.
Choosing Lynn, they championed his leadership qualities. Like McCoy, he was a former longtime NFL offensive assistant who’d never been a head coach and likely received bottomtier salary.
Importantly, Lynn wasn’t going to upset the top-down power dynamic in which Telesco had final say on player personnel.
The Chargers aren’t unique in giving the GM final say on the roster, joining the Packers, Browns and Steelers, among others, in that approach. Others NFL teams such as the Patriots (Belichick), Seahawks (Pete Carroll), 49ers (Kyle Shanahan) and Chiefs (Reid) empowered the head coach to make the final call, while those coaches developed trust with a GM.
Super Bowl QB?
Herbert, coming off a stunningly good rookie season, represents a 6foot-6 eraser to many mistakes Telesco-Spanos have made or will make.
He led the Chargers to a 7-9 record, a year after they went 5-11 with Rivers not missing a significant snap. Making Herbert’s job tougher, the special teams were either the NFL’s worst or close to it, while the defense ended up 23rd in points.
Sophomore slump be damned: Herbert will make the head-coach opening more attractive. He made the NFL look easy in many of his 15 starts. The Miami Dolphins may have done Team Spanos a huge favor when they drafted Tua Tagovailoa one spot before Telesco wisely chose Herbert.
As for what the Spanos brain trust seeks in its next coach, Dean Spanos may have given a clue Monday.
“We have been innovative in many facets of our organization in recent years,” he said, “and we need to carry that over to our entire operation.”
Whether the Chargers have in fact been innovative in non-football realms since Dean and his three siblings moved the club north, I don’t know, but innovation was seldom a Chargers strength during the family’s 33-year run in San Diego.
Alex Spanos, two years after buying control of the team in 1984, fired one of the most innovative head coaches in the sport’s his
tory in Don Coryell. He replaced him with a yes man in Al Saunders, who, for sure, was a bright offensive schemer but never again became a head coach.
In recent years as the analytics boom gained traction in football, the Chargers didn’t seem to embrace it in a way that benefited their head coaches. Interestingly, McCoy said the Broncos provided their coaches more analytical support than the Chargers had. (Judging by Vic Fangio’s game management, that support goes only so far.)
Potential candidates
As a longtime assistant under one of the NFL’s great innovators in Reid, former Chargers running back Eric Bieniemy should interest the Spanoses and Telesco. With Bieniemy as their offensive coordinator, the Chiefs have finished first, fifth and sixth in points since 2018.
Under former Carroll protege Robert Saleh, last year’s defense for the San Francisco 49ers led the team to the Super Bowl. This past season, Saleh adapted to numerous personnel setbacks, helping the D finish 17th in points.
Rams defensive coordinator Staley, who coached at Telesco’s college alma mater, Carroll, made tweaks to the Wade Phillips scheme that helped Los Angeles finished first in points. At 38, the former Dayton quarterback has coached under well-regarded innovators such as the defensiveminded Fangio and Rams head coach Sean McVay, a former offensive coordinator.
Under coordinator Daboll, a former Belichick underling who attended the same high school as Telesco, third-year Bills quarterback Josh Allen has become a MVP contender who led Buffalo to its first AFC East title in 25 years.
Herbert and Allen have similar physical traits.
Whoever becomes the Chargers head coach should be expected to lead the team to a winning season this year and the Super Bowl tournament soon. The roster will include Joey Bosa, Derwin James, Keenan Allen and Austin Ekeler, to say nothing of a quarterback whose salarycap charge the next three years could be a huge bargain.
Then again, to throw a cloud over the L.A. sunshine, the Spanoses didn’t reach any Super Bowls with star quarterbacks Dan Fouts, Drew Brees or Rivers.