Staley still trails McCoy in one area
Despite Sunday’s bad game in Houston, Brandon Staley still has a real shot at the playoffs as a rookie head coach.
His Chargers are favored Sunday against the Denver Broncos. The season’s final opponent is a Las Vegas Raiders club Staley’s team beat by 14 points in October.
Winning those two games could be enough, though Baltimore must lose at home to either the Rams or Steelers. Just one win might punch a playoff ticket, if Staley catches breaks elsewhere.
If, in two weeks, Staley is targeting a winnable road game in the wild-card round, it’d be a chance to reprise the first-round success of the two Bolts coaches who preceded him: Mike McCoy, whose first team won at Cincinnati eight years ago; and Anthony Lynn, whose second squad won at Baltimore five years later.
Dangling a plum to Staley that was unavailable to McCoy and Lynn, the NFL has enlarged the playoff field to seven teams per conference.
There’s another plausible dimension to this sunny scenario for Staley, 39.
Long run, he may enjoy better circumstances than either McCoy or Lynn did if you believe these two things are true: 1) Justin Herbert, the 23-year-old quarterback who has earned a Pro Bowl berth in his second year, has more upside than Philip Rivers had in the second half of a career that, all told, took him to eight Pro Bowl teams, seven postseasons, one AFC title game and no Super Bowls; 2) notwithstanding a financed relocation fee of $650 million owed to the NFL, the club’s move to a glitzy L.A. stadium will bring the Chargers competitive advantages in spending power they couldn’t have attained in San Diego absent a new stadium there, per the assertion of team owner Dean Spanos several years ago.
File all that under TBD. Let’s dig into one key facet of Staley’s performance by asking a question whose answer may be surprising to many San Diegans.
In his one area of reputed NFL expertise — defense — how has Staley matched up compared with McCoy in the latter’s one area of NFL expertise — offense — through 15 games?
Answer: Staley’s first defense has under-performed the first McCoy offense. And it isn’t close.
If that’s surprising, it’s because McCoy’s good-to-bad, four-year tenure is remembered for its failings more than the first offense’s stunning successes in a 9-7 season. That’s understandable because McCoy, the final coach of the 56year San Diego era, finished with a .422 win rate. Stylistically, his wooden public persona didn’t please many fans and media personalities.
Staley, in comparison, is Hollywood smooth behind the microphone. His eloquent defenses of analytics (a field where the Bolts were far less supportive than the Broncos, McCoy reported after his 2016 dismissal) and, separately, player safety, have generated glowing praise on social media and from media personalities.
On the football field where the Chargers play defense, however, there’s scant evidence Staley has lived up to the credentials that played a big role in his getting the job, even though the talent level of his current unit is significantly below that of the Rams defense he coordinated for one year. The biggest difference is at defensive tackle, where Rams star Aaron Donald is a certain future Hall of Famer.
A year after finishing 27th in points, the Chargers have fallen to 31st.
So, they’re next to last, ahead of only the New York Jets of Robert Saleh, also a rookie head coach and former NFL defensive coordinator.
The Chargers are the NFL’s worst defense on third down, allowing opponents to convert on 51.6 percent of their attempts.
No one ever accused McCoy of elegance or media savvy, but the offensive know-how of McCoy and his coaching hires translated into a playoff berth and wild-card victory.
McCoy and staff installed a quick-pass scheme and other details he said would rejuvenate Rivers,
then 31.
The quarterback had lost some precision the previous two years. Coinciding with increasingly porous blocking and a careerhigh sack total, Rivers’ footwork had deteriorated, said Hall of Fame QB Steve Young. He’d become more apt to drift and throw bad passes.
McCoy, brimming with confidence, declared Rivers would complete 70 percent of his passes for the 2013 season.
Rivers ended up at 69.5 percent, close enough. It beat his career percentage by six points and his best season by nearly four points.
Fundamental to McCoy’s whole plan was ball control.
By completing short passes and developing a stretch run game behind running back Ryan Mathews, an immature and uneven performer under coach Norv Turner, Rivers and Co. would shelter a Bolts defense low on both frontline talent and depth.
The ensuing results were borderline surreal for an
offense whose starting tackles were journeyman King Dunlap and rookie D.J. Fluker and whose primary guards were de facto rookie Johnnie Troutman, journeyman Chad Rinehart and converted tackle Jeromey Clary.
Per drive, McCoy’s first Chargers offense led the NFL in yards, time and plays while finishing second only to Peyton Manning-led Denver in points and thirddown conversion rate.
They ended up 12th in points, despite losing the projected No. 1 receiver, Malcom Floyd, for the year in Week 2.
Rivers had his best season, in light of the roster’s overall talent limitations and the turnover-free performance in Cincinnati where San Diego won as a six-point underdog.
Did Staley hire assistants as capable as McCoy hires Frank Reich, Ken Whisenhunt and Nick Sirianni?
Reich became the first former NFL quarterback to serve as Rivers’ position coach and, said Rivers, improved the consistency of the veteran’s fundamentals.
Reich went on to bigger things after struggling the following two years as McCoy’s coordinator. The Philadelphia Eagles claimed their first Super Bowl victory with Reich as their coordinator. In Reich’s four years as their head coach, the Colts have won 59 percent of their games and are in position to claim their third playoff berth.
Whisenhunt, McCoy’s coordinator, had won a Super Bowl as Pittsburgh’s offensive play-caller and led Arizona to its only Super Bowl as a head coach. Under rookie head coach Sirianni, a quality control coach for offense under McCoy, the Eagles occupy the final playoff spot in the NFC race.
Staley’s defense would figure to improve this week, against a Broncos offense that’s 23rd in points, except Houston ranked even lower before putting up 34 points Sunday (the final TD came on an interception return).
What if Staley’s Chargers, who are eighth in points scored under Staleyhired coordinator Joe Lombardi, were merely approaching the lower level of defensive performance associated with the many successes of his Los Angeles Rams’ D last year? If the Chargers were 10 to 15 spots above their current slot — 24th — in the defensive rankings of analytics site Football Outsiders?
Instead of standing eighth in the 16-team AFC with an 8-7 record, they’d be higher. And Staley would be drawing praise for his defense, not just his engaging personality.