Los Angeles Chargers

When a team is struggling as much as the Chargers are struggling, you can’t help but feel sorry for the players. Los Angeles has a stacked roster which includes superstar-caliber players such as Keenan Allen, Joey Bosa and even rookie quarterback Justin Herbert.

So why are they losing?

Aside from the fact that they have been injury-plagued, all fingers point in the direction of their coaching staff. According to former Ohio State football head coach Urban Meyer, there are three factors that contribute to a football team’s demise: trust issues, dysfunctional environment and selfishness.

Using those three aforementioned factors, let’s analyze the shameful recipients of our “You’re Fired” segment.

Trust Issues:

If we were to describe head coach Anthony Lynn’s offensive play-calling in one word, it would be ‘timid.’ Throughout the season, Lynn has coached his team with the mediocre mentality to play ‘not to lose’ instead of playing to win.

Given that he has to coach a rookie quarterback, we can cut Lynn some slack, as rookies are more inclined to commit costly ‘rookie mistakes.’ However, barring a few errors, Herbert has played far beyond his years. Countless times throughout the season, Lynn has opted to punt or even send out the field-goal unit instead of trusting his offense and ‘going for it’ on fourth down while his team has the ball near their opponent’s goal line. Consequently, it has cost his team precious points as his field goal kicker can’t seem to put the ball through the uprights.

Dysfunctional Environment:

Towards the end of Sunday’s game, it was blatantly obvious that there’s a strong disconnection between the coaching staff and the players. Granted the game was basically over, but Lynn’s indecisiveness as to whether to send out the field-goal unit or not in the final minute of the game left the Charger offense confused and frustrated.

Lynn’s meltdown on Sunday is a mere microcosm of how his indecisiveness and his timid, mediocre mentality has trickled onto his players in the second half of games throughout the season. Consequently, costing the Chargers multiple victories in close matchups.

To put it into perspective, the Chargers are arguably one of the best first-half teams in the NFL, per USA Today. Los Angeles has outscored teams by 40 points in the first half, good for the eighth-best differential in the league. Meanwhile, their defense has allowed a league-low average of 134.3 yards.

However, once the second half starts, the Chargers magically transform into a bottom-feeder team. Before Sunday’s matchup, Los Angeles had allowed 164 points in the second half and overtime, which was tied for second-most in the league. Also, the 209.7 yards allowed was fourth worst across the NFL.

Selfishness:

For this portion, we will need to step away from the gridiron and take a panoramic view of the Chargers organization as a whole. In particular, we will focus on the controlling owners, the Spanos family.

The Spanos family broke the heart of millions of San Diegans when they packed their bags and moved their team up north to Los Angeles, a city that already had a successful team, the Los Angeles Rams. Regardless, the Spanos family forcibly thrusted themselves into the Los Angeles sports scene in the name of money. Needless to say, the move hasn’t paid off for them.

Since they moved to Los Angeles in 2017, the Chargers have accumulated a less than stellar 29-30 record, per Football-Reference. Sure, they made one playoff appearance in 2018, but they exited early in the divisional round. Needless to say, it’s been downhill from there, as the Chargers haven’t had a winning season in two years.

Now, we aren’t saying that the move to Los Angeles is the reason why Lynn can’t call more aggressive offensive plays, or why the defense can’t hold a lead once the second-half starts. But it’s definitely a contributing factor— it’s a trickle-down effect.

The Chargers’ biggest struggle isn’t on the football field, it’s in the owner’s box. The Chargers’ biggest frustration isn’t the fact that they can’t hold onto leads in the second half, it’s the fact that they have been thrusted into a city that doesn’t want or need them. The Chargers’ biggest flaw isn’t that their head coach is indecisive and timid, it’s the fact that they left a city that adored them for the sake of greed.