Alexander: Chargers’ coaching change was only a matter of time

Brandon Staley lost his team well before Chargers chairman Dean Spanos made it official Friday morning.

To this (admittedly untrained) eye, he seemed to have lost his players from an effort standpoint last Sunday, when the Denver Broncos came into SoFi Stadium and methodically dismantled the Chargers, 24-7. And it was glaringly obvious to anyone who watched Thursday night’s massacre in Las Vegas, a 63-21 drubbing by the Raiders that could have been even worse, that the players who were still healthy enough to play had pretty much packed it in.

Was it overt, a conscious undermining of their coach? Not necessarily. It’s not always mutiny or rebellion. Sometimes it’s just discouragement, a realization that things just aren’t going to get any better.

So it should have been no surprise when word came down Friday morning, via press release, that Staley had been thanked and excused and so had General Manager Tom Telesco, who almost made it to the end of his 11th season as GM and had lasted long enough to hire as many coaches as his team had achieved playoff berths in that span: Three apiece.

Was Staley the wrong choice when he was hired in January 2021? You judge. The main credential on his resume was one season as Rams defensive coordinator, for the 2020 unit that finished first in the NFL in total defense. The positive was that he came in with plenty of self-confidence. The negative seems to have been … that he came in with plenty of self-confidence, also manifested as impetuousness, recklessness and a hubris that came out of not knowing what he didn’t know.

There were plenty of other attractive candidates at the time, including current NFL head coaches Dan Campbell, Nick Sirianni and Shane Steichen – who had been former Chargers coach Anthony Lynn’s offensive coordinator – as well as Eric Bieniemy, who should have been hired as a head coach long before now but is still an offensive coordinator, now with Washington.

But Staley interviewed well and he came relatively cheap, always a consideration with Spanos’ organization.

Staley’s decision-making at the end of the 2021 season finale in Las Vegas cost the Chargers a playoff spot. His insistence on using his starters most of the way in a meaningless regular-season finale in Denver last January cost him the services of wide receiver Mike Williams, who suffered a small fracture in his back. Tell me the Chargers couldn’t have used Williams in the second half in Jacksonville the following week, as a 27-0 halftime lead slipped away.

Injuries have been a factor this season, true. But injuries are a factor for every NFL team in every season. And while a 63-21 rout at the hands of your ancient rival is pretty telling, the greater indictment is this: The Chargers are 5-9 overall and 0-5 in games decided by a field goal or less.

Well-coached teams win those games, or at least a majority of them. Had the Chargers won three of the five they’d still be in playoff contention – and, amazingly, would be a half-game behind AFC West leader Kansas City.

Staley has publicly taken responsibility for his team’s failures more frequently this season, it seems, but it seems to be a rhetorical device. And as we’ve noted previously, the more you take responsibility – the more you have to take responsibility – the greater the chances are that ownership will believe you and do something about it.

“I didn’t do anything well enough to get us ready to play,” he said in Thursday night’s postgame news conference in Las Vegas. So one reporter, to his credit, asked why if that were the case should he still be the coach?

“Games like this happen in the NFL,” Staley responded. “You can look at every great coach that’s ever coached in the league. Sometimes games like this happen, and I don’t need to retrace history but it’s part of sports.”

(Note the use of the word “great.”)

Asked earlier in that session if he expected to still be the team’s coach the next day, he said he didn’t know. Asked if he thought he should be, he said: “Yes … I know what I’ve done here for three years. I know what I’ve put into this, and I know that we’re capable of going (further) … I know the type of coach that I am. I believe in myself.”

Maybe that’s part of the problem.

There were points during Thursday night’s game when Staley’s firing not only seemed a certainty, but you wondered if he’d escape the tarmac with his job once the plane home landed. (Feel free to add a Lane Kiffin one-liner here if you wish.) Staley used the term “unpack” in his post-game press conference to describe his regular day-after-game sessions with management, and maybe that team was hauntingly prescient.

But this isn’t a Spanos record for uncoupling a coach after a bad result. Mike McCoy was fired a little more than an hour after the final game of the 2016 season, also by way of press release (and well after McCoy had addressed the media post-game). That firing, as it turned out, was the first tipoff that the team would definitely be making the long-rumored move from San Diego to L.A.

This firing seems the precursor to a major overhaul in connection with the hiring of a new general manager. Telesco replaced A.J. Smith in 2013, and he has assembled some top-end talent but has had lots of misfires in the middle rounds.

But through the years there has just seemed to be something missing with this franchise, a feeling that this is an organization that kinda/sorta wants to win but isn’t willing to go to the mat to do so. John Spanos, who hired Telesco with one of his first moves as executive vice president of football operations in 2013 and two years later became the president of football ops, will oversee this … what? Rebuild? Restructuring?

The easy – and lazy – speculation has 71-year-old Bill Belichick coming west, because (a) Belichick is still motivated to break Don Shula’s record for career victories, and (b) he’s a much better coach when he has a quality quarterback, and Herbert certainly qualifies. But here’s a prediction: The only way this happens is if New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft engineers a trade, with Belichick (who is under contract through 2024) coming to the Chargers for two middle-round draft picks, and a third thrown in if Kraft continues to pay a portion of Belichick’s salary.

Otherwise, look for another promoted assistant coach, paid below market rate, and the same old merry-go-round going forward. And isn’t it obvious by now? The concept of “Chargering” starts at the very top.

jalexander@scng.com