Brandon Staley is still coach in Chargers’ biggest bet yet

Chargers head coach Brandon Staley responds to a question at a press conference.

Columnist

Jan. 18, 2023 6:58 PM PT

The Chargers held a press conference for their coach Wednesday morning and you’ll never guess who showed up.

He’s still here. He’s still their leader. He’s still the boss. He didn’t get whacked. He didn’t get dumped. He didn’t get canned. If you listen to him, he didn’t even get scolded.

“When I talk about alignment,” he said, “there’s no better alignment that I have than with the Spanos family.”

Turns out, the Spanos family never discussed firing him, never wondered about firing him, never even considered it, and Staley knew it.

While all of Los Angeles was screaming for his job, while the NFL experts were guessing about his replacement, while Sean Payton’s phone was buzzing through Manhattan Beach, Staley was preparing for this press conference.

Shortly before noon, he calmly walked into the media workroom at the Chargers’ Costa Mesa facility holding a coffee and wearing a smile and taking his place behind the podium and it was like … gotcha!

Yeah, he really wasn’t fired, and the only thing more surprising was that he didn’t show up wearing Joey Bosa’s helmet.

No, he said, he never thought his job was in danger.

“I have a lot of confidence in the way we’ve done things for two years,” he said.

You mean the two seasons that ended in coaching implosions?

Chargers head coach Brandon Staley greets linebacker Joey Bosa (97) before their wild-card game.

“I know the type of improvements that we’ve been able to make, as a football team, since I’ve been here,” he said.

Were those improvements in a running game that disintegrated or a defense that folded?

“I think that the way we finished the season, the way that we finished down the stretch, shows you all of the things that we’re excited about moving forward,” he said.

How you finished? Was that two seasons ago when shoddy game management cost you a tie with the Las Vegas Raiders and a spot in the playoffs? Or was that last weekend when you blew a 27-0 lead in a wild-card game in Jacksonville?

“I know the culture that we have in our locker room, I know the quality of the product on the field, and I also know the capacity that we have to grow,” he said.

Yet the culture is still all about “Chargering,” the product on the field wasted another great season by quarterback Justin Herbert, and the capacity to grow appears limited by its struggling coach.

Again, why didn’t Brandon Staley get fired?

The Spanos family just doesn’t work like that. They value consistency, even if that consistency is troubling mediocrity. They value thriftiness, even if it costs them a chance to nab the NFL’s most valuable free-agent coach in former New Orleans Saints boss Payton.

The Spanos’ are running a newly hot Los Angeles team as if they were still in San Diego, and that attitude will cool matters quickly.

The Rams gave Jeff Fisher 13 games in Los Angeles before he was dumped for eventual rock star Sean McVay. The Rams know that in this market, you better quickly make a splash or risk an ugly drowning.

The Chargers have given Staley 35 games. He has won barely half of them. He has been heavily criticized and even blamed for losses in several of them. There were the risky fourth-down calls from the previous season.

There was his decision to expose Mike Williams to a needless injury in a meaningless game at the end of this season, a move that might have cost them their playoff game. Then, of course, he ultimately was outcoached by Jacksonville’s Doug Pederson in their near-historic meltdown last weekend.

The Denver Broncos recently ousted Nathaniel Hackett after 15 games. The Houston Texans have gone through four coaches in three years.

Thirty-five games for an NFL coach is not a small sample size. Thirty-five games is enough to know what you’ve got … and what you don’t.

What the Chargers have in Staley is a smart, engaging 40-year-old who is pleasant enough to hold a 40-minute press conference in the middle of a job crisis and caring enough to earn the admiration of the veterans in the locker room.

What they don’t have in Staley — after two full seasons of hoping — is a savvy game manager and strategist who finally can put this franchise on a Los Angeles map.

The time is right. The time is now. They are no longer castaways from San Diego. They have become entertaining inhabitants of the city’s showcase stadium with a glamour quarterback and cool uniforms and it feels as if the town is ready to swoon.

The fans are there. The buzz is there. Judging from the prolonged furor over last weekend’s meltdown, a powerful and surging interest is there.

But the coach is not there. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But there he was Wednesday morning, back to work, surprise, surprise.

“I was not worried about that,” Staley said of his job status, “because I know what goes on here on a day-to-day basis and I know what we have in the locker room, I know what is out on that field. I am excited to keep going.”

It would be easy to be excited with him, if one thought he was willing to make the changes that would elevate his coaching to a championship level. But over the last two seasons, every public hard look in the mirror seems to be accompanied by a stubbornness that inhibits the sort of self-examination that leads to growth.

Instead of becoming a better Brandon Staley, he is becoming the next Clay Helton.

Yes, Staley publicly acknowledged responsibility for the Jacksonville loss in a message he also delivered to his team.

“I needed to coach better in all three phases in order to help us finish that game,” he said. “I didn’t do a good enough job of that. I take full responsibility.”

But then, unlike when his mentor McVay acknowledged he was outcoached by New England’s Bill Belichick in Super Bowl LIII, Staley would not cop to obviously being badly outmaneuvered by Pederson. Seriously, did you see that fourth-down outside run by Travis Etienne?

“I just thought it was a high-level game all of way around. … I know that we were coaching at a high level,” Staley said.

When asked about Williams, whose large pass-catching presence easily could have prevented the Chargers’ wild-card collapse, Staley said he wouldn’t change a thing. He said he has to treat all players the same. This means he would play Williams again in a meaningless regular-season finale that resulted in a broken back? Really?

“It was tough to lose Mike in that game [but] … I think, doing it over again, I’m proud of our process,” he said.

When asked about picking up Bosa’s thrown helmet not once but twice against Jacksonville — making it appear as if he was enabling a player who just committed a game-costing penalty — he also said wouldn’t change a thing.

“I saw a player having a tough moment … you’re there for your player,” Staley said. “I would do it over again.”

It is the Chargers fans who are now having a tough moment. It is the Chargers fans who need someone to pick them up.

The club fired offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi and quarterbacks coach Shane Day, but that is not going to placate anybody. By keeping Staley, they are betting that he will evolve faster than the chatter of a mob that was certain he would be gone.

Like a bolt out of the powder blue, he’s back.

It is the Chargers’ biggest bet yet.