Column: Season under scrutiny: Can Brandon Staley provide ‘compass’ for Chargers championship?
Brandon Staley was talking about the Super Bowl the other day, and why not?
Anything short of that and the story probably remains the same, about how the Chargers are cursed and how Staley isn’t the coach who can change that.
To his credit, Staley has never stuck his head in the sand and pretended to not hear what is said by everyone around him.
Two years ago, as a rookie head coach, he addressed the 50-year-old elephant in the room and spoke to his players about the Chargers’ history of choking.
These days, he sees what everyone else sees, the franchise quarterback in Justin Herbert, the offensive weapons in Keenan Allen and Austin Ekeler, the defensive stars in Derwin James, Khalil Mack and Joey Bosa, and how a team this talented should win.
The Chargers’ offense had featured many short receiver patterns, but under new coordinator Kellen Moore long passes are aimed at creating space for Justin Herbert to throw.
“Our expectations here are to be champions,” Staley said. “A division champion. A conference champion. A Super Bowl champion. That’s our goal.”
The words provide direction for his team. They serve, in his words, as “a compass.” They also establish a standard to which his critics can hold him.
The last part is why many coaches and managers refrain from saying the quiet part out loud. Yet Staley is aware enough to know how he’s viewed. He knows he’ll spend this season under scrutiny, regardless of what he says or what he doesn’t.
He’s the coach who blew a 27-point lead in a playoff game. Before that, he was the coach who called a controversial timeout that might have cost his team a place in the postseason.
He knows not everyone is enamored with him.
No more excuses. Brandon Staley is still running the defense. He has brought his type of players on board and drafted to his specifications. Can his defense finally produce?
“As someone who loves sports, I understand why people feel that way,” Staley said. “I think the way the seasons have ended are two of the toughest ways you can lose.”
Last season, the Chargers were the victims of the third-largest comeback in postseason history when they were defeated by the Jacksonville Jaguars in AFC the wild-card round 31-30.
The previous year, they were denied a spot in the playoffs after the Las Vegas Raiders converted a field goal with time expiring in overtime of their Week 18 matchup. The postgame autopsy raised questions about whether a timeout by Staley prompted the Raiders to play for the win rather than settle for a tie, which would have qualified the Chargers for the postseason.
The two season-ending defeats have defined the 40-year-old Staley, overshadowing the progress the Chargers made leading up to them.
A celebrated defensive coordinator with the Rams, Staley inherited a seven-win team and collected nine victories as a rookie head coach. He guided an injury-ravaged team to a 10-win season last year.
When the Chargers decided to not fire Staley in the wake of the Jacksonville disaster, they staked the position that these improvements were a more accurate measure of him as a coach than the cartoonishly painful endings to their seasons.
Staley was grateful.
“I’m well aware when you lose a game like that what can happen,” he said.
Staley was granted one of the most precious resources in professional sports: Time.
He was afforded an opportunity to run it back with a talented but injury-prone roster. He was given a chance to make a long-awaited breakthrough for a franchise associated with heartache.
He is still racing against time, however.
This summer, Herbert signed a five-year contract worth up to $262.5 million. The deal carries a cap hit of $8.5 million this season, but that figure will increase dramatically in the coming years, making it more difficult, but not impossible, to build a balanced roster.
“You can’t let it beat you twice. You can’t let it pull you back. You need it to launch you forward.”
— Chargers coach Brandon Staley, on blowing 27-point lead to the Jaguars in playoff loss last season
Another factor are the Rams, who are rebuilding. The Rams should be awful this year, and Los Angeles once again feels as if it’s up for grabs as a football market.
The time for the Chargers to strike is now.
Staley is convinced the Chargers are ready to do so. He pointed to how after a loss to the Raiders dropped them to 6-6 last year, they went on a four-game winning streak that pushed them into the playoffs.
“Things weren’t going well,” Staley said. “We were getting cleaned up by injuries and we were at that tipping point of the season and I really felt like we showed what we were made of. I think it really showed the toughness and the resilience that we were building towards.”
Still, the team lacked experience winning together, and that’s why Staley thinks they unraveled in Jacksonville after taking an early 27-0 lead.
“We hadn’t had a lead like that since I’ve been here,” he said. “Knowing how you play when you have the lead and you shrink the game, and how you shrink the game without losing your intensity and your aggressiveness, that was all new to us.”
Brandon Staley watched his parents battle cancer and then had his own bout, but the Chargers coach believes the experience can help him be a stronger coach.
Not anymore, as Staley said the Chargers have learned from the experience.
Similar to how he addressed the Chargers’ history as a rookie coach, Staley made it a point in training camp this year to acknowledge what happened in Jacksonville.
“I feel like what we did in training camp this year was start from that point and face what happened in that game,” Staley said. “Most of us were at the game. Those guys who weren’t at the game, I wanted them to feel what we felt. I wanted them to know what happened.”
Staley said he also showed his players examples of teams who endured disappointments similar to theirs.
The Golden State Warriors, who lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals but won the next two championships. The Boston Red Sox, who were dominated by the New York Yankees until they broke through and created a dynasty of their own.
When older quarterbacks are dealing with the younger generation of the NFL, veterans share the tricks to keeping up with the youngers on and off the football field.
The New England Patriots, who blew a 21-3 lead to the Indianapolis Colts in the 2006 AFC Championship game and were a perfect 16-0 in the regular season the year after. The San Antonio Spurs, who fell to the Miami Heat in the 2013 NBA Finals and returned to win a title the next year.
Manchester City, which was upset by Real Madrid in the 2022 Champions League semifinals, avenged its defeat against Madrid the following year and went on to be champions of Europe for the first time.
“The next year, they had huge responses,” Staley said. “They were all champions the next season. I wanted to show them, if you compete long enough, something like this is going to happen. What you gotta be able to do is you gotta be able to respond. You gotta use it the right way. You can’t let it beat you twice. You can’t let it pull you back. You need it to launch you forward.”
The Chargers have more than one crushing defeat at their disposal. They have the entire history of their franchise.
Staley will attempt to use that to transform the organization. He’ll either emerge from this as an admired leader or join the extensive list of Don Quixotes who believed they could win with the Chargers but were ultimately crushed by reality.
Go beyond the scoreboard
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