Chargers have fooled, failed San Diego fans once again

Four Chargers games to go and once again, thousands of delusional, warped San Diegans got suckered.

They tuned into Chargers telecasts by the droves, in the dubious belief that an NFL team run by Dean Spanos and son John Spanos could win a Super Bowl.

What they got was another season of Chargering.

Anticipating a Super Bowl hangover for Andy Reid’s Chiefs, they believed Team Spanos would win its first AFC West title in the 11th try since Dean installed a new braintrust atop the football office.

The tandem: son John, who had scouted for the Chargers; and the collegial and collaborative Tom Telesco, the replacement to the cranky, NFL-hardened egomaniac A.J. Smith.

Believing in the 2023 Chargers meant ignoring former team captain/All-Pro safety Eric Weddle’s blunt assessment of the Tom-John tandem.

The franchise, said Weddle years before he came out of retirement to help the Rams get to and win a Super Bowl, would never win anything big under Spanos and Telesco.

Weddle’s former veteran teammates Danny Woodhead and Matt Slauson co-signed on similar skepticism from Weddle during the trio’s podcast.

Local suckers, er, Chargers fans who believed this would be the breakout year ignored as well Andy Reid’s “baseball bat” thesis on how things can come a cropper for a questionable NFL head coach in his third season.

“Normally your third year, it fits,” Reid told the Kansas City Star before his third season with the Chiefs in 2015. “You kind of establish what you are or what direction you’re going.”

Reid added: “If you just study the longevity of coaches that third year, if it’s not rolling, they don’t quite make it through the four- to five-year contract they’ve signed. It hits you in the head like it’s a baseball bat.”

Chargers coach Brandon Staley listens during Sunday's postgame news conference.

Brandon Staley’s third season has produced a 5-8 record going into Thursday night’s contest against the Raiders.

Before Staley, the Chargers went 5-11 and 4-12 in the third seasons of Anthony Lynn and Mike McCoy. Like Staley, those two had never been a full-time NFL head coach before the Spanos-Telesco braintrust hired them. Nor were any of them going to command either much say-so on personnel or a heavy salary, a pair of typical Spanos-coach traits.

John Spanos fell for the smooth-talking Staley, who had become a media darling in his one year as a Rams defensive coordinator.

(Staley should buy Rams star Aaron Donald a Rolex as appreciation for the $15 million John Spanos pledged him via a four-year contract).

One thing the true believers got right: the Chiefs were more vulnerable than they’d been since Reid made the bold, un-Spanos-like trade of three premium draft picks to get Patrick Mahomes, the generational QB whom the Chargers had passed on despite Lynn’s preference for him two picks earlier in their final San Diego-based draft.

The Chiefs look worn out and scattered on offense.

Broncos linebacker Alex Singleton (49) takes downChargers running back Joshua Kelley during Sunday's first half.

But it is Sean Payton’s first Broncos team, not Staley’s third Chargers team, that has responded to Kansas City’s decline. Pulling to one game behind the Chiefs in the AFC West standings, Payton’s club took a 24-7 victory Sunday on the fake grass in the sunken, sterile Kroenke Dome.

Payton was available for hire the past two offseasons.

But the Spanoses don’t hire coaches such as Payton. He commands too much clout, too much money. Worse yet, giving up draft picks to get him was part of the price. The Spanoses don’t trade draft picks during season or for coaches. They brag about John’s draft legacy in his media-guide bio.

So even though Payton surely preferred Justin Herbert, he had to settle for Russell Wilson and a talent-challenged defense.

Don’t look now, but the Broncos have won six of their past seven games. The 35-year-old Wilson has rebounded from a poor season. Coordinator Vance Joseph has coaxed decent results from the defense. Months after allowing 70 points in Miami, the unit stands 23rd of 32 teams in fewest points allowed.

Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert, center, walks on the sidelines with an injured hand in the pouch of his hoodie.

Sounding off

For pundits who work for NFL media partners, Justin Herbert’s broken finger is a gift.

Instead of saying one word about the franchise’s inadequate stewardship, they can now blame the team’s struggles on bad luck. That’s always the pseudo-narrative on Chargers failures. Fans and local media eat it up.

For the schadenfreude crowd in San Diego, it’s been another delightful Chargers season.
Because so many QBs go down, it’s fair to judge what an NFL club can accomplish with its No. 2 QB. Elsewhere in the AFC, the Browns (8-5), Bengals (7-6), Steelers (7-6) and Colts (7-6) are playoff contenders despite losing their franchise QBs.
The Raiders-Chargers contest matches comparably challenged team owners in Dean Spanos and Mark Davis, a pair of scions and former collaborators on a would-be NFL stadium in Carson. Making Dean and John Spanos look good, the Raiders are 84-123 (.406) with two winning seasons since Davis inherited the ownership reins in 2011 from his late father and Hall of Famer Al Davis, a former San Diego Chargers assistant coach under Hall of Famer Sid Gillman.
The biggest difference between the Dean and Mark regimes? Spanos has enjoyed infinitely better QB luck. Herbert fell into the team’s lap in the 2020 draft with assists from the longtime-bumbling, pre-Brad Holmes Lions and the execrable, since-deposed Washington owner Daniel Snyder. The NFL’s most durable QB other than Bills star Josh Allen since taking over, Herbert was available to the Chargers for all 64 starts before cracking a finger in the second quarter Sunday. Philip Rivers never missed an NFL start. The Spanoses got him after the team lucked into the catbird seat of a draft that also served up future Super Bowl-winning QBs Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning. It’s been at least since before 2004 that a Chargers franchise QB was unavailable to start a game. Herbert’s next start: the 2024 opener.
WR Odell Beckham Jr.’s hands and body control are still first-rate, helping the Ravens patch some of a large hole created by TE Mark Andrews’ injury absence.
QB Dak Prescott is having perhaps his best season. The complementary football Mike McCarthy envisioned for the Cowboys (10-3) is becoming a reality.
Blitzes are still exposing the Chargers’ offense coordinated by Kellen Moore, the media darling who joined Staley’s staff after McCarthy parted with him last offseason.
Who would’ve thunk it? Derwin James is having a Grade-C season, at best.