The Los Angeles Chargers are nine point favorites tonight.
Is their opponent not showing up?
How can a Chargers team that has lost four of their first six games and have their only two wins by four and seven point margins be favored by this many points?
Oh, I see, they are playing the Chicago Bears who will again be without their starting quarterback, Justin Fields, who is nursing a dislocated right thumb. Last week, in the first game Fields missed, his teammates responded to his absence with a convincing win over the visiting Las Vegas Raiders. I suspect the thinking here, and it is sound, is that when a team has a spike in their performance while compensating for the loss of their starting quarterback they suffer problems in their next game.
The reason for this sudden shift in motivational assisted play is that they are looking to overcome the loss of their starter in the first game without him while not knowing if they can. Once they succeed, the motivation is lost and they are still without their starting quarterback.
But, the Chargers favored by nearly double-digits?
That can’t be good for the home team and their backers.
The Chargers are a clear example of what bad coaching can generate. They have one of the highest paid quarterbacks in football and he has never won a postseason game. If Justin Herbert is so good, why doesn’t it show up in Los Angeles’ won/loss record?
One word..
Coaching.
This season, the National Football League had five teams with head coaches that were not in their positions the prior September. In a typical season, the NFL will see six men fall victim to how Bum Phillips categorized NFL head coaches, “Those that have been fired, and those that are gonna be fired.”
Chargers Head Coach Brandon Staley should have been the sixth coach fired after last season. Yet, he remains in his position not based on his success or lack of success on the field, but because the organization guaranteed a lot of money in his contract and letting him go would be expensive. This is an example of the bean counters coaching the team.
Not good.
How important is coaching?
For my upcoming book on Al Davis, my friend and the former Oakland Raiders great center, Jim Otto, wrote the introduction. While meeting with him, Jim told me that he first met Davis while the future Raiders head coach and owner was an assistant on Sid Gilman’s staff in San Diego. Otto was invited to work with the players on his old college team, the University of Miami, and Davis came in for a few days to evaluate the talent for the draft and stepped in to run some drills with the college athletes.
“I learned more in those few days with Davis on what it took to win and how to do things right than I had in two years of playing for the Raiders before he arrived,” Otto said in acknowledgement of his old coach and mentor.
Today, the Chargers appear to be getting the kind of coaching that Otto toiled under before Davis arrived in Oakland. Before what is required to be great was imparted talented teams can fail.. And in Los Angeles, they are doing it at the expense of allowing a talented roster to rot on the vine.
And still, I don’t want the Bears tonight for other reasons, but certainly am not going to lay that many points with a misguided Chargers organization.