Behind the Los Angeles Chargers' Unraveling: Poor drafting, misses in free agency and defensive failings

• Poor drafting has created depth issues: While the Chargers' big-name players create buzz every summer, the team has never been able to live up to the expectations due to poor depth stemming from failed draft picks.

• No bang for their buck in free agency: Despite having a lot of money to spend in 2022, the players they signed to multi-year deals from outside the organization have not lived up to their contracts.

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The Los Angeles Chargers have become synonymous with offseason hype. Being the beneficiary of excellent quarterback play between Justin Herbert and Philip Rivers over the past decade will do that. However, year in and year out, this team continues to disappoint.

Under former general manager Tom Telesco's regime, the Chargers surpassed their preseason win total just four times in 11 years. They’ve regularly struggled to exceed (or even meet) the expectations the market has set for them, and the expectations were likely higher within the building, considering they had the golden ticket — a very talented quarterback on a rookie contract.

Despite getting great play from Justin Herbert, the Chargers have gone under their preseason win total in every year of the young quarterback's career.

Last season, the Chargers produced one of the biggest collapses in NFL playoff history, blowing a 27-point lead to the Jacksonville Jaguars as the defense allowed the Jags to score a touchdown on five straight possessions to end the game. This offseason, the Chargers decided to run it back with the same core group of players despite being in a tough spot regarding the salary cap. They restructured the deals of four of their most expensive players  — Khalil Mack, Joey Bosa, Keenan Allen and Mike Williams — and entered this season with essentially the same roster as the year before.

And it has been an abject disaster.

Injuries have taken their toll, with the team losing key players like Mike Williams, Corey Linsley and Joey Bosa to season-ending injuries. Too often, the team has come up short in key situations at the end of games. And following an embarrassing 63-21 blowout on national television, the Chargers ownership felt like a change was necessary ahead of Week 16.

Let's examine how the Chargers got to this point and how they never managed to succeed despite having Justin Herbert as their signal-caller.

Poor drafting has created depth issues the Chargers have never been able to solve

Tom Telesco served as the Chargers' general manager for over 11 years. In those 11 years, the held had picks throughout the first round — they’ve picked in the 20s multiple times, and they’ve gotten to pick in the top six multiple times.

No matter where they have ended up picking, the team has been objectively bad in the draft since Telesco's first season.

Here are the Chargers' draft outcomes for all their players since 2013 based on average percentile outcomes.

As you can see, the Chargers have been the fourth-worst team at drafting during the Telesco era. Sure, he’s secured some big hits, such as Justin Herbert, Joey Bosa and Derwin James. But on average, the Chargers didn’t draft well while he was the general manager.

A big part of this was his reluctance to trade back in the draft. In 11 drafts, Telesco never traded back. Not once. The only other team that never traded back in that timeframe was the New Orleans Saints.

Sure, it takes two to tango when it comes to trading in the draft, but it is simply unreasonable to believe that the team was unable to find a trade partner for 11 years. 

Why is trading back important? Well, you want to accumulate as many dart throws as possible for Day 3. A starting-caliber player on a cheap rookie contract is extremely valuable.

Considering that Philip Rivers was making top-tier starter money in seven of the 11 Telesco years, having good players for cheap in those years would have been very helpful.

While Telesco made zero draft-day trade downs in his tenure, he’s traded up four times. With those picks, he’s selected a running back in the first round (Melvin Gordon), two off-ball linebackers (Manti Te'o and Kenneth Murray) and an outside linebacker (Jeremiah Attaochu). None of these players signed second contracts with the team, and Kenneth Murray has generated -0.04 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) since being drafted, 266th among all linebackers in that span.

Here is a breakdown of how the Chargers have spent their top-100 picks under Tom Telesco.

The three top positions the Chargers invested in? Linebacker, guards and wide receivers.

Linebackers and guards are not considered premium positions, given how replaceable they are (teams often find starting-caliber guys in free agency). And of the eight linebackers and guards the Chargers drafted in the first 100 picks, only one of them, Denzel Perryman, received a second contract. That’s just not an ideal way to build a competitive roster.

This year, we saw the Chargers take Quentin Johnston over Zay Flowers and Jordan Addison, who are playing very well. Seeing those players work out elsewhere as Johnston struggles to generate targets — even with Keenan Allen and Mike Williams out with injuries — must not have sat well within the organization.

So, while the Chargers' big-name players create buzz every summer, the team has never been able to live up to expectations due to poor depth stemming from failed draft picks and not having enough draft picks to find good players for cheap.

Not getting bang for their buck with free-agent signings and extensions

Having a great quarterback on a rookie deal allows teams to spend more in the initial years of that contract. In Years 2 and 3 of Justin Herbert’s rookie contract, the Chargers entered the offseason ranked in the top 10 in terms of effective cap space.

Here’s where they stood heading into 2022, with tons of money to spend. But despite having all this money in 2022 and over $20 million to spend in 2021, the players they signed to multi-year deals from outside the organization have not lived up to their contracts.

These are the players the Chargers signed in free agency to multi-year contracts under the Brandon Staley-Tom Telesco regime. The crown jewel was supposed to be J.C. Jackson, who signed the biggest external free agent contract ever for a cornerback. It resulted in seven games played in one and a half years and him getting traded back to New England in Year 2 of the deal. He will now cost the Chargers over $20 million in dead cap space next year. 

Outside of Jackson, the returns on these signings have also been poor. Corey Linsley was playing at an elite level when he was on the field, but because of a heart-related issue, he may never see the field again. This means the Chargers will likely have paid a player $36.5 million in cash for two years' worth of playing time. 

But the defensive signings have all failed to make a significant impact, which is concerning, given Staley’s background as a defensive coach. Going out and getting the players you want to build your defense in your vision is perfectly fine. It becomes an issue when those players don’t live up to the contracts they signed and cannot provide surplus value.

The Chargers' recent extensions they’ve handed out have also produced similar results.

These are some of the deals the Chargers have handed out since Justin Herbert was drafted, and it’s not a stretch to say that none of these players have lived up to the deal they signed.

Joey Bosa has played one full season in the last four years and has one 10-plus sack season in that span. Mike Williams will have missed more games than he’s played over the last two seasons, even though he has been productive when he’s been on the field. Derwin James has a 53.8 PFF grade this season, the 12th-worst among all safeties. Michael Davis has been very up and down, underperforming in 2021 (which led to the J.C. Jackson signing), bouncing back in a big way in 2022 and struggling in a big way again in 2023. Trey Pipkins was one of the few non-first-round draft picks Telesco re-signed to a multi-year deal, and he currently ranks 53rd in PFF pass-blocking grade and 64th in pass-blocking efficiency.

Opening up the checkbook for homegrown talent is fine; it sends a message to young draft picks that if you play well, you will get rewarded when the time comes. And at the time, maybe only Mike Williams was seen as an overpay. However, when this talent fails to stay on the field or produce at the level they’re getting paid to, it’s tough to be successful. 

Despite having a defensive-minded head coach, the Chargers failed on defense

Brandon Staley’s defense was the talk of the league after his 2020 campaign with the Rams. The style and vision of his defense were very popular talking points, as his Rams unit boasted the No. 1 defense in the league by most metrics.

The Chargers hired him, thinking he would be able to elevate the talent on the roster while also being able to help Herbert progress as a signal-caller by teaching him to read defenses, given Staley’s background as a college quarterback. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case at all.

In Year 1 of his tenure, he inherited a defensive roster built for Gus Bradley’s 4-3 single-gapping defense. Players such as Linval Joseph, Justin Jones, Jerry Tillery and Uchenna Nwosu were all holdovers from Gus Bradley’s defense and were forced to switch to Staley’s 3-4 gap-and-a-half scheme.

The results were not pretty — they fielded the worst run defense in the NFL and regularly struggled against good offenses.

Overall, the Chargers defense has been near the bottom of the league in terms of defensive efficiency and has gotten worse since last year. Since 2021, the Chargers defense ranks 27th in expected points added (EPA) allowed per play and 28th in success rate allowed. Over the same period, the team's offense ranks 12th in EPA per play and 10th in success rate.

It's pretty easy to see what the problem has been.

The Chargers have no balance on offense

Much of the Chargers' success on offense relies on Justin Herbert bailing a bad run game out in pure passing situations.

This season, more than ever, the Chargers failed to establish any consistency on the ground despite having a pretty healthy offensive line outside of Corey Linsley.

The Chargers dominated the Dolphins on the ground in Week 1. But since then, they have averaged -0.287 EPA per rush and generated a 27.3% rushing success rate, both of which are last in the NFL. If you compare that 27.3% rushing success rate to every offense in the past decade, it would be the worst rushing offense in that span.

Nowadays, a team’s passing offense is more important than its run game when it comes to winning games consistently. But when you have the worst rushing game of the past 10 years, it’s tough to win games at all.

Part of this goes back to drafting players. The Chargers took a Day 3 running back each year from 2020 to 2022, and none of them have panned out. Joshua Kelley has the occasional good game but has struggled when given a larger workload. Larry Roundtree III was drafted in 2021 and cut before 2022. Isaiah Spiller was considered a steal when the Chargers took him in the fourth round, but he’s been inactive in six of the team's 14 games this season. And since returning from injury in Week 6, Austin Ekeler is averaging 3.2 yards per carry, the fourth-worst mark among all running backs in that span.

While the absence of running backs who can actually run the ball is part of the problem, the other issues stem from run blocking. Entering Week 16, the Chargers have a 42.2 PFF run-blocking grade, dead last among all teams this year, and they have the seventh-lowest rate of perfectly blocked runs.

The only running back who is signed on the roster for 2024 is Isaiah Spiller. An overhaul of the room is necessary for this offense to not be the league's worst again next season.

Conclusion and steps forward

Having Justin Herbert at quarterback will make this job attractive to head coaching candidates, even though Patrick Mahomes plays in the same division.

Despite the team being $58 million over the cap, there is a path to becoming cap-compliant by letting go of some aging veterans on the roster. And looking forward to 2025, the Chargers can have close to $100 million in spending space if their goal is to clean the books this offseason.

There are some very interesting candidates out there who can turn this team around from a head coaching standpoint. Guys like Detroit's Ben Johnson and Baltimore's Mike MacDonald have done extremely well over the last two seasons from a coordinator standpoint. And then there are other former head coaches who could look to get back in the ranks, such as Dan Quinn or Brian Flores. Jim Harbaugh could finally make the leap back to his roots with the organization that drafted him.

Either way, a vision and identity for both sides of the ball will be crucial so the Chargers don’t waste more years of Justin Herbert.

As for the general manager, having someone who can improve the Chargers' draft success rate will be crucial to try and build out the depth they’ve never had. Trading back in the draft (finally) and allocating premium picks to premium positions will be on the shortlist of how to get the Chargers back to relevance and build a contender that can look to compete by 2025 at the latest.

The Chargers had the golden ticket in Justin Herbert on a rookie deal but squandered it due to poor defenses, bad drafting and injuries to key players. The grand total of zero playoff wins over Herbert's rookie contract is inexcusable, and as a result, both Telesco and Staley were let go.

The Chargers' margin for error has shrunk exponentially now that Herbert has become the second-highest-paid player in the NFL.