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Originally posted by cmplxgal
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An agressive defense like 94-95.
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Love it !
An agressive defense like 94-95. -
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He acknowledged that he’s more fit than when he started this season injured so while he might have aspirations of coming back next season better than ever….he sounds like he can play right now better than at the start of this season.Originally posted by Fouts2herbert View Post
That would be good enough, IMO.Comment
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That spin move on one of the best guards in the nfl is sweet, he did something similar against the chiefs last year in the game we won at arrowhead against their best guard thuney…Originally posted by cmplxgal View Post"The author assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this post. The information contained in this post is provided on an "as is" basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness or timeliness..."Comment
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Bosa is playing on Sunday!
What a great plan Staley put together - rest some of your stars during the season, eek out some close wins without them and then bring them back for the playoffs! It's a genius plan - what a great HC!THE YEAR OF THE FLIP!Comment
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Popper’s mailbag is back. He doesn’t see Slater coming back by the end of the regular season. Maybe in the playoffs.
What’s the better playoff matchup in the wild-card round for the Chargers? — @sky_riehemann
The Chargers still have a chance to move into the fifth seed. I broke down all the scenarios in my Final Thoughts earlier this week, but the short version is losses from the Ravens (vs. the Steelers) and Bengals (vs. the Bills) would significantly increase those chances.
Taking over that fifth seed would be a big deal. Right now, the Chargers are in sixth place in the AFC playoff picture. If they finish there, they would end up playing on the road against the Chiefs, Bills, Bengals or Ravens, depending on how these final two weeks shake out. Kansas City, Buffalo and Cincinnati all have top five offenses in DVOA, Football Outsiders’ efficiency metric. Baltimore is ninth in DVOA, despite Lamar Jackson missing the past three-plus games with a knee injury. Jackson was also ruled out of Sunday night’s game against the Steelers. But assuming Jackson returns in time for the postseason, the Chargers would be facing a top-10 offense with an excellent quarterback regardless of who finishes in the third spot.
If the Chargers can move into that fifth seed, they would get an easier playoff matchup. They would play at the winner of the AFC South — either the Jaguarsor the Titans. Between those two teams, I think the Titans are a better matchup. Quarterback Ryan Tannehill underwent ankle surgery after suffering an injury in a loss to the Chargers in Week 15. The Titans placed Tannehill on injured reserve this week, and he will now have to miss a minimum of four games. The earliest he can be activated is for the conference championship, if the Titans make it there. So if the Titans do win the AFC South, and the Chargers claim the fifth seed, they would be going up against rookie Malik Willis or possibly Joshua Dobbs, who made his first NFL start on Thursday. That is a better matchup than facing Doug Pederson, a Super Bowl champion play caller, and Trevor Lawrence, who is third in the league in EPA/dropback since Week 12, according to TruMedia. The Chargers were blown out by the Jaguars in Week 3. They beat the Titans in Week 15 and had a really sound plan for slowing down Derrick Henry.
The ideal scenario is playing the Titans in Nashville in the wild-card round.
What happens to Kyle Van Noy’s role when Bosa comes back? — @SocialMediaHerb
Van Noy has played his best football of the season over the past three weeks, but his role will slowly shrink with Bosa back. I do not think that will happen right away. As Staley mentioned, Bosa will have to work his way back into game shape. Somewhere around 20 to 25 snaps probably makes sense for Bosa in his first NFL game in over three months.
So in the short term, Van Noy’s role should not shift too much. I expect him to play a majority of his snaps on the edge Sunday, as he has since Bosa’s injury. But as the Chargers enter the postseason, and Bosa’s conditioning improves, Van Noy should move into a more specialized role — the role the Chargers envisioned when they signed Van Noy in May.
That role will be tailored predominantly to known-passing situations and third downs. Van Noy has the capacity to play both on the edge and off the ball as an inside linebacker, and Staley can utilize that versatility to disguise his blitzes and pressures on third down. This will not necessarily be anything new. The Chargers have used Van Noy in this way on third downs over the course of the season, including Monday night against the Colts.
Van Noy, Khalil Mack and Chris Rumph II — three edge rushers — were on the field together for nine snaps in Indianapolis: eight third downs and one fourth down, according to TruMedia. They moved Van Noy around to try and engineer one-on-ones. Sometimes, they had Van Noy on the edge with Mack rushing on the interior against a guard. Other times, they lined Van Noy up on the interior, and this really allowed for Staley’s disguises. Van Noy can shift alignments from the right guard to the left guard (or vice-versa) to create confusion. He can disguise like he is rushing before dropping into coverage in the middle of the field. Or he can disguise like he’s dropping into coverage and then rush the quarterback after the snap.
Bosa would move into Rumph’s current role in these third-down packages. This is a grouping the Chargers used regularly in the first two games of the season before Bosa’s injury, and it created a lot of one-on-one matchups for Bosa and Mack. The Chargers should get back to these looks now that they are returning to full strength in their edge-rushing group.
How impactful have guys like Fehoko, Fox and Salyer been? — @ryan_tarvers
The Chargers would not be in the playoffs without their depth pieces. I can write that unequivocally. Staley and general manager Tom Telesco deserve a lot of credit for how they have built this roster. The coaching staff, Staley included, deserves credit for finding ways to maximize the depth pieces as injuries took their toll on some top-end talent. The depth players individually deserve the most credit for stepping up, improving, developing and making an impact.
The three players our question-asker mentions top that list.
Breiden Fehoko has been excellent in run defense, particularly over the past three weeks, helping that phase of the team improve even as Austin Johnson, Otito Ogbonnia and Christian Covington went down with season-ending injuries and Bosa remained on injured reserve.
Morgan Fox has been one of the most valuable free-agent acquisitions in the league. The Chargers signed Fox to a veteran minimum contract in May. He is second on the team with 36 pressures, trailing only Khalil Mack, according to TruMedia. He is also second on the team with 5 1/2 sacks, a half a sack short of his career high, which he set with the Rams and Staley in 2020. Fox ranks sixth among qualified interior defensive linemen in pass rush productivity, Pro Football Focus’ pass rush efficiency metric. While Bosa was out, the Chargers were searching for pass rushers to step up. Fox has been consistent, reliable and productive.
Rashawn Slater went down with his biceps injury in Week 3. Jamaree Salyer has started every game since, playing 100 percent of the offensive snaps since Week 4. He has solidified the position. Does Salyer have limitations? Yes. He is not the smoothest mover, and as Salyer has put more reps on tape, pass rushers have attacked him with speed moves to the outside. That has led to more pressures. But he is a functional player at one of the toughest positions to play and transition to in the NFL. And many scouts and draft experts felt like Salyer had no chance of playing left tackle at this level, despite playing well there in college at Georgia. He has proven a lot of people wrong. A move to guard in the future makes the most sense for him long term. But the Chargers were scrambling after Slater went down. Storm Norton entered the season as the swing tackle. He was very clearly not up for the task of replacing Slater. The Chargers realized that in Week 3 and made a bold move to give Salyer a shot. He has rewarded them.
These are just three of many depth pieces that have stepped up. A few more that deserve shoutouts: safety Alohi Gilman, cornerback Ja’Sir Taylor, wide receiver DeAndre Carter and offensive tackle Foster Sarell.
What adjustments do you believe have been made to the defense that led to this incline in performance? — @JosuePuente04
More than anything, the Chargers are executing on defense. Run defense, pass defense, third downs. They are in position, connected and making plays. It all starts there.
But Staley has made adjustments to the scheme and play calling since the bye week, and particularly over this recent three-game stretch. Staley believes in being as multiple as possible on defense. And when installing his defense in the spring and summer, he gives his players the full menu. As the season progresses, Staley can then turn knobs up and down depending on what his players can do well, what they cannot and what each week’s matchup dictates.
One notable tweak over these past three weeks has been more Cover 2 — a zone coverage with two deep safeties, multiple defenders in the middle of the field and two outside corners defending the flats. Asante Samuel Jr. had an interception in Cover 2 against the Colts. Michael Davis had a pass breakup on third down in Cover 2 against the Dolphins. This is a coverage the Chargers have proven they can play well consistently, and so Staley has leaned into it more over this three-game winning streak.
Through the first 12 weeks of the season, the Chargers played Cover 2 on 4.1 percent of their defensive plays. Over the past three weeks, that rate has jumped to 10.9 percent.
It has been one of the Chargers’ best coverages since the bye week. Through the first seven weeks of the season, the Chargers ranked 31st in EPA per dropback while playing Cover 2, according to TruMedia. They rank third in EPA per dropback while playing Cover 2 since their bye week.
“It’s a lot of the coverage variety that we believe in,” Staley said this week. “There’s always chapters that you want to keep for an entire season, for a long season. And some of it is matchup-driven, but we really believe in that variety, that it’s the spice of life. You got to make it tough on people. And one of the ways you make it tough on people is flipping the script. And so that’s what we’ve always tried to do, but I think we’ve played (Cover 2) well, and that’s another motive. Any time you’re playing something well, you want to do it. But that’s kind of what we believe in. You may not see that coverage for a couple weeks, but we know that we have it, and that’s one of the hallmarks of the way we play.”
The Chargers have also played significantly less man coverage since the bye week. They played man coverage on more than 30 percent of their defensive snaps through the first seven weeks of the season, according to TruMedia. Since Week 9, that rate has dropped to 19.7 percent.
Any update/estimate on Slater’s potential return? — @c_schoell
I would be shocked if Slater is designated to return off IR next week. If Slater is able to return, I think the absolute earliest he could play is the wild-card round. But even that feels like a long shot, considering the nature of a biceps tear and the typical recovery window. There is also a possibility of re-injury if Slater comes back too soon, and that is part of the consideration. The Chargers want to do everything they can to contend for a Super Bowl this season, of course. Slater, though, is an All-Pro player at one of the most important positions on the team, and his long-term health has to be the priority. So we will see.
What do you think is the main reason for the sacks piling up for Herbert? — @mayonezappa
Justin Herbert has been sacked 25 times since Week 11, the most for any quarterback during that span, according to TruMedia. Herbert was only sacked 12 times in the first 10 weeks of the season.
So what has changed? Most of this, to me, is just natural regression. Herbert was having a historic season in terms of avoiding sacks through the first 10 weeks of the season. He was taking sacks on only 8.5 percent of his pressured dropbacks, which would have the best single-season mark since Philip Rivers in 2017, according to TruMedia. That was despite being the 11th-most pressured quarterback in the league. Maintaining that rate was just not sustainable.
Since Week 11, Herbert’s sacks-per-pressure rate has jumped from 8.5 percent to 21.7 percent, according to TruMedia. And yet, for the season as a whole, Herbert still ranks fifth among qualified quarterbacks in lowest sacks-per-pressure rate. He has just come back to Earth in this area to a degree.
Some of it, too, though, has been an increase in pressure allowed. Herbert was pressured on 34.5 percent of his dropbacks through the first 10 weeks of the season, according to TruMedia. Since Week 11, that rate has jumped to 41.2 percent, fourth-highest in the league over that span. A good deal of that pressure has come on the interior against guards Matt Feiler and Zion Johnson, who have gone up against some elite interior rushers over the past three weeks between the Dolphins’ Christian Wilkins, the Titans’ Jeffery Simmons and the Colts’ DeForest Buckner.
Herbert’s true dropback rate — meaning no play action or screen —has stayed pretty steady even with Mike Williams and Keenan Allen back. He used straight dropbacks 62.6 percent of the time through the first 13 games of the season, according to TruMedia. That number has actually dipped to 57 percent over the past three games with both Williams and Allen playing. I think the types of play action the Chargers use could make a difference. Offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi calling more pocket movement concepts and designed rollouts might help alleviate some of the pressure on the interior.
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Popper being kind re Lombo.Comment
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As a former fire Telesco fanatic, I'll admit my thinking has changed. Telesco and Staley have answered the "What have you done for me lately?" question. What about the past decades futility? Time to put the past behind us and quit crying over spilt milk. I'm not sold on keeping Lombardi yet, but would defer to Staley on that question. Staley will do what is right for the team in the long run, he's a smart guy. Certainly wouldn't try and replace him at this stage of the game. Just a few short weeks ago, the possibility of the playoffs did not excite me. Big deal, one and done. That's not the case anymore with the way this team is coming together. Looking forward to making some noise in the playoffs.Originally posted by Velo View PostComment
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Too be honest, I think the best roster decisions made this season are all Staley, he's telling Telesco who he wants and teaching Tom how to be good at his job. Whatever the case, the duo of Staley/Telesco seems to be working. Knock on weed.Originally posted by Berserker76 View PostComment
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Well the OL depth is crap but ill give them the pieces they did pick up. They didnt foolishly go and spend on name guys when we had injuries. Davidson has played OK on the DL, Fehoko has been great since thy gave him some playing time, and we got by with our scrub WRs ....barely.Originally posted by Velo View Post
Robbie Anderson has done nothing in AZ and Isabella has done nothing in Baltimore as we keep our picks and still have cap space.Comment
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