The Chargers Decline Has Left Jim Harbaugh Literally Speechless
The podium is a tough spot for a head coach. You get up there, especially after a game like today, and have no choice but to defend players that were terrible. You have to! If a coach went up there and said "Well we probably lost because Player X was giving up 100 pressures and Player Y was taking bad angles" is losing his locker room and getting fired. For a player's coach like Harbaugh, that would basically be blasphemy. But you also need to have SOME accountability. You can't tell us "the team is improving" when the exact opposite is happening as plain as day. What's the saying? Don't piss on my boots and tell me it's raining?
There are obvious deficiencies on this team and most of them were obvious to the most casual of fans. The first is this offensive line is garbage. YES, Slater is gone and will never be the same. YES, Joe Alt has been out. But the original issue wasn't them, it was the interior. They went out and got Mekhi Becton, who has either been out with injury or played mediocre (7 pressures allowed yesterday). Zion has been maybe slightly above that and Bradley Bozeman. Man. What can I even say anymore?
Not only has he been, pretty much inarguably, the worst center in football, but he was bad last year and Joe Hortiz EXTENDED him! By all accounts a great guy and beloved in the locker room but what are we doing here! His issues have also been made worse by the injuries around him. The team is down to their 5th and 6th OT, and Hortiz is expecting his franchise QB to be adequately protected by Austin Deculus (currently one of the worst rated T in football) and Bobby Hart (who hadn't started an NFL game since 2021).
And the defense, which I have extensively called a paper tiger from last year after the terrible schedule they faced, has been equally bad. The Chargers opted not to keep Poona Ford in the offseason and, as a result, their run defense has plummeted. Jonathan Taylor basically jogged into the endzone untouched three times, slicing through every level of the defense like a hot knife through butter. Check out the angles by Perryman (MLB) and Derwin (S) on this puppy.
Great work boys. So, thanks to Hortiz being insanely stingy last offseason and assuming Jesse Minter defense could run it back with an island of misfit toys on the front 7, they suck ass.
So when the defense sucks and the offensive line is giving up pressure on 55%+ of drop backs, there is only one thing that can save you: The QB being absolutely perfect. Herbert wasn't. He was under siege the entire game and there was no run support whatsoever BUT he also threw behind a few players and had a red zone INT. That is now 2 of them this year which is inexcusable. He had ZERO last year and has never had more than 1 in a single season before. It's unfair and no QB should be expected to carry 100% of the load but I think it's still fair for us to expect something a little closer to perfection.
It feels closer to the Chargers of a couple years ago during the death rattle of Brandon Staley. The defense gives up a billion points right away, there is no run game whatsoever and Herbert is expected to just manage. It sucks, and this is the exact thing Harbaugh was brought in to rectify. But hey, at least I got to watch them get embarrassed while wearing piss yellow jerseys that everyone hates. AND I get to watch them on a short week on TNF get fucking BUNDLED by an extremely angry Vikings team!
P.S. Only positive from this game is that Oronde Gadsen is a stud