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I figured this would be a good place to throw in our feelings about Lynn and the coaching staff. Also a good place to post articles to get us pumped for the season 
I'll start by saying that I hope Lynn continues to progress, learn, and adapt. You can definitely see the change from year 1 to year 2. There's more analytics used to justify certain coaching decisions ie. we're passing more on 1st downs now and being in less third down territory. I would like Lynn to continue finding new ways to attack opponents and be unpredictable, especially against the better teams. Also, I would like us to continue to use analytics and sport science to minimize injuries.
https://theathletic.com/830705/2019/...-anthony-lynn/
I'll start by saying that I hope Lynn continues to progress, learn, and adapt. You can definitely see the change from year 1 to year 2. There's more analytics used to justify certain coaching decisions ie. we're passing more on 1st downs now and being in less third down territory. I would like Lynn to continue finding new ways to attack opponents and be unpredictable, especially against the better teams. Also, I would like us to continue to use analytics and sport science to minimize injuries.
https://theathletic.com/830705/2019/...-anthony-lynn/
In two years, the Chargers added grit, became a reflection of 'unflappable' head coach Anthony Lynn
Sam Fortier Feb 22, 2019
On a warm January day in San Diego, the Chargers' top brass assembled in the owner's conference room at Chargers Park. Owner Dean Spanos, general manager Tom Telesco, president of football operations John Spanos and executive vice president of football administration-player finance Ed McGuire understood the organization needed change. Days earlier, the team had finished the 2016 season at 5-11 to conclude one of the worst two-year stretches in franchise history. After their last game, a New Year's Day loss at home to rival Kansas City, they fired head coach Mike McCoy and then gathered to fix a critical part of the franchise.
In the Chargers' search for a new coach, "leadership" became most important of the four criteria because, more than the challenges they faced on the field, it remained unclear whether or not they would relocate from San Diego. The league was days away from a vote to decide who among the Rams, Chargers and Raiders would move to Los Angeles. Even if the Chargers stayed in San Diego, though, a long-term stadium solution with the city looked unlikely. The management group understood it was asking candidates, in addition to coaching football, to provide public stability for a franchise amidst upheaval.
"We felt that would be a difficult dynamic," Telesco said. "We really needed the right head coach."
Not long before, then-Indiana University basketball coach Tom Crean had sent Telesco the book "Grit." In it, author and psychologist Angela Duckworth argued: "the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence." She called it "grit." Duckworth used Army cadets in their first days at West Point, young finalists in the National Spelling Bee and her personal story -- how a third-grader who tested too low for the gifted-and-talented program later received the MacArthur "Genius Grant" -- to illustrate the power of "paragons of perseverance."
Crean, who through mutual friends met Telesco while he was with the Colts, sometimes sent him articles, but for Telesco, the book in particular resonated. That season, he believed the Chargers responded poorly to adversity and, after the Kansas City loss, he told the team in a meeting he believed they had mental toughness, "but for whatever reason, it didn't manifest." He kept thinking about how the book said grit, what set people apart, could be learned and developed. He gave copies to other employees. He believed, considering the circumstances, the Chargers needed a coach who was gritty.
"We needed a leader," Telesco said. "Didn't care if he had an offensive background, defensive background, special teams background. Didn't matter if he had previous head coaching experience or didn't. It didn't matter if he was a coordinator or college head coach. We needed someone who could lead."
That day, Anthony Lynn walked into the room.
Last month, two years to the day after he was hired, Lynn strode into his press conference disappointed. He had U-turned the Chargers, engineered their best two-year stretch in more than a decade (including a 12-4 campaign this past season), and transformed the locker room's culture, according to two dozen players. But none of the feel-good progress stopped the Patriots' 41-28 thrashing in the AFC divisional playoffs. The dismaying end undercut a season in which Lynn, a long-shot Coach of the Year candidate, rekindled the franchise's Super Bowl aspirations.
"We got our butts kicked," Lynn said, sugar-coating nothing, as usual.
After the game, players emphasized this playoff run didn't feel like a one-off. The year before, the Chargers narrowly missed the postseason and, this year, won a game in it. This progress felt sustainable, several said, in large part because of the head coach. Even former players noticed Lynn's steady, even-keeled approach. In November, radio host and longtime center Nick Hardwick remarked on the team's "business-like manner," which was "different than Chargers teams in the past, who thrived and died on emotional football." For the Chargers to build upon this success, to enable a culture predicated on Lynn's personality and comfort with empowering players, they know they needed to maintain their level of play.
"You win, everybody's happy," edge rusher Uchenna Nwosu said. "You just have to (keep winning)."
For some, Lynn's New England press conference harkened back to the team's 0-4 start in 2017, when this success seemed impossible and when the franchise looked overwhelmed as the chaos of relocation piled onto the pressure from a poor start.
The mounting losses had tested the players' trust in Lynn. They respected him for what he had done -- the former undrafted free agent carved out a six-year NFL career and won the Super Bowl they all craved -- and because he demanded it; Chargers described their first impressions of Lynn as "stern," "genuine," "unflappable," "military" and "gritty." They knew the first-time head coach built his coaching staff to have two coordinators, Ken Whisenhunt on offense and Gus Bradley on defense, with prior head-coaching experience to cover his blind spots. Yet some players wondered: What is he leading us toward? If Lynn doubted himself, he did not betray it. Players said his attitude never wavered, win or loss.
"There are some coaches who would panic (after 0-4), and all hell would break loose and everyone would start panicking," said right guard Michael Schofield. "But because (Lynn) stayed the course, guys stayed focused."
Finally, on the road in Week 5, the Chargers beat the Giants. Philip Rivers flipped Lynn the game ball and said, "Sorry it took so dadgum long."
The team appreciated Lynn's belief in himself and how he remained gritty through a winless September. After that, Tom Telesco said the players bought in. The next week, the Chargers beat the Raiders and, the week after that the Broncos. Players grew more confident in their weekly preparation, which contrasted that of former coach Mike McCoy.
Under McCoy, "we'd have a team meeting about something every single day and it'd repeat itself," said Nick Dzubnar, a veteran special-teamer. "Then you come to Coach Lynn. ... If there's something he wants said, he's going to say it. That's when you have to pay attention and lock in. He's not going to repeat himself, not going to waste people's time by calling X amount of team meetings per week. It's different that way."
After the bye week, the Chargers lost in overtime at Jacksonville and then transformed into a force, beating Buffalo, Dallas, Cleveland and Washington and, in all, winning six of their last seven. From afar, one of Lynn's teammates at Texas Tech, a defensive back named Tracy Saul, watched on with pride. He thought back to 1990 when expectations ran high for the Red Raiders after they thumped Duke in the previous year's All-American Bowl. The beginning of the season was a disaster. Texas Tech skidded to a 1-4 start and Saul remembered dissension on the team, particularly from a fullback unhappy about playing time.
Lynn, a running back, knew the fullback well. Despite the fact he "didn't do a lot of talking," Lynn was a rare junior captain, and his teammates then had a similar impression of him that his players have now. Back then, those closest to Lynn thought he embodied where he came from, a small, farmland town north of Dallas called Celina where they harvested corn, wheat and sorghum. They described him as an authentic, serious man who preferred work over words but would, if he needed to, tell you exactly what he thought in an even voice.
One day, Saul said, Lynn pulled the fullbacks aside and "got us all back on the same page." The Red Raiders experienced a small turnaround, winning three of their last six to finish 4-7, but teammates found it most important Lynn smoothed out the situation. He prevented panic. He stayed the course.
Anthony Lynn is a player's coach, the player always starts. Then he pauses. Almost everyone on the team has tried to explain the gap between the common idea of a "player's coach" and how Lynn lies just outside it. He might joke with you, they'll say, but he's never buddy-buddy. He might understand the player perspective -- granting Victory Monday, occasional unpadded practices, no bye-week practices, uniform tweaks -- but he never strays from his role as head coach. He might accept feedback, but he makes the final decision.
"He tries to keep it his way, which is good, but (he also) tries to give us a little leeway," running back Melvin Gordon said. When Gordon wanted to play through a knee injury at Kansas City this season but Lynn held him out, Gordon begrudgingly respected "it's best for the team." He and several others noted the importance for players to have a coach who understands what it takes to be them. It also helps, Gordon said, Lynn has "a formula" from his two Super Bowl appearances as a player to get where they all want to go.
"That's why he's pretty headstrong about what he wants," Gordon said of Lynn. "Whatever he has been through or done, it got him there and he won the Super Bowl."
Though the Chargers couldn't carry over any of their wins from the sizzling end to last season, the culture has by all accounts only expanded. This year, as the Chargers jetted out to their best start in more than a decade at 7-2, the coaching staff afforded more trust to the players, to some extent deputizing them.
"I've never heard of a coach go out of his way to make sure the players know how much he appreciates each one of them."
Tackle Russell Okung on Lynn's approach
Established veterans, like receiver Keenan Allen and defensive tackle Brandon Mebane, sometimes ran their position-group meetings and coached up younger teammates. More frequently, receiver Geremy Davis said, Lynn yielded the team-meeting floor to players with a story to share for a "Wise Words" segment. Other times, Lynn evicted all the coaches from meetings so a team leader could share a relevant, personal story amongst his peers.
"It's not like everything has to be me, me, me in terms of Lynn," Davis said. "He wants us to love on each other, serve each other and be accountable to each other."
Lynn wanted to be held to the same standard. Around Christmas this year, after the Chargers pulled off two huge upsets in Pittsburgh and Kansas City, Lynn singled out every player and, whether in a team meeting or a hallway or by their locker, he told them something he appreciated about them. Lynn told Jahleel Addae he valued how hard the safety played because he too was an undrafted free agent. He told backup quarterback Geno Smith he felt confident the team would be OK if Smith ever needed to start. He told Uchenna Nwosu he respected the rookie's willingness to play wherever they needed him on defense.
"I've never heard of a coach go out of his way to make sure the players know how much he appreciates each one of them," said left tackle Russell Okung, echoing his teammates. "There are a lot of guys where a coach is walking down the hallway and you hit a quick right because you don't want to interact with him. But with Coach Lynn, it's completely different."
Nick Dzubnar, a fan of the expanded freedom, joked Lynn's new policy was like a parent telling a child: "I'm not going to give you a curfew unless you give me a reason to give you a curfew." He also praised the coach's adaptability from last season to take a step back and allow the team to self-police as long as they won. Dzubnar, after all, utilized it in the Chargers most important game of the year.
In the week before the New England game, Dzubnar was reviewing film when he noticed, on a few returns, the Patriots double-teamed the position on kickoff where the Chargers usually have safety Rayshawn Jenkins. Dzubnar thought it over and decided it might make more sense to swap himself and Jenkins so he could absorb the double-team and Jenkins could use his speed to hopefully beat the one-man block. Early the year before, Dzubnar said he wouldn't have dared suggest the change to special teams coordinator George Stewart. This year, bolstered by the encouraged communication, he did.
The afternoon after the New England loss, Anthony Lynn walked up to another podium. This one was in the Chargers' media room for his last press conference of the season. Lynn had come from meeting with players for year-end evaluations, where he said a long line was queued. For perhaps the first time all season, you could tell what happened during the game in Lynn's body language.
"I don't have much more to say today than I said last night, to be honest with you," he said.
The loss still stung. He seemed subdued, another season cut short. He demurred on even the softball questions asking if the pain from a season-ending defeat like that might galvanize the team for next year. "I don't know if it will," he answered. One of the few times Lynn brightened was discussing the locker room. Next season, Lynn will have nearly all his core pieces back and, though he couldn't carry over any of the marquee wins the team picked up this season, he wanted to continue the culture.
"This team had a lot of grit," he said.
Sam Fortier Feb 22, 2019
On a warm January day in San Diego, the Chargers' top brass assembled in the owner's conference room at Chargers Park. Owner Dean Spanos, general manager Tom Telesco, president of football operations John Spanos and executive vice president of football administration-player finance Ed McGuire understood the organization needed change. Days earlier, the team had finished the 2016 season at 5-11 to conclude one of the worst two-year stretches in franchise history. After their last game, a New Year's Day loss at home to rival Kansas City, they fired head coach Mike McCoy and then gathered to fix a critical part of the franchise.
In the Chargers' search for a new coach, "leadership" became most important of the four criteria because, more than the challenges they faced on the field, it remained unclear whether or not they would relocate from San Diego. The league was days away from a vote to decide who among the Rams, Chargers and Raiders would move to Los Angeles. Even if the Chargers stayed in San Diego, though, a long-term stadium solution with the city looked unlikely. The management group understood it was asking candidates, in addition to coaching football, to provide public stability for a franchise amidst upheaval.
"We felt that would be a difficult dynamic," Telesco said. "We really needed the right head coach."
Not long before, then-Indiana University basketball coach Tom Crean had sent Telesco the book "Grit." In it, author and psychologist Angela Duckworth argued: "the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence." She called it "grit." Duckworth used Army cadets in their first days at West Point, young finalists in the National Spelling Bee and her personal story -- how a third-grader who tested too low for the gifted-and-talented program later received the MacArthur "Genius Grant" -- to illustrate the power of "paragons of perseverance."
Crean, who through mutual friends met Telesco while he was with the Colts, sometimes sent him articles, but for Telesco, the book in particular resonated. That season, he believed the Chargers responded poorly to adversity and, after the Kansas City loss, he told the team in a meeting he believed they had mental toughness, "but for whatever reason, it didn't manifest." He kept thinking about how the book said grit, what set people apart, could be learned and developed. He gave copies to other employees. He believed, considering the circumstances, the Chargers needed a coach who was gritty.
"We needed a leader," Telesco said. "Didn't care if he had an offensive background, defensive background, special teams background. Didn't matter if he had previous head coaching experience or didn't. It didn't matter if he was a coordinator or college head coach. We needed someone who could lead."
That day, Anthony Lynn walked into the room.
Last month, two years to the day after he was hired, Lynn strode into his press conference disappointed. He had U-turned the Chargers, engineered their best two-year stretch in more than a decade (including a 12-4 campaign this past season), and transformed the locker room's culture, according to two dozen players. But none of the feel-good progress stopped the Patriots' 41-28 thrashing in the AFC divisional playoffs. The dismaying end undercut a season in which Lynn, a long-shot Coach of the Year candidate, rekindled the franchise's Super Bowl aspirations.
"We got our butts kicked," Lynn said, sugar-coating nothing, as usual.
After the game, players emphasized this playoff run didn't feel like a one-off. The year before, the Chargers narrowly missed the postseason and, this year, won a game in it. This progress felt sustainable, several said, in large part because of the head coach. Even former players noticed Lynn's steady, even-keeled approach. In November, radio host and longtime center Nick Hardwick remarked on the team's "business-like manner," which was "different than Chargers teams in the past, who thrived and died on emotional football." For the Chargers to build upon this success, to enable a culture predicated on Lynn's personality and comfort with empowering players, they know they needed to maintain their level of play.
"You win, everybody's happy," edge rusher Uchenna Nwosu said. "You just have to (keep winning)."
For some, Lynn's New England press conference harkened back to the team's 0-4 start in 2017, when this success seemed impossible and when the franchise looked overwhelmed as the chaos of relocation piled onto the pressure from a poor start.
The mounting losses had tested the players' trust in Lynn. They respected him for what he had done -- the former undrafted free agent carved out a six-year NFL career and won the Super Bowl they all craved -- and because he demanded it; Chargers described their first impressions of Lynn as "stern," "genuine," "unflappable," "military" and "gritty." They knew the first-time head coach built his coaching staff to have two coordinators, Ken Whisenhunt on offense and Gus Bradley on defense, with prior head-coaching experience to cover his blind spots. Yet some players wondered: What is he leading us toward? If Lynn doubted himself, he did not betray it. Players said his attitude never wavered, win or loss.
"There are some coaches who would panic (after 0-4), and all hell would break loose and everyone would start panicking," said right guard Michael Schofield. "But because (Lynn) stayed the course, guys stayed focused."
Finally, on the road in Week 5, the Chargers beat the Giants. Philip Rivers flipped Lynn the game ball and said, "Sorry it took so dadgum long."
The team appreciated Lynn's belief in himself and how he remained gritty through a winless September. After that, Tom Telesco said the players bought in. The next week, the Chargers beat the Raiders and, the week after that the Broncos. Players grew more confident in their weekly preparation, which contrasted that of former coach Mike McCoy.
Under McCoy, "we'd have a team meeting about something every single day and it'd repeat itself," said Nick Dzubnar, a veteran special-teamer. "Then you come to Coach Lynn. ... If there's something he wants said, he's going to say it. That's when you have to pay attention and lock in. He's not going to repeat himself, not going to waste people's time by calling X amount of team meetings per week. It's different that way."
After the bye week, the Chargers lost in overtime at Jacksonville and then transformed into a force, beating Buffalo, Dallas, Cleveland and Washington and, in all, winning six of their last seven. From afar, one of Lynn's teammates at Texas Tech, a defensive back named Tracy Saul, watched on with pride. He thought back to 1990 when expectations ran high for the Red Raiders after they thumped Duke in the previous year's All-American Bowl. The beginning of the season was a disaster. Texas Tech skidded to a 1-4 start and Saul remembered dissension on the team, particularly from a fullback unhappy about playing time.
Lynn, a running back, knew the fullback well. Despite the fact he "didn't do a lot of talking," Lynn was a rare junior captain, and his teammates then had a similar impression of him that his players have now. Back then, those closest to Lynn thought he embodied where he came from, a small, farmland town north of Dallas called Celina where they harvested corn, wheat and sorghum. They described him as an authentic, serious man who preferred work over words but would, if he needed to, tell you exactly what he thought in an even voice.
One day, Saul said, Lynn pulled the fullbacks aside and "got us all back on the same page." The Red Raiders experienced a small turnaround, winning three of their last six to finish 4-7, but teammates found it most important Lynn smoothed out the situation. He prevented panic. He stayed the course.
Anthony Lynn is a player's coach, the player always starts. Then he pauses. Almost everyone on the team has tried to explain the gap between the common idea of a "player's coach" and how Lynn lies just outside it. He might joke with you, they'll say, but he's never buddy-buddy. He might understand the player perspective -- granting Victory Monday, occasional unpadded practices, no bye-week practices, uniform tweaks -- but he never strays from his role as head coach. He might accept feedback, but he makes the final decision.
"He tries to keep it his way, which is good, but (he also) tries to give us a little leeway," running back Melvin Gordon said. When Gordon wanted to play through a knee injury at Kansas City this season but Lynn held him out, Gordon begrudgingly respected "it's best for the team." He and several others noted the importance for players to have a coach who understands what it takes to be them. It also helps, Gordon said, Lynn has "a formula" from his two Super Bowl appearances as a player to get where they all want to go.
"That's why he's pretty headstrong about what he wants," Gordon said of Lynn. "Whatever he has been through or done, it got him there and he won the Super Bowl."
Though the Chargers couldn't carry over any of their wins from the sizzling end to last season, the culture has by all accounts only expanded. This year, as the Chargers jetted out to their best start in more than a decade at 7-2, the coaching staff afforded more trust to the players, to some extent deputizing them.
"I've never heard of a coach go out of his way to make sure the players know how much he appreciates each one of them."
Tackle Russell Okung on Lynn's approach
Established veterans, like receiver Keenan Allen and defensive tackle Brandon Mebane, sometimes ran their position-group meetings and coached up younger teammates. More frequently, receiver Geremy Davis said, Lynn yielded the team-meeting floor to players with a story to share for a "Wise Words" segment. Other times, Lynn evicted all the coaches from meetings so a team leader could share a relevant, personal story amongst his peers.
"It's not like everything has to be me, me, me in terms of Lynn," Davis said. "He wants us to love on each other, serve each other and be accountable to each other."
Lynn wanted to be held to the same standard. Around Christmas this year, after the Chargers pulled off two huge upsets in Pittsburgh and Kansas City, Lynn singled out every player and, whether in a team meeting or a hallway or by their locker, he told them something he appreciated about them. Lynn told Jahleel Addae he valued how hard the safety played because he too was an undrafted free agent. He told backup quarterback Geno Smith he felt confident the team would be OK if Smith ever needed to start. He told Uchenna Nwosu he respected the rookie's willingness to play wherever they needed him on defense.
"I've never heard of a coach go out of his way to make sure the players know how much he appreciates each one of them," said left tackle Russell Okung, echoing his teammates. "There are a lot of guys where a coach is walking down the hallway and you hit a quick right because you don't want to interact with him. But with Coach Lynn, it's completely different."
Nick Dzubnar, a fan of the expanded freedom, joked Lynn's new policy was like a parent telling a child: "I'm not going to give you a curfew unless you give me a reason to give you a curfew." He also praised the coach's adaptability from last season to take a step back and allow the team to self-police as long as they won. Dzubnar, after all, utilized it in the Chargers most important game of the year.
In the week before the New England game, Dzubnar was reviewing film when he noticed, on a few returns, the Patriots double-teamed the position on kickoff where the Chargers usually have safety Rayshawn Jenkins. Dzubnar thought it over and decided it might make more sense to swap himself and Jenkins so he could absorb the double-team and Jenkins could use his speed to hopefully beat the one-man block. Early the year before, Dzubnar said he wouldn't have dared suggest the change to special teams coordinator George Stewart. This year, bolstered by the encouraged communication, he did.
The afternoon after the New England loss, Anthony Lynn walked up to another podium. This one was in the Chargers' media room for his last press conference of the season. Lynn had come from meeting with players for year-end evaluations, where he said a long line was queued. For perhaps the first time all season, you could tell what happened during the game in Lynn's body language.
"I don't have much more to say today than I said last night, to be honest with you," he said.
The loss still stung. He seemed subdued, another season cut short. He demurred on even the softball questions asking if the pain from a season-ending defeat like that might galvanize the team for next year. "I don't know if it will," he answered. One of the few times Lynn brightened was discussing the locker room. Next season, Lynn will have nearly all his core pieces back and, though he couldn't carry over any of the marquee wins the team picked up this season, he wanted to continue the culture.
"This team had a lot of grit," he said.
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