2021 Official Chargers Season Discusssion

[Bearded14YourPleasure]

I don’t think it was just Broughton’s size but his game. He’s more of a penetrating type DL and Staley mentioned he wanted someone with more anchor. Maybe that’s Banks?

Jason at OTC also reporting that going into week 1 Chargers are the healthiest team in terms of salary cap lost to IR, PUP, and non football injury. Staley is doing something right.

[powderblueboy]

This is the only comment on Banks from a Ram fan site:

"Practice Squad candidate, imo"

"Yes hope so.

A bit surprised (on Banks being cut)".........


Note: there is a thread on him that is empty of responses

[chargeroo]

Bet you Banks is closer to 290# now. He has great length and athleticism. I believe Broughton was redundant vs JJones, Tillery and Covington in several aspects. Then there is Merrill who we expected to not be claimed.

But, wait a minute - two days ago they said he was 270, are saying he put on 20 lbs. in two days?
Glad I don't have to pay for his food!

[Xenos]

So far so good.

[Xenos]

I’ll post the entire article later.

[Bolt4Knob]

I’ll post the entire article later.

It was a very good read. I hope Lombardi is following through on making the offense tailored to Herbert and not what Brees had. Brees had complete command of the offense after 15 years even if the arm strength diminished over time. Herbert has the physical skills but needs to learn the mental part of the game Brees developed.

[Formula 21]

I’ll post the entire article later.

This is a great read on how to build an offense around a player and the incredible amount of detail that goes into it. Staley’s offensive coaches are not here by accident, they each bring parts of dynamic offensive systems to a new system that Staley is creating for Herbert’s skills.

This makes me excited for the season. That crap we saw in the exhibition games has nothing to do with what we are going to see coming up.

[TexanBeerlover]

I also think Palmer has most to gain with Herbert. Lombardi likes to use passing game to maintain time of possession. Palmer is a possession receiver. That and running game yet to be proven and weakest offensive link on the roster.

[blueman]

So far so good.

Best Charger news in decades, starting the season with EVERY starter available.

[sonorajim]

I think that is pretty fair actually. I have questions about the team

are the OL and if the Special Teams truly are improved.
Along with does Herbert get better and the offense improve or at least not regress
Can the defense improve and can James stay healthy
Can Vizcaino make a clutch kick

With the bar on the ground, getting over it isn't all that much struggle.
There's no question that LT- LG- C- RG talent are improved. If Bulaga is healthy, him too. Performing as a group with the NFL's #1 C leading 3 quality vets and the 2021 draft's top 1st rd OT, it's hard for me to imagine being 32nd best again.
STs have gotten more attention, personnel choices than in a long time. Should be better. Close to a lock that we'll beat 32nd.
If we believe that Herbert IS really special, and I do, he won't regress and will improve with more talent around him.
Viz Can make a clutch kick. Will he? Maybe.
Health is anybodies guess. A lot of time, money, fitness personnel, systems have been directed at the issue. That guaranties nothing. We'll have to see.
On the positive side, Staley thinks ahead about "what if's" and has a plan in mind. Nothing is better than everyone healthy, having Staley will ease the dings as long as we aren't wiped out at one position.

[Xenos]

I’ll post the entire article later.

Here’s the full article. It’s just crazy all the detail and nuance.

https://theathletic.com/2799010/2021/09/03/the-qb-is-the-system-how-the-chargers-are-building-their-offense-through-justin-herbert/

During the summer of 2009, Brandon Staley took a trip that forever altered his football life. Staley, then just a 26-year-old assistant at Division III powerhouse St. Thomas in Minnesota, talked his way into a week’s worth of meetings and practices with the Saints’ quarterbacks. Joe Lombardi, the Saints’ QB coach at the time, had been the offensive coordinator during Staley’s stint as the QB at Mercyhurst College, and the enterprising young assistant parlayed that connection into six days within the Saints’ inner sanctum.

New Orleans led the NFL in scoring the previous season and Staley’s time with Drew Brees and Sean Payton gave him an intimate look at what kept the best offense in football humming.

“He’s a brand-new coach, and he was just seeing that the Saints were really successful,” Lombardi said. “And he always wanted to know why. What do you guys do? How do you do it?”

By the time the week was over, Staley had his answer. He was floored by the level of detail that permeated every aspect of New Orleans’ approach. Staley specifically remembers the script reviews New Orleans would conduct before the following day’s practice, which included plans for how every play would function against all the possible looks a defense could throw at them.

“Every walkthrough,” Staley said. “How intentional every single play was. To get the right personnel grouping. To get the right formation. To get the right motion. So that you can get the right matchup … I just think that they poured into all those little things that make a big difference.”

Now in his first season as the Chargers’ head coach, Staley has been open about why he chose Lombardi as his offensive coordinator and the Saints’ system as the unit’s foundation. With the endless combinations of personnel packages, formations and motions, the New Orleans offense mirrors Staley’s approach on defense. To put it simply, playing against that offense makes for a miserable week at the office. But beyond the mechanics of the Saints’ system, Staley was also drawn to the way that Brees shaped every facet of the New Orleans offense.

“I felt like the quarterback had full command over what was happening,” Staley said. “There wasn’t anything that was getting run in those practices that wasn’t designed for Drew Brees, that he wasn’t truly invested in.”

In Justin Herbert, the Chargers have a 23-year-old quarterback fresh off one of the best seasons for a rookie quarterback in NFL history. With Lombardi on staff and the Saints’ offensive blueprint in hand, the Chargers’ goal wasn’t to drop Herbert into an offensive system that already existed. It was to turn that quarterback into the offensive system.

“That experience shaped me as a coach,” Staley said of his time with the Saints. “Now being with Justin, so much of that experience has stayed with me.”

---

To understand the complexion of the Chargers’ offensive plan, let’s rewind to the early days of 2021, when Staley was hired as the team’s head coach. Staley had long decided that Lombardi — who he’s known for almost 20 years — and the Saints’ central principles would form the offense’s foundation. But there were other key elements he felt compelled to poach from some of the league’s top offenses based on how they complemented Herbert’s abilities.

As the Rams’ defensive coordinator last season, Staley got an up-close look at the tenets that make the wide-zone, play-action systems of Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan so successful. The Shanahan scheme is a nightmare for opposing defensive coaches because every aspect of the offense is tied together and looks almost identical for the first few steps of a given play.

“I also knew that I needed the run game and the keeper game to align, which is a strength of Sean and Kyle,” Staley said. “It’s also a strength of Justin, being able to throw on the move and to be able to get him outside and to change the launch point and to put pressure on defenses because of the marriage of the run and the pass.”

To help incorporate some of those principles, Staley hired former 49ers quarterbacks coach Shane Day as his passing game coordinator. Day has worked hand-in-hand with offensive line coach Frank Smith to hone that harmonious run-pass marriage that makes teams like San Francisco such a challenge.

The final component of the Chargers’ three-pronged approach emerged from a blend of Herbert’s own history and Staley’s latest lesson as a defensive play-caller. During last year’s playoffs, the Packers took advantage of the Rams’ focus on erasing explosive plays by turning to Aaron Rodgers’s strengths as a quick-trigger quarterback. The shotgun-based, RPO aspect of Green Bay’s offense didn’t exist in New Orleans. That’s an area where Chargers tight ends coach Kevin Koger — a former Packers quality control assistant — has been able to lend his experience to the offensive gumbo simmering in Los Angeles.

“When I meant uniquely shaping the offense for Justin, that’s what I mean,” Staley said. “There’s certain things that we can do that they didn’t do with Drew [Brees].”

By leaning more heavily into RPOs, the Chargers will incorporate more of the spread-out, wide-open features of the offense that Herbert grew up running at Oregon.

“I feel like that’s helped Justin operate at a high level,” Staley said. “Getting him in that comfort zone, allowing him to see the defense, and make quick decisions and truly play point guard. Because that to me is truly what the RPO game is, it’s playing point guard.”

When Staley visited New Orleans in 2009, Lombardi was in his first few months as the Saints’ quarterbacks coach but well into his third year with the franchise. Aside from a two-year sojourn as the Lions’ offensive coordinator from 2014-2015, Lombardi has spent nearly his entire 16-year professional coaching career in New Orleans. That experience, the Saints’ ideologies, and the lessons they imbued seep into every aspect of who he is as a coach.

“It’s something that Sean Payton always says that sticks with me,” Lombardi said. “He’d say, ‘It’s not what we do here that makes us good. It’s how we do it.’ The attention to detail, the amount of care and effort that goes into game-planning, the molding of the offense, and the playbook, and the game plans around your players.”

A prevailing belief in the Saints’ building is that the quarterback should have input on every component of the offense, no matter how minute. That privilege extended beyond Drew Brees.

“They cater the offense to you and how you feel in it,” said Luke McCown, who played in New Orleans from 2013 to 2016. “Because ultimately, you’re the only one pulling the trigger to get the ball to where it needs to go on game day. The more comfortable you are, the better you’ll execute the offense.”

In New Orleans, Brees and Lombardi worked together not only on which route combinations fit the offense but which receivers fit which routes and why. Saints receivers had differing amounts of freedom within the offense depending on the familiarity they had with the system and how comfortable Brees felt with letting them feel out certain route depths and aiming points in real time. That intimate knowledge about the idiosyncrasies of his pass catchers allowed Brees to suggest specific players for specific roles within individual route concepts, a process that Herbert has been ironing out since the spring.

“When you go out in the offseason, before practice, or during practice, Jared Cook is going to run a stop differently than Mike Williams does,” Herbert said. “He’s going to run it differently than Keenan [Allen] does. But being out there and repping it with them, that’s the best way to learn it.”

In March, the Chargers brought in Chase Daniel to serve as both the backup quarterback and as a resource for Herbert as he learned the ins and outs of how the Saints’ approach operates. Daniel spent five total seasons over two stops in New Orleans, and he’s had a close-up look at how Lombardi solicits feedback from his quarterback to shape the system.

“That’s what I think is really cool about Joe,” said Daniel. “He really checks his ego at the door. Obviously he’s the guy in charge of the offense, but he always asks for input, especially from the quarterback position. And especially from Justin.”

Lombardi has also brought specific rituals with him from New Orleans that are designed to enhance the quarterback’s voice in molding the offense to his specifications. On the eve of each game during the season, the Saints would hold a session they called the “dot meeting,” where the quarterbacks and offensive staff would go through every possible play for the following day and gauge the starting quarterback’s enthusiasm for each one by placing a dot next to his favorite calls.

“I may think it’s the greatest play in the world, but if you’re breaking the huddle, and you’re like, ‘I don’t really feel great about this, I don’t want to run it,’” then we won’t,’” Lombardi said. “I think every quarterback, there’s a certain handful of concepts where they’re like, ‘Man, you call this, I’ll find you a completion. I know it so well. I’m so comfortable with it.’ That’s what we’re aiming for, just getting that communication and experience where I know exactly what he likes.”

Everything from Lombardi’s coaching ethos to the structure of certain meetings is designed to solicit feedback from Herbert, but the process only works if the quarterback is willing to speak up and assert his authority within the offense. That part has been a work in progress with Herbert, who at 23 years old may be as amiable as he is talented.

“These guys, they’re so competitive,” Lombardi said. “They’re pleasers. They don’t like to tell you, ‘I don’t like that.’ So we’ve tried to just keep that communication open, and say, ‘Hey, man, be honest. There’s a million plays we can run. We don’t have to run one you don’t like.’”

To help foster that open dialogue, Staley has leaned on Daniel, whose familiarity with the Saints’ meeting environment has helped him serve as a useful example of how quarterbacks and coaches should interact. During training camp, the Chargers have also tried to accelerate the feedback process by drilling down on a handful of core ideas that Herbert favors.

“When we’ve actually been going live, and we’ve truly been able to feel and express a lot of these routes and concepts, I think that relationship has really grown,” Staley said. “I think Joe’s been able to witness — whether it’s routes on air, individual, practice — ‘This is his wheelhouse. This is what he really likes,’ and keep calling that so that you create even more confidence. Instead of dabbling in a bunch of everything, we’ve been able to hone in more.”

There are plenty of tangible benefits to shaping an offense around a quarterback’s particular tastes, but McCown says that there’s also a less concrete advantage that Lombardi’s method helps to unearth: Quarterbacks are more likely to buy into an offense when they’ve had a part in building it.

“That’s the key to any young quarterback in the NFL,” McCown said. “He’ll only be as good as the amount of ownership he has — and feels like he has — in the offense. You feel really comfortable when you can say, ‘Man, I created this thing. It’s built around me. It’s built to the things that I like to do.’”

---

There will — and should — be multiple areas where the Chargers’ vision diverges from how Brees operated during his Hall of Fame career. Staley and Lombardi are both quick to praise Herbert’s football smarts, but aptitude only goes so far. There are aspects of the offense that a sophomore QB, no matter how sharp, can’t grasp in the same way Brees could late in his carer.

“I think the big thing is this is Year 1 of our offense,” Staley said. “We’re not gonna treat this like it’s Year 15 in New Orleans.”

For most of his time in New Orleans, Brees was responsible for every component of the Saints’ offense. Every Mike linebacker identification, every play check, every protection change. They all ran through Brees because that’s the way he wanted it.

One of Lombardi’s challenges during his first offseason with the Chargers has been finding the right balance between utilizing Herbert’s impressive intellect and not overloading a young quarterback with too many tasks. To sort out the correct proportions, Lombardi has given Herbert full responsibility in some areas but only partial control in others. During OTAs, Lombardi and the staff threw the Saints’ entire gamut of complex personnel groupings, formations, and motions at Herbert and basically told him to sink or swim.

“Their mindset was, ‘We’re gonna put it all in, and you’re going to struggle,’” Herbert said. “‘But you’re going to find out a lot about yourself and find out a lot about the offense. Early on, it was tough. Even walkthroughs were tough. But as the weeks go on, you start to feel more comfortable.”

Throughout OTAs and the early days of training camp, Herbert wore a wristband that helped him with the dense verbiage for each of the Chargers’ play calls. Unlike some offenses, the Chargers will often tag individual players within each call — a Brees preference to simplify the offense for everyone else even if meant complicating it for himself.

“My thing was you just have to visualize it,” Herbert said. “When you get out there and you hear the play, it does seem like a lot. And [Joe] talks really quickly. I have to slow him down sometimes. He’ll give a play, and I’ll say, ‘This is the formation. This is the motion. This is how it all ties in together.’ When you can visualize it and go through it, I think that’s best.”

After routinely stumbling through calls this spring, Herbert says something clicked late in the Chargers’ first week of training camp practices. Shortly before the team’s public practice at SoFi Stadium on August 7th, Herbert ditched the wristband for good.

“Drew, when I was with him, we were always studying,” Daniel said. “Studying, studying, studying. Just to memorize plays and to understand them. I think that’s what made Drew so good. I think with Justin, he sorta just hears it a few times and gets it. It’s sort of like that Beautiful Mind type of memory.”

The Chargers have been slightly more cautious when it comes to saddling Herbert with protection responsibilities. Part of the thinking behind signing All-Pro center Corey Linsleythis offseason was that bringing in a veteran pivot with Linsley’s experience would allow the Chargers to develop Herbert’s role in dictating protections at their own pace.

“ [Justin] doesn’t have to sit there and think about it every snap,” Lombardi said. “He can leave it to the center until he sees something different that he wants to change. That just takes a little bit of mental energy off the quarterback.”

Herbert has final say on protection calls and has already shown notable growth in his first few months within the system, but by installing Linsley as the first link in the chain of communication, the Chargers are hoping that Herbert can play with the freedom and confidence that make him such a gifted thrower.

“I wanted him to be able to play,” Staley said. “Yes, you’re gonna have to know this, and yes, he does know it. But he’s got a system of checks and balances with Corey Linsley that’s going to allow him to be the fullest version of himself. And then in time, Justin will be able to do all that by himself. But there’s a sequencing that matters when you’re coaching a player.”

The Chargers are hoping that with time, the mental aspect of Herbert’s game creeps closer and closer to where Brees was late in his career. But the physical aspects are a different story entirely. By the time Brees hit his late 30s, his arm strength had began to decline to the point that New Orleans had to reshape its offensive approach around his rare ability to beat defenses with a combination of his mind and quick release.

“Drew knew where he was throwing it before the ball was even snapped, usually,” Lombardi said. “He wasn’t going to throw it as far as Justin can throw it. So, our offense, especially as the years went on, became a little bit more about shorter passes, because he was going to complete 80 percent of them.”

But as McCown, Staley, and others all pointed out, it’s important to not confuse the Saints offense from 2020 to the system New Orleans ran during the early years of the Brees-Payton partnership. “I think everyone forgets that when Drew was really rolling, they were throwing the ball down the field,” Staley said. “You don’t throw for 5,000 yards throwing Stick and Spacing. You throw for 5,000 yards because you’re throwing the ball down the field.”

Daniel says that some of the deeper posts and spear concepts that were thrown out later in Brees’ career have returned with Herbert at the controls. They’ve even renamed a few of the Saints classics, if only to accentuate the Chargers spin they’ve tried to put on the offense. A more aggressive Saints downfield play called “Giant,” for reasons Lombardi still doesn’t quite know, has been renamed “Poison.” “There’s a post, an over, and an in,” Lombardi said. Coach [Staley] is like, “Well, let’s call it Poison. Post, over, in. ‘Poison.’ I was like, ‘That makes total sense.” Lombardi has also introduced deeper, out-breaking routes to the field that disappeared from game plans late in Brees’s career — throws that might be a challenge for some quarterbacks but that Herbert can make “in his sleep,” as Staley puts it.

The Chargers staff has mined offenses like the Bills and Chiefs to find plays that only ultra-talented quarterbacks like Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, and Herbert can pull off. They’ve also folded in more concepts with deep, out-breaking routes to the field. It’s all part of the process that Staley envisioned when he asked Lombardi to join him in Los Angeles and try to create their own version of the QB paradise that has existed in New Orleans for so many years.

“There are branches to this house that we never had that we’re exploring, because, man, he can make throws that most mortals can’t,” Lombardi said.

---

Of all the lessons that McCown took from his time in New Orleans, one piece of advice has stuck with him the most. It’s a kernel of QB wisdom that he shares with his son and several other young quarterbacks that he’s coached over the years: “We don’t want you to be a robot,’” McCown said. “Robots are only programmed to do what they’re programmed to do. In a football game, quarterbacks have to adjust. Because it’s never how it was programmed.”

Over the past 15 years, the greatest strength of the New Orleans offense was the way it could adapt in real time — from game to game and moment to moment —based on what the defense presented.

Herbert says that his curriculum this offseason involved decades worth of Saints tape. Brees has stopped by Chargers practices multiple times in the past few months, and Herbert has tried to mine the wealth of systematic knowledge that resides in Brees’s brain. The most important lesson has been the way Brees could so naturally feel the game as it unfolded, as if the coverages and his responses had melded together.

“The way that he sees defenses, it’s to the point where he’s not even thinking,” Herbert said. “He’s just reacting. You can see it on film. When you watch it, it’s just, ‘OK, they’re doing this. This is what I’m gonna do.’ I think if any QB can get to that point, I think they’re set.”

Certain details about the offense will be different when filtered Herbert’s talents, but that goal — of the QB becoming one with the offense around him — is the same. By fostering a culture of honest communication and shaping the offense around Herbert’s strengths, the Chargers have tried to build a system that’s indistinguishable from the quarterback at its center.

“I think we’ve done a good job of truly creating an offense for him,” Staley said. “And one that he feels confident in each and every play. That’s what’s been fun. Because you can see it in the way he plays and how that ball comes off his hand, what his footwork and his rhythm and timing look like. I think there’s been some good signs here that would lead to believe he’s in a real comfort zone.”

[La Costa Boy]

he’s hoping TT will trade his 1st and 3rd to JAX to get TBilly back.

ONLY a first and a third for T "JeffersonAlworthJoiner" Billy???? I would throw in Bosa and Slater too................

I mean......we can't win without him............