2021 Official Chargers Season Discusssion

[MagicMamba88]

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[Maniaque 6]

Here's the front of the Bills stadium

[Xenos]

A Bengals writer takes a look at the different ways both teams (Bengals and Chargers) constructed their roster to protect their respective QBs.
https://theathletic.com/2570534/2021...ung-qbs-needs/

If you’re a Bengals fan, you’ve undoubtedly spent time searching for or at least wondering about alternate realities. Maybe one in which Paul Brown chooses Bill Walsh and not Tiger Johnson as his successor in 1976, or one in which Joe Montana’s pass intended for John Taylor gets tipped into the hands of a Cincinnati defensive player in January of ’89.

Who among us following this often tortured franchise hasn’t thought of a parallel football universe where Dan Wilkinson and Ki-Jana Carter actually play like top overall draft picks, where Carson Palmer plays an entire game against Pittsburgh, or where Jeremy Hill hangs on to the damn football?

What if I told you that there actually is an alternate reality from the Cincinnati Bengals? No, I can’t guide you to a place where championship flags are draped all over a livelier version of Paul Brown Stadium, but I can point you toward a place where an NFL franchise possesses a major striking similarity, yet exists in a reality that is, at least for the time being, vastly different.

I’m referring to Los Angeles.

Even if the locals don’t seem to care all that much, L.A. is home to an NFL franchise that has a promising young quarterback whose first season was spent playing behind a garbage offensive line. This is an offseason driven by the urgency to capitalize now on having the game’s most prized asset, which is a high-ceiling quarterback whose rookie contract doesn’t occupy much cap space.

With Justin Herbert entering Year 2, the Chargers aren’t dissimilar from the Bengals with Joe Burrow. Both have burgeoning stars behind center whose rookie seasons were encouraging, but were spent playing behind crummy offensive lines. Herbert was the 2020 AP NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, after starting 15 games and finishing his first season with a flourish that included four consecutive victories and eight touchdown passes against just one interception.

Burrow’s rookie season was cut short after just 10 starts, with perhaps the defining images of his and the Bengals’ 2020 being him carted off after suffering a devastating knee injury in Washington. Even before that brutal moment, anyone who’d watched Burrow continually drop back behind such a hole-filled offensive line understood that a priority had to be finding him better protection.

Only three of the 36 NFL quarterbacks who attempted at least 200 passes in 2020 had less time in the pocket per snap than Burrow, whose average pocket time per attempt was 2.3 seconds. Of the top 15 most-sacked quarterbacks last season, only Burrow and Jacksonville’s Gardner Minshew started fewer than 12 games, which suggests that had Burrow been on the field for the entire season, no quarterback would have taken more sacks.

Herbert’s 32 rookie-season sacks were as many as Burrow, but only one quarterback took more hits in 2020 and none had a higher total of hurries, hits and sacks. The bill came due for years of Los Angeles not prioritizing the offensive line in the draft. It resulted in a unit that failed to keep Herbert clean while ranked last in Pro Football Focus’ final 2020 O-line rankings, two spots behind the Bengals.

The turning of the calendar to 2021 is where the realities of the two franchises have started to diverge, creating one of the league’s more interesting dynamics. The Bengals and Chargers entered the offseason dealing with similar situations but have since taken different approaches in how they’ve handled them.

Los Angeles has gone big, bold and expensive while spending the past few months giving their offensive line a massive overhaul. The Chargers signed Corey Linsley, Matt Feiler and Oday Aboushi in free agency. Linsley has long been a reliable presence on Green Bay’s offensive line, finishing 2020 as the highest graded at his position, according to PFF. It earned the former Buckeye a contract with L.A. that briefly made him the league’s highest-paid center.

Feiler, desired by some Bengals as a fallback option once the Joe Thuney pipe dream didn’t materialize, was given a $21 million deal by the Chargers after playing guard and tackle in Pittsburgh. Aboushi has had a nomadic career, but he did play his highest number of snaps in six seasons, earning a 2020 PFF grade that easily put him among the top half of qualified players at right guard.

The Chargers’ willingness to invest in their offensive line didn’t preclude them from continuing to make it a draft priority, using the 13th overall pick on Northwestern tackle Rashawn Slater, ranked by most evaluators as the second-best lineman in the draft behind Penei Sewell. Slater has a background that suggests he’ll be capable of starting immediately — he earned a PFF grade of 90 in a final college season that included a standout performance against Ohio State’s Chase Young. Even if a built-in learning curve is expected for a rookie who didn’t play college ball last season, his selection rounds out sweeping change on the Los Angeles offensive line. Depending on what the Chargers’ plan is with Aboushi, it could result in four new starters from last season’s brutally bad offensive line. Regardless of whether their offseason work pays off in Herbert being pressured and hit less frequently, the front office’s plan for his second season could not be less ambiguous: protect the franchise at all costs.

In Cincinnati, the plan with the offensive line hasn’t been quite as ambitious, and the plan to protect the franchise’s most important asset hasn’t been limited to acquiring large men to keep defenders away from him. For all of the early winter Joe Thuney hysteria, his free-agent contract with Kansas City was accompanied by the usual reminders of what the Bengals are and aren’t willing to spend on a position that they’ve historically placed less value on than others. For anyone who watched the interior of the Bengals’ offensive line flounder around in 2020, it is remarkable that the lone lineman acquired in free agency is a player who’s played exactly zero of his over 8,000 NFL snaps at guard.

In Riley Reiff, the Bengals have replaced Bobby Hart with a better player. But given the intensity with which we spent the latter part of the 2020 season discussing possible changes on the offensive line, it does seem a little weird that the only established player brought in to block for Burrow is a 32-year-old tackle on essentially a one-year contract.

The Bengals were active in free agency, shuffling things on the defensive line and secondary enough to create one of the bigger one-year defensive overhauls in franchise history while simultaneously shifting the conversation about bolstering the O-line toward the draft.

But by the time the draft arrived, that conversation had changed too. Months ago, anyone wagering on what direction the Bengals would go in the first round would have put their money on an offensive lineman being taken with the fifth pick. But as the exhausting pre-draft process unfolded, dominated by months’ worth of “Team Sewell” versus “Team Chase” debates, what seemed unlikely in January eventually turned into an April near-inevitability. By the time the draft arrived, no one was surprised when the Bengals took receiver Ja’Marr Chase.

Of course, the offensive line wasn’t ignored in the draft. The Bengals selected three linemen between the second and sixth rounds, including Clemson’s Jackson Carman, who was taken in Round 2 after trading down to the 46th pick. Still, given the ways in which the O-line has been such a major talking point for years, it’s striking how comparatively little work was done to retool the team’s biggest weakness. The Bengals’ plan is an interesting contrast to the one being unfurled by a team 2,000 miles west.

The Chargers have spent the offseason loading up on linemen at the expense of their skill positions. During the same time frame in which they spent tens of millions on the offensive line, they turned down the chance to use the franchise tag on tight end Hunter Henry. He bolted for New England in free agency, and L.A. replaced him with an older player in free-agent tight end Jared Cook.

The Chargers signed no other skill players in free agency, not an insignificant development given both the depth of wide receivers available and the fact that despite Keenan Allen and Mike Williams being a productive duo, the L.A. wide receiver corps last season lacked speed. They did select a wideout in the draft, grabbing Tennessee’s Josh Palmer in the third round, but the Slater pick combined with the infusion of experience added to the line in free agency provides a clear picture of what the plan is heading into Herbert’s second season.

Burrow’s second season is being approached differently. The plan in Cincinnati has been to make incremental improvements on the O-line that neither necessitated massive amounts of dollars being spent or a total overhaul of the unit. But the Bengals added a quality wide receiver to be a game-breaking threat who can give their offense the explosive element it’s lacked for years. The idea is Chase will allow Burrow’s passing targets to gain quicker separation, enabling him to make more immediate reads and get rid of the football quickly and decisively.

It’s a plan we’ve seen work here before. For all of the credit the Bengals offensive line deserved during Cincinnati’s 12-4 2015, the success of that season’s offense was driven by Andy Dalton being equipped with as good of a collection of targets as he’s ever had. With an in-his-prime A.J. Green being complemented by Marvin Jones (who missed all of the prior season), Mohamed Sanu, Tyler Eifert (who missed all but one half of one game the previous year), and a 1,200-yards-from-scrimmage Giovani Bernard, Dalton was able to take advantage of his improved ability to throw the ball quickly by having teammates getting open almost immediately after the snap. The result was Dalton’s best season, even considering the season-ending injury he suffered in Week 14.

It was also the most recent winning Bengals season, and while there are a billion contributing factors to a half-decade’s worth of losing, the dropoff at the skill spots has been a major reason. Jones and Sanu bailed in free agency after 2015, Eifert was continually limited by injuries, and the health issues that plagued the final years of Green’s stellar Cincinnati run started becoming near-annual issues in 2016. Yes, the offensive line devolved into a total mess, and there has been no shortage of issues on defense either, but what the Bengals have lacked as much as anything since their last playoff year are the kind of weapons that can amplify a quarterback’s skills.

Burrow is more skilled than Dalton. So is Herbert. And the contrasting approaches their respective teams have taken to try to build around him provide an interesting NFL subplot. It’s not that one team got it wrong and the other nailed it. There’s a decent chance the Bengals and Chargers ascend quickly and spend years as perennial contenders being led by bona fide franchise quarterbacks. There is no one way to build a winning NFL franchise.

But it will be fascinating to follow both franchises, and if one ends up being far more successful than the other, fans of the team that didn’t get it right will have an alternate reality to agonize over.

[like54ninjas]

I get Homeritus every year around this time just so you know, but I have a feeling this year might be very different! At least the following article shares my view somewhat about how this Chargers team might become the new and upcoming team..

The Athletic - 9th (subscription required)

"If you have an agnostic football fan in your life who has been waiting to find the right team to root for, it might be a good time to suggest jumping on the Chargers bandwagon. Home games in southern California. Great uniforms. And Justin Herbert, one of the league's most fun quarterbacks to watch. Los Angeles is a legit Super Bowl sleeper.

"The Chargers made the wise decision to reshape their offensive line — four new projected starters — after finishing 31st in pass-block win rate last season. They had the fourth-most injured defense with Derwin James missing the entire season and Joey Bosa playing just 53 percent of the snaps. And the coaching staff was a disaster with game management. The pieces are in place for Herbert to develop into a star and the defense to be a top-10 unit. That means a high ceiling for the Chargers."

I usually own the kool-aid stand every season. This year I’ve doubled up on my supply!

[DragonIce]

I usually own the kool-aid stand every season. This year I’ve doubled up on my supply!

Sensible thinking to buy Charger stock now. Such a keen mind will soon be embracing PFF. opcorn:

[dmac_bolt]

Four new starters, are all of these guys counting Bulaga as a returning starter? Because I don’t think I have ever seen him play before ...

[MagicMamba88]

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[Bolt4Knob]

I usually own the kool-aid stand every season. This year I’ve doubled up on my supply!

I usually have the glass over half full too and many times - I was seriously wrong
I am optimistic but as I also have been saying for too many years now "how will the OLine do?"

That and special teams. Both need to be improved. And not a little - middle of the NFL type levels

[like54ninjas]

I usually have the glass over half full too and many times - I was seriously wrong
I am optimistic but as I also have been saying for too many years now "how will the OLine do?"

That and special teams. Both need to be improved. And not a little - middle of the NFL type levels

I am good with the personnel/talent acquisitions this offseason in both those phases.
The draft gave us at least 6 more ST candidates.

[Bolt Dude]

I usually own the kool-aid stand every season. This year I’ve doubled up on my supply!

IMV the thing that makes it different this year is the emphasis on OL. I’ve been harping on that for years and years and finally it’s been addressed.


And BTW, Herbert looks like the 6th Beatle.

[like54ninjas]

IMV the thing that makes it different this year is the emphasis on OL. I’ve been harping on that for years and years and finally it’s been addressed.


And BTW, Herbert looks like the 6th Beatle.

Buzz cut to mop top to golden locks by TC?

[Bolt Dude]

Buzz cut to mop top to golden locks by TC?

I think he should go with the wooky white boy dreads like Meinerz.