After firing Brandon Staley and Tom Telesco, what's next for the Chargers?
The Chargers have cleaned house. How will they go about filling it up again?
By firing both coach Brandon Staley and G.M. Tom Telesco, the Chargers have given themselves a clean slate. They can go in any direction they want.
They can hire a coach who runs the show, a G.M. who hires the coach, or a coach/G.M. partnership. It gives the Chargers maximum flexibility.
So what will they do? Some teams have a habit of hiring a coach who is the exact opposite of his predecessor. Under that approach, the Chargers would look for an offensive-minded, old-school, non-analytics-obsessed, big-personality candidate, with prior head-coaching experience.
Jim Harbaugh becomes the most obvious name, for now. Last year, he was eyeing the Chargers job, we heard at the time. This year, he could be looking seriously at a return to the NFL.
He instantly turned around the 49ers in 2011, getting the most out of a former first-round quarterback who had dealt with a revolving door of offensive coordinators. The Chargers need someone who will become joined at the hip with Justin Herbert, who can get the most out of him, and who won't leave if/when things go well.
Hiring a defensive coach would set the stage for the offensive coordinator, if it all works, to become a head coach elsewhere. At this point, they need someone who will combine with Herbert and stay for a decade or longer, ideally.
Herbert's presence makes the job far more attractive than it otherwise would be. Even with Herbert, there are issues. How much money will the team pay? How much other money will be invested in overhauling the operations?
The Chargers, for example, seem to have way too many injuries. They need a top-to-bottom assessment and potential reconfiguration of their training, rehab, and nutrition program. Things like that are not cheap.
Cheap won't get it done, for any NFL team. Will Dean Spanos spend competitively on a new coach and new front office? That will go a long way toward determining whether the Chargers can truly turn things around.
