COSTA MESA — We won’t dwell on the events of Jan. 14 in Jacksonville, when the Chargers’ first playoff appearance in four years turned into a disaster. But let’s just say that the experience left behind an attitude.
“It put a little chip on our shoulder,” wide receiver Keenan Allen said. “It made everybody hungry.”
Understand, everybody in the NFL feels that hunger. The way it works is one team wins the Super Bowl and everyone else ends the season envious. (Even more so when the champ is in your division, as Kansas City is.) And whether there are expectations you place on yourself, or expectations others bestow upon you, the message is the same: Win, or else.
So the Chargers, who finish their preseason schedule Friday night in Santa Clara against the 49ers, are two weeks away from beginning a season where expectations are maybe as high as they’ve been since the franchise moved from San Diego to L.A. in 2017.
Quarterback Justin Herbert is armed with a new contract and increasing recognition as one of the game’s best young talents. The skill players around him provide enough weapons that the Chargers should score plenty of points. The defense is studded with stars: Derwin James Jr., Joey Bosa, Khalil Mack and newcomer Eric Kendricks among them.
The major questions coming out of camp seem to be who the kicker will be, Dustin Hopkins or Cameron Dicker. Or whether the backup to Austin Ekeler will be Joshua Kelley, Isaiah Spiller or Elijah Dotson.
But back to that attitude: Over Herbert’s three previous seasons in the Chargers’ shade of blue, encompassing Anthony Lynn’s final season as head coach and Brandon Staley’s first two, his team has evolved from one that wanted to win to one that thinks it can win to one that expects to win.
“I think that’s fair to say,” Staley said this week. “I think from the beginning our expectations were to win every game that we play. I don’t think our expectations have changed at all since we’ve been here. I think the belief since we’ve gotten here has grown.
“I think we established that belief in my first season, but I think it’s just grown and grown each and every day that we’ve been together.”
But there are those end-of-season mishaps …
In Staley’s first season, the Chargers missed the playoffs on the final night of the season, a 35-32 overtime loss in Las Vegas decided on Daniel Carlson’s 47-yard field goal as time expired in overtime, when a tie would have put the Chargers in the postseason. Staley, who became quickly noted for his aggressive play-calling, especially on fourth down, was second-guessed in the aftermath, but a leaky defense was just as much a culprit.
The defense let the Chargers down at the worst possible moment again in January. They led 27-0 at halftime of the wild-card round in Jacksonville, forcing five turnovers, and then spit it all up in a 31-30 loss. Another last-second field goal, this one by Riley Patterson, ended a season, broke hearts, activated the second-guessers – some of whom were adamant that Staley not see a third season as head coach – and reminded anyone with a sense of the franchise’s history why the term “Chargering” is listed in the Urban Dictionary.
From adversity, you learn, true. But I’m sure everyone in the Chargers’ building wonders how long this learning is supposed to last.
The Chargers should score plenty. Herbert is already No. 2 in NFL history in passing yards per game (minimum 1,000 attempts) at 287.5 and holds records for completions, passing yards, combined touchdowns (running and passing) and 300-yard games among quarterbacks in their first three years in the league.
But the offense was only 13th in the league in points and eighth in total offense in 2022 though third in passing offense, which may help explain why Kellen Moore, rather than Joe Lombardi, is now the offensive coordinator.
Herbert’s influence and leadership have grown, as you might expect.
“He’s comfortable,” said Allen, who is beginning his 11th NFL season and segued from Philip Rivers to Herbert. “He’s hungrier. He understands what it is to be in this league, to be a professional now. He’s been on the downsides of the seasons, and I think he’s past that and he’s ready to go win.
“You can’t lead if you’re not – I don’t know. I guess comfortable is the word. You can’t lead if you’re not in a spot where you feel like you’re capable of being the best you can be. You got to kind of find it and go from there.”
On the other side of the ball, James told reporters last week that continuity would be the defensive unit’s strength.
“We’ve added a few pieces along the way, but the more that you play together, the more games you play and jell together, the more you practice together, the more that you see what you did wrong, you get in there and you fix it,” he said. “It’s very important. It’s that bond that people don’t understand that it takes to be able to communicate when you’re tired, in the fourth quarter, that I can trust that guy next to me because we’ve been through it.
“When you develop that, that’s what helps you go out there and play faster.”
The trick is for it all to be meaningful when the games matter most. Expecting to win is only part of the puzzle.