San Deigo Chargers

San Diego Chargers May Have Failed in 2010, But it Shouldn't Carry ...

The San Diego Chargers were an enigma in 2010: a team with enough potential to win a Super Bowl, yet somehow, they found a way to lose seven games and miss the playoffs. They led the league in Net Yards per Pass on both offense and defense last year, normally a pretty good indicator of a leading Super Bowl contender. Yet they lost five of their first seven games, and when they needed wins against non-playoff teams later in the season (Oakland, Cincinnati), they were blown out.

The biggest culprit was a historically-inept special teams unit. Each of the first three losses, all by a single score, featured at least one special teams touchdown allowed. They also lost a game against New England in which they doubled the Patriots in total offensive yards, but had things like a lateral/fumble that wasn’t picked up by the offense and returned by the Pats, and a game-tying field goal miss.

When they won, they often won big, winning 6 of their 9 games by more than three touchdowns. As a result, despite a record of 9-7, they outscored their opponents on the season by 119 points.

I am bullish on the Chargers entering the 2011 season (well, as bullish as I can be while still not trusting Norv Turner) and think the special teams issue–which they focused on heavily in the draft–can be resolved, while the offense can be just as good with Philip Rivers. The receiving group had lots of missed time, including Antonio Gates missing 6 games, Vincent Jackson missing time due to the holdout/suspension, and Malcolm Floyd and Patrick Crayton getting hurt. Ryan Mathews was a rookie last year at running back, and battled lingering ankle injuries all season. If health improves, and they don’t take too much of a net loss once free agency begins, they could be an elite unit.

BUT . . . BUT . . . there’s that big question of how they couldn’t win games when it was on the line in 2010, and how that translates going forward. I’m a big believer in looking at point differentials going forward (and more detailed things like rate stats and play by play performance), but perhaps the teams that put up gaudy point differentials but lost more games had some flaw that continued to manifest itself.

I looked at all teams in the 16-game era that had a season point differential within 20 of the Chargers (+99 to +139) and then recorded how many wins they had, and how they did the following season. As you might imagine, the Chargers are toward the bottom of the win scale; only 7 other teams since 1978 had a point differential in this range and failed to win at least 10 games. Interestingly, the 2010 Atlanta Falcons are also on the list, and were kind of the anti-Chargers, a team that won close games in the regular season and was considered “clutch.

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