There were moments during the 2014 season when the Chargers offense looked like one of the best in the NFL. There were other moments during the year when the Bolts looked like they needed a GPS to find the end zone.
Inconsistency is probably the number one complaint Chargers fans had with the play calling of first-year offensive coordinator Frank Reich (with lack of creativity a close second, but we can save that debate and Mike McCoy’s role for another day). So, it came as a bit of a surprise when Reich’s name popped up as a head coaching candidate in a couple of different NFL cities.
Reich interviewed with the Bills and Jets, but it’s looking like he’ll be back in San Diego for 2015. Buffalo has chosen former Jets head coach Rex Ryan to take over and New York is said to be drooling over Seahawks defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, who will be courted by several teams once the Seahawks playoff run is over.
I’m not exactly sure why the Bills would want to bring in a guy like Ryan. He’s always been a tremendous defensive coach but struggled with sub-par quarterbacks. Buffalo has a top-10 defense but had to bench inconsistent quarterback E.J. Manuel and will look to free agency or the Draft to find a permanent QB. Heck, at this point Reich would be a better option for the Bills to play quarterback.
Now, let’s address the impact of Frank staying put. Despite some truly head-scratching decisions (Donald Brown up the middle on 4th & 1 in Kansas City?) I think he did a nice job.
The Chargers played seven of the top-10 scoring defenses in the NFL, which accounted for eight games (they got the second-ranked Chiefs twice). They hung 30 points on Seattle (#1), 34 on Baltimore (#6) and 31 on San Francisco (#10). In each of those games Reich put either put together a fantastic game plan or made the proper adjustments to make a second-half run.
However, the Bolts offense looked borderline inept against the Dolphins and only scored one touchdown in games against the Raiders (who had the worst scoring defense in the league), Patriots, Broncos and Chiefs.
If they’re good enough to drop 30 on the Seahawks (the only other team to do that was the Cowboys), you’d figure they should be good enough to get a few more points against everyone else.
The complaint that Reich and McCoy got overly conservative is valid, but so is the reason they did so. Philip Rivers was hurt behind a porous offensive line that was decimated by injuries. Ryan Mathews and Danny Woodhead were not there to make the running game go, so opposing defenses knew they could just focus on the pass rush. Reich’s focus then switched to giving his quarterback as much protection as possible so he has time to get the ball off.
That means keeping extra guys in to pick up rushers. The problem there is, it puts fewer targets on the field and makes it easier for the secondary to cover them all. So, once the snowball started rolling, it was extremely difficult to stop.
The bottom line is, if Reich ends up returning for next season, and it would take a giant surprise for him not to, he showed enough to give Bolts fans hope that he can make the offense go again. Now it’s on General Manager Tom Telesco to find offensive linemen and a running back who can stay healthy enough to let Frank call a game the way he wants to call it.
