For diehard Chargers fans in San Diego, football feels fun again.
Mr. Khaki Pants is coming to the rescue.
Yes, Jim Harbaugh is really doing this.
The new head coach’s introductory news conference comes Thursday in the Kroenke Dome, meaning that on the first day of February 2024, the long-sleepy NFL franchise will have returned to relevancy.
Because the Spanoses finally wised up, there’s hope anew for the masochists who invest time and emotion in this team.
“For once,” said former NFL executive Randy Mueller, “the Chargers were self -aware. They knew that they had hired three prior coaches and none of this had worked in the past. So, they had to get outside of their comfort zone.”
I wrote last month that if Dean Spanos and John Spanos were serious about winning, they needed to get over themselves and loosen their grips on money and power so they could land Harbaugh.
No way Harbaugh, 60, would’ve taken the Chargers’ job when Michigan was offering to retain him for about $12 million per year unless the Spanoses agreed to invest in the franchise’s infrastructure, in addition to paying Harbaugh three to five times what they’d paid the likes of Mike McCoy, Anthony Lynn and Brandon Staley.
Giving Harbaugh the funds to hire his preferred assistants had to figure into the deal, too, and already he’s hired a strength and conditioning coach much lauded by former NFL star J.J. Watt.
Although John Spanos remains president of football operations, Harbaugh’s wealth of big-time football experience will demand he has more say-so on personnel than any of his three predecessors hired since Dean elevated John into the football brain trust 11 years ago.
Count on this: Andy Reid and Sean Payton, coaches of the Chiefs and Broncos, would rather the Spanoses had stuck with Brandon Staley or replaced him with a fourth consecutive hire who’d never been a head coach at any level and could be fit into the Spanoses’ box.
“The hiring of Harbaugh puts the Chargers kind of on par with Kansas City, with Denver,” said Mueller, who GM’d the Saints, Dolphins and Seahawks and worked under the Spanoses from 2008 to 2018 as the Chargers’ senior executive of football operations.
“We’re talking about some legitimate coaches now who are developing players who are really heard and understood from a league standpoint,” Mueller added on The Athletic Football Show. “Harbaugh now gives the Chargers a chance to compete against those top-line coaches. There’s no training needed, there’s no period of adjustment needed. Harbaugh’s been there, done that. He kind of fits with those two guys in the AFC West.”
It should be a welcomed reality check for the true “Bolt Up!” believers in San Diego who’d been deluding themselves that their team could win a Super Bowl in the 11 years since Dean promoted John into power.
Though the franchise’s extraordinary good luck at QB ensured the Chargers could flirt with playoff contention in most years, come to find the Spanoses were skimping on infrastructure in addition to not hiring very impressive coaches.
Not that it was surprising to find out, but two former coaches spilled a few beans.
Mike McCoy, who assembled a terrific offensive staff and led his first Chargers team to a wild-card spot and a road victory, told me on the record after ing the Broncos in 2017 that Denver’s analytical of the coaching staff was eye-opening in comparison with what the final four San Diego teams received.
McCoy’s successor, Anthony Lynn, who led his second Bolts team to a 12-4 record and a road playoff victory, in addition to recommending a Texas Tech QB named Patrick Mahomes, made a similar comment about Chargers infrastructure after ing the 49ers as an assistant coach.
“This organization will do whatever it takes to win it,” Lynn told the Los Angeles Times last January. “Resources out the (ears). That was different for me compared to what I was going through in L.A. So it’s just like, man, this is what it’s supposed to be like.”
The thousands of true believers in San Diego don’t have to kid themselves anymore.
The Spanoses have to be relieved, too.
Harbaugh can present his square jaw and winning pedigree to the football world. Dean and John, the latter an amiable man with a background in scouting, can bask in having hired him. They can brag about the L.A. money making it more possible, thus somewhat complimenting the Spanos family for taking the NFL up on its offer to relocate the franchise.
“This does take some pressure off those in the Charger building for (previously) hiring first-time coaches who probably knew less than them,” said Mueller.
“Now, they’ve been able to say, ‘OK, maybe we need some help here.’ And they’ve hired someone with some skins on the wall.”
Mueller attached a caveat, saying the Spanoses will need to “continue to open the purse strings and keep those somewhat loose, which allows them to stretch the (salary) cap a little bit…which hopefully means more depth.”
Some football evaluations don’t require deep thinking.
Having gone from Brandon Staley to Jim Harbaugh, while also receiving the fifth pick in all seven rounds of the next draft and a last-place schedule in 2024, the Chargers should improve upon last year’s 5-12 record.
No one should be surprised if Harbaugh’s first team contends for the franchise’s first AFC West title since Norv Turner’s third squad, in 2009, parlayed the AFC’s weakest schedule (per Football-Reference.com) into the title.
The “JH trio” of Jim Harbaugh, Justin Herbert and new GM Joe Hortiz spells better times for a too-comfortable franchise that was no closer to winning a Super Bowl than the FBI was to finding Jimmy Hoffa.
