RP Clips: Someone Forgot to Plug in the Chargers

Matt Harmon (0:00)

This is Reception Perception, The Show. James Koh and Matt Harmon.

James Koh (0:06)

No question, the biggest storyline, one of the biggest storylines from week number one was the absolute implosion of the Chargers. There's so many, you know, horror stories of like, you know, Circus Survivor Pool, a record number of entries being lost. It was just, it was insane. Like there was nobody that was picking the Cardinals. The Cardinals are supposed to be one of the worst teams in the NFL. There was a crazy amount of hype in regards to Justin Herbert and Mike McDaniel and the entire offense. And I'm going to be honest with you, man, 14 points against that Cardinals defense. That's embarrassing. That's a joke. That was an absolutely disgusting performance overall. It's gotten to the point where now we're even breaking down and guys are arguing online. Former offensive linemen are arguing online with people about protection schemes and protection responsibility. It's just, it was a complete top-down, embarrassing performance by the Chargers.

And there's really just no getting around it. You know, it was bad. Like, look, I'm expecting Arizona to score points. That's fine.

But for the Chargers to score 14 against that Arizona defense, with Mike McDaniel as your OC., lie or truth, Mike McDaniel's, the hype was just that, hype.

Matt Harmon (1:30)

Oh, man, this is so, so, so, so discouraging. I watched this game basically every snap of it on Sunday, and they got, they got killed, man. I mean, it was rushed. It was embarrassing what happened to the Chargers on Sunday. It was truly embarrassing. Look, I say this as the Cardinals' curious guy. I've been beaten that, hey, the Cardinals are not as bad as you think. I've been beaten that drum for a minute now, but I still picked the Chargers to crush them in week one.

I thought this would be a big win by the Chargers. I think they generally have their way. I was super wrong about that. And there's a lot of things to consider here about this Chargers, about what happened with the Chargers. I think the one sort of, you know, maybe excuse making that people might call this, but I do think it was a real variable and I felt it watching the game. This was the stats, the Trevor Sikama pointed this out, looking to what went wrong for the Chargers. And when McConkie went off, things fell, went out, things fell off a cliff. With McConkie on the field, 8.9 yards per pass play, off at 3.9 yards per pass play. 0.12 EPA per play with him, 0.61 at negative EPA per play without him. Huge, huge difference. And it felt like that once McConkie went out of the game, they had nothing. They had nothing in the passing game. And that speaks to the volatility of Quinton Johnson. And I think the fact that Trey Harris and some of these guys are like interesting pieces, but nobody's ready to be a starting receiver. It's pretty lad centric. And it felt like the first three completions that Justin Herbert had in this offense were all explosive pass plays to lad McConkie. It looked awesome. It looked awesome. He looked awesome. And then the play that he gets hurt, it's kind of what I've said. I fear about lad McConkie is that he just doesn't have the body to hold up.

It's definitely a pass that's high and he has to adjust for it, but he gets pinned over the middle of the field and then he exits. That's bad, but it wasn't great even before McConkie was there. You know, like the run game was hit and miss. The protection rules, as you mentioned, were a mess. You know, as Herbert missing assignments, the interior offensive line didn't look good regardless. They're doing this weird like left guard rotation thing.

That doesn't make any sense to me. I've seen some talk that it's like, well, one guy's in there for man gap and one guy's in there for zone. I'm like, well, that seems like a massive tell to the defense, doesn't it? Yeah, I don't know if that's going to change things necessarily. Oh yeah, it's a gap run. So we're like, okay, but still you don't want to, football is a game of deception and it seems like you're dipping something off there by that. So about as discouraging as you possibly could get debut for the Chargers here.

James Koh (4:17)

Okay, so a couple of thoughts here. One, I was very surprised given their wide receiver talent pool that they went. Okay, so they went 11% of 41% of the time according to Sumer Sports, right? But they went double running back 30% of the time, right? So 21 or 22 personnel.