The San Diegans who cheer against the Los Angeles Chargers haven\u2019t been burned yet.<\/p>\n
L.A. owns no AFC West titles or divisional-round victories from its nine seasons since the club\u2019s relocation from San Diego into the country\u2019s No. 2 media market.<\/p>\n
Delighting the San Diegans who wouldn\u2019t be able to stomach Roger Goodell handing Dean Spanos a Super Bowl trophy, L.A. has tasted four brutal defeats in the playoffs and missed five cuts, while also seeing the Los Angeles Rams win a Super Bowl inside the Kroenke Dome.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Judases always choke in the end,\u201d one former San Diego Chargers fan emailed me last month, after Los Angeles trained at the University of San Diego before a supportive crowd.<\/p>\n
This year, L.A.\u2019s trophy pursuit looks more capable than any of its others thanks to the addition of a 5-foot-9, 175-pound assistant coach who drew San Diegans\u2019 cheers last month.<\/p>\n
Mike McDaniel, one of the NFL\u2019s brighter offensive coaches, inspires confidence that, beginning with next Sunday\u2019s season opener against Arizona, L.A. will build upon its two-year foundation put down under head coach Jim Harbaugh, the team\u2019s first coach since Norv Turner in 2009 to reach consecutive postseasons.<\/p>\n
The logic goes like this:<\/p>\n
Due to McDaniel\u2019s expertise as a teacher, designer and playcaller and the return to health of tackle Joe Alt and running back Omarion Hampton, an L.A. offense quarterbacked by Justin Herbert, 28, will handle tougher challenges much better than Bolts units that flopped in first-round playoff losses the past two winters.<\/p>\n
After all, with McDaniel earning high grades as an assistant under offensive guru Kyle Shanahan, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan had an MVP season in leading Atlanta to a Super Bowl; and Jimmy Garoppolo, bolstered by a ground game coordinated by McDaniel, took the 49ers to a Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
Considering also that McDaniel helped to revive the career of accurate but physically fragile Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa in his four-year run as Miami\u2019s head coach and playcaller, before his dismissal in January, the powerful-and-accurate Herbert ought to thrive in McDaniel\u2019s creative quick-pass game married to a well-disguised, versatile ground attack.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll put a San Diego spin on the McDaniel hire while also noting that the L.A. Chargers don\u2019t feel to me like an extension of the San Diego Chargers.<\/p>\n
McDaniel stands as the most interesting offensive coordinator to debut with the franchise since Bill Walsh took over San Diego\u2019s offense in 1976 under Tommy Prothro and Joe Gibbs arrived three years later under Don Coryell.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d McDaniel dead-panned when Hall of Famers Walsh and Gibbs were mentioned in early August, before the Chargers\u2019 final session at USD.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust kidding,\u201d added the coach, whose sense of humor is a strength.<\/p>\n
In Walsh\u2019s lone year in San Diego, fourth-year quarterback Dan Fouts improved in all major categories, while the offense jumped from 26th to 19th in points.<\/p>\n
Walsh was 38 when the Chargers hired him off Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown\u2019s staff with the Bengals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was aware that he coached for the Chargers in the \u201970s, which fired me up as well in my job search,\u201d said McDaniel, whose Dolphins had a .515 win rate and two playoff losses as an underdog.<\/p>\n
McDaniel traced core elements of his precise pass game, meant to get the ball out of Herbert\u2019s hands fast and trigger big gains after the catch, to Walsh-coached units.<\/p>\n
\u201cIronically, much of what I\u2019ve been talking about the whole offseason \u2013 timing and pass game and the depth of routes being tied to the quarterback\u2019s drops \u2013 that is the starting point principle of what Bill Walsh really did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, the West Coast offense as it\u2019s referred to when you\u2019re referencing Bill Walsh, that\u2019s what it is. My direct connection to him and his teaching was through Mike Shanahan. But (Walsh) set the vision of how I try to create pass game across the board. It\u2019s gigantic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under Gibbs, the Chargers finished second and fourth in points scored for AFC West winners in 1979 and1980 before crashing out of each postseason as a favorite.<\/p>\n
At 44, Gibbs was a year older than McDaniel, 43, in his San Diego arrival following a one-year run as Tampa Bay\u2019s coordinator.<\/p>\n
McDaniel studied Washington\u2019s famed \u201cHogs\u201d \u2014 the blockers who powered 1990s offenses under Gibbs, who in the mid-1960s coached San Diego State\u2019s offensive lines under Coryell.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the principles the Hogs used in terms of attacking the line of scrimmage and playing physical are things that are very much intertwined into my run game beliefs,\u201d McDaniel said. \u201cWhat they were doing was, running plays that the defense knew what was coming. They still couldn\u2019t stop it. That level of execution, of technique and fundamentals is the bedrock, really, of what I believe in and line of scrimmage football play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Individually and as a tandem, Harbaugh and McDaniel look capable of guiding L.A.\u2019s AFC team to new heights.<\/p>\n
Harbaugh, a former NFL quarterback and the son of a longtime coach, excels at building up physicality and toughness throughout the team, an area where the Chargers have improved in his two seasons.<\/p>\n
McDaniel said attention to fundamentals and technique anchor his approach, but he may be best known for his creativity.<\/p>\n
\u201cMike is creating new ways to do the actual plays,\u201d veteran NFL guard-tackle and San Diego State alum Daniel Brunskill, who played under McDaniel last year, told ESPN last fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are going to steal from him because he\u2019s actually creating new things that have never been done before.\u201d<\/p>\n
McDaniel earned a history degree at Yale, where he played wide receiver.<\/p>\n
He worked under Super Bowl-winning head coaches Mike Shanahan and Gary Kubiak who, along with McDaniel\u2019s longtime mentor Kyle Shanahan and his former Washington colleague Sean McVay, favored an offensive system that continues to enjoy widespread NFL success.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s so intelligent,\u201d Harbaugh told the Rich Eisen show this week. \u201cBook smart, football smart, all the smarts. Street smart. And, kind of the mirror reflection of that is Justin Herbert in intelligence. It\u2019s such a great fit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knowing that McDaniel will attract job offers if he succeeds, the Chargers may not be able to count on employing him for a long time.<\/p>\n
Walsh and Gibbs weren\u2019t long for the job, leaving for head-coach positions with Stanford and the NFL\u2019s Washington club, just one year and two years after moving to San Diego. Each coach went on to win three Super Bowls as a head coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you saying you\u2019re seeing a pattern?\u201d cracked McDaniel, standing in USD\u2019s west end zone before a practice. \u201cBecause I\u2019d be lying if I didn\u2019t think about that once or twice before you just said that.\u201d<\/p>\n
If McDaniel\u2019s offense overcomes the Chargering bug, the job offers will be too numerous to count.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Diegans who cheer against the Los Angeles Chargers haven\u2019t been burned yet. L.A. owns no AFC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1333,752,74,76,75,127],"class_list":["post-455003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-los-angeles-chargers","tag-nfl","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}