Brandon Staley and Tom Telesco fired by Chargers, but problems of Broncos’ AFC West rivals go deeper than coaching, personnel

Brandon Staley isn’t the only coach to squander a top-shelf quarterback with the Chargers. He’s just the latest.

From San Diego to Los Angeles, through the eras of Dan Fouts, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers and now Justin Herbert, a common thread needles though Chargers history: a failure to capitalize on having a terrific player at the game’s most important position.

The franchise has just one Super Bowl appearance, and it came with none of those quarterbacks — rather, with gritty Stan Humphries, who guided a team with a playmaking defense and a penchant for clutch moments to Super Bowl XXIX. And every few years, it turns over its head coach.

Meanwhile, since 1984, ownership by the Spanos family remains a constant — first by family patriarch Alex, and then on to son Dean. And the Chargers’ staff is dotted with Spanoses.

In the NFL’s second-largest market, the Chargers are a mom-and-pop shop.

Brandon Staley, a former Broncos outside-linebackers coach who worked under Vic Fangio in 2019, became the latest casualty of this legacy of failure.

The Chargers sacked him Friday, hours after a 63-21 shellacking at the hands of the Las Vegas Raiders that, in some ways, might have been more embarrassing than the 70-20 humbling the Broncos received at the hands of the Miami Dolphins in September.

The Chargers also fired general manager Tom Telesco, who’d been on the job so long that Staley was his third ex-Broncos assistant to work under him as a head coach, along with Mike McCoy and Anthony Lynn.

And that’s the thing. The Bolts’ malady is bigger than the coach or GM.

After the loss to the Raiders, Staley acknowledged that he didn’t know if he would still be the Chargers’ coach. But he believed he deserved to remain in the position.

Alas for the embattled Staley and the long-serving Telesco, Chargers ownership — equally embattled — decided otherwise.

WHAT’S NEXT AFTER BRANDON STALEY?

Thursday night represented just one game — and it was played without Herbert, who fractured his index finger last Sunday against the Broncos, ending his season.

But it also showed the depth of the Chargers’ issues — and just how profound Herbert’s impact is. It became obvious that the fourth-year quarterback is the pole keeping the Chargers’ tent from total collapse.

Since Herbert departed last Sunday’s game at SoFi Stadium, the Chargers have been outscored 80-28 over six-plus quarters. A scoop-and-score touchdown off of a strip sack by Ja’Quan McMillian was erased by instant replay; otherwise, that ledger would be even more lopsided.

Without Herbert, the Chargers’ roster issues are laid bare. That — along with the team’s long track record of underachievement under Spanos family ownership, which is in its 40th season — is enough to give plenty of candidates pause, even with Herbert signed to a long-term contract.

The Chargers have officially squandered four years of cost control for Herbert. From those seasons, they have a single playoff appearance — without a win — to show for it. In future years, Herbert’s cap figure rises as part of his 5-year extension that is worth up to $262.5 million. His cap charge will rise over $37 million in 2025 and soars from there; this year, it was $8.457 million.

So, the business of building a team around Herbert — a business at which the Chargers failed in the last four years — grows more difficult now.

That might make it difficult for the Chargers to entice the type of coach they want.

Broncos coach Sean Payton has spoken in the past about the “triangle” between the head coach, general manager and ownership. This was one of the aspects that drew him to Denver; there is every scintilla of evidence that the Walton-Penner group provides the ample support needed for success.

It’s something that a new Chargers coach may not have under Spanos family stewardship — and could ensure the Broncos continue having an upper hand in this AFC West rivalry, despite the presence of Herbert in Southern California.

Even with the Broncos struggling in recent years, they could still rely on holding their own against the Chargers. Denver hasn’t been swept by the Bolts since 2010 and has won six of the last nine games in the series.

The coach will change in Los Angeles. So will the GM.

But as long as ownership persists, results should remain the same, much to the Broncos’ delight.