Brandon Staley got this feeling coming off the field, after watching the Chargers’ offense, Tuesday, and it was back again Wednesday. And even if, a few days later, he still couldn’t quite gather the words to fully explain that feeling in his gut, it was unmistakable.
It was about where his offense was and, maybe more so, about where it was going.
“I left the practice field of the last practice of minicamp saying that was the best throwing session that we’ve ever had since we’ve been here,” Staley said, over the phone from Chicago, on his second day of vacation. “It was the highest level, it was the highest quality of play, both sides of the ball, since I’ve been here. And there were a lot of reasons for it. We’ve got really good players. We’ve got guys that really believe in our culture and they’re going on Year 3 and all that. But it’s just, the level of play …
“The play-calling on both sides of the ball, the quality of the players, the belief system and how we’re doing everything, I left the field saying, .”
There was energy. There was tempo. There was aggressiveness.
There was everything Staley envisioned when a burgeoning relationship with, and a healthy respect for, Kellen Moore led to a conversation in January, and then the Chargers swooping in to pluck the offensive coordinator off the market days after he and the Cowboys parted ways.
There was plenty of good fortune involved in it, too. It’s not often that an offensive play-caller with the skins on the wall Moore has is suddenly available, much less after such a coordinator makes it to the divisional round of the playoffs. It also wasn’t automatic that the Chargers, as rich in talent and at quarterback as they are, would be Moore’s best offer—he was in the running for the top job in Carolina right up until the end of the Panthers’ process.
But as luck would have it, there Moore was at the end of January for Staley to hire. And there he was last week, fulfilling the vision he laid out for the Chargers five months ago.
The story of how this one came together is pretty spectacular.
The Chargers’ offense, as a result, very well could be, too.
