More photos » by Denis Poroy - AP

2 months ago: San Diego Chargers coach Norv Turner argues a call during the second quarter of an NFL football game against the Denver Broncos on Monday, Oct. 19, 2009 in San Diego. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)

Browse more photos »

With all the hubub about the Chargers under-performing, and how poorly Norv Turner is coaching, I thought it would be interesting to see how Norv's record thus far in his career matches up against some of his contemporaries.  I've put together each of the coach's records as a head coach and kept a running tally of the cumulative win percentage in the regular season and post season.

I've put Norv up against the four of the SB winning coaches who are currently not coaching and will be looking for work soon (I don't think Dungy will be).  I've thrown in Jeff Fisher and Bill Belichek just for some additional perspective.

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting when I was putting together these numbers.  I had a vague belief in my mind that Norv's early career failures might match up with other top coach's slow starts and that perhaps history would show us we should just be patient.  So, let's take a look.

Continue reading this post »

via thesportsaddict.files.wordpress.com

View full size photo »

Victor Conte was on XTRA 1360 with Josh Rosenberg and Mark Ziegler (SDUT) a few weeks back.  I had it on my iPod but hadn't gotten around to listening to it.  Being sick of listening to people talk about the Chargers, I thought it might make an interesting listen.  If you don't know, Victor Conte was the CEO of BALCO and was responsible for supplying world class level athletes such as Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, Jason Giambi, and Bill Romanowski with Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs).  BALCO was busted by the feds a few years back and the grand jury testimonies and other fall out from that investigation has led to a lot of the current fervor about PEDs, especially in baseball.

I don't know what you think about Conte, I personally figured him to be a a bit of a money hungry mad scientist who was willing to sacrifice the purity of sport for a few bucks and some glory.  The interview with the XTRA guys shed a bit of a different light on him.  The interview itself is about 20 minutes long, and I've summarized it below.

Josh and Mark interview Victor Conte on XTRA 1360 (mp3)

Continue reading this post »

I saw a fanpost by jman on the what the AFC West looks like at the quarter pole.  Since we are 4 games into the season, it is probably a good time to look at how things are stacking up.  jman's analysis was his view of how each team is doing.  I thought I would take it from a different angle and get some more "objective" views on how things are going.  Once we go through that, I'll give you some thoughts on how things might shake out.

All right, so first, let's explain quickly some of the numbers, specifically the DVOA numbers.  You can click on the headings to see the complete rankings and get details on exactly how they are generated.  In summary, the DVOA stands for Defense Adjusted Value Over Average.  That is, how much better is this team than the average NFL team if we adjust for who they are playing.  Theoretically, this should normalize for an offense that gets to play a really bad defense vs. an offense that plays a really good defense.  Now, there is some controversy on how accurately the DVOA numbers represent reality, but they are as good as anything else out there.  In addition, since the season is still fairly young, they don't really have the sample size they need to generate really accurate numbers.

After the last game against Pittsburg, none of us are surprised that our defense should rank #30 out of 32 teams.  Sounds about right.  I think what is a little surprising is that our offense is ranked middle of the pack.  We are #9 in points scored, but #15 overall.  A good part of this has to do with how the offense is really good in spurts, but then stinks it up.  Or more accurate, how our offense sucks the first half, is mediocre the third quarter and then becomes the '94 49ers in the 4th quarter.

Everyone has probably noticed this, but how about the Denver defense?  26 points given up over 4 games?  6.5 points per game average?  Now, they have played some bad teams, but they also have played the Cowboys with a decent offense, and the surprisingly good Bengals.  This area that was a major weakness and a big reason behind the Bronco collapse last year is surprising good, and may even be a strength of this team.  We will get an up close view of this in a few weeks and will be able to tell for ourselves if they are as good as they seem to be at this time.

One of my good friends is a Raider fan and we used to go pretty crazy during Raider week.  He is a snapshot of the Raider team.  The loss to the Bucs in the SB earlier this decade ripped his heart out and he has been in descent ever since.  He barely even wants to talk about his team any more.  Looking at them, I think that if they had a decent QB, they could be competitive.  JaMarcus Russell has a completion percentage of under 40%.  That is ridiculous.  They have a good crew of RBs and a good enough OL, there is no reason why their offense should be ranked #32.  It''s too bad.  Keep this between us, but I secretly wish the Raiders were good and Raider week meant something again.

The Chiefs are still a conundrum to me.  They definitely were not as bad as their record was last year.  They definitely aren't as bad as their record is this year.  But at some point you have to say, as AJ likes to say, "You are what your record says your are."  I'm still worried about this team and I feel they could beat just about any team on any given Sunday.  They have the offensive weapons.  They have some holes on the OL, and their defense is a little weak, but they have just been completely run over so far this year.  Is Haley in over his head? Perhaps.  Did Belichek not let Pioli take the magic beans with him when he left NE?  Probably.  The jury is still out, they may still be in recovery mode from ditching their offensive coordinator right after the last preseason game.  Offensively they have some weapons and should be serviceable.  Defensively, they have a lot of young talent.  Like I said, this is a scary team in that they might only win 4 or 5 games, but those 4 or 5 wins might be against playoff teams.

View full size photo »

I'm sure we all know that the Charger's 50th anniversary team is up for a vote right now.  You can go to the Charger's web site and look through the list and vote here.

There are a lot of guys on that list who you haven't heard of and maybe a lot of your votes tended to favor some of the more recent guys.  I thought I would take a second to promote one of my favorite Chargers and a guy who is up for the 50th anniversary team as an offensive guard.  Ed White played in the Air Coryell days.  He was in the NFL from 1969 to 1985, playing the final 8 of those years with the Chargers.  When he retired, he had played in more games than any other offensive lineman (241). That is a lot of time to play in the NFL.

Ed was an all-american defensive lineman at Cal before being drafted by the Vikings and converted to offensive guard.  He was a starter by his second year in the league and made the pro-bowl 4 times over his 17 year career.  He also played in 4 super bowls with that Vikings team. He came to the Chargers in 1978 and his arrival coincided with the accendancy of the Chargers in the Don Coryell/Dan Fouts era.  Ed is one of the one or two guys from those teams who guys in the know wonder why he isn't in the hall of fame. 

No less authority than Dan Fouts says Ed should be in the Hall.  "No question about it," Fouts said. "When he retired, nobody had played in more games as an offensive lineman than Ed White. They don’t have any statistics for offensive linemen other than Pro Bowls and Super Bowls, and those are things Ed has done. He was one of the most feared offensive linemen in the game. You talk to guys like Howie Long and Matt Millen who had to go against Big Ed. They hated it."

Dennis McNight, former Charger lineman and owner of a fine car wash down the street from me had this to say about Ed:  "Big Ed was probably the best all-around offensive lineman in the league in terms of run blocking and pass blocking"

After his playing career was over he coached at a variety of different levels.  He spent some time coaching the Chargers and the Rams.  He was the line coach at SDSU when Kyle Turley came through.  Ed was instrumental in converting Kyle from a defensive lineman into one of the best offensive lineman around.  To this day Turley will claim Ed is the best coach he has ever had. 

So why do I care about a guard who played a quarter century ago?  Well, I grew up where he lived when he played for the Chargers.  I played high school football with his sons.  He was my defensive coordinator (he never really got over being converted from defense to offense).  He is one of the biggest contributors to my love of football.  I remember my dad talking to him the week after the famous ice bowl.  It was two or three days later and Big Ed was saying that he still couldn't totally feel his fingers.  And this was from a guy who spent the first half of his career playing in Minnesota, pre-dome.

So, go check out the 50th anniversary voting here, learn a little Charger History, and cast a vote for my man Big Ed.

More photos » by Paul Sakuma - AP

3 months ago: San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson, right, fumbles the ball and is brought down by Oakland Raiders defensive end Greg Ellis (99) during the first quarter of their NFL football game Monday, Sept. 14, 2009 in Oakland, Calif. The Raiders recovered the ball. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Browse more photos »

 All right, so on Monday I was a big proponent of panicking.  I have had a few days to cool off and I thought I should take a look at this a little more methodically.  After all, if we're going to start panicking, at least we should have a reasonable justification for it. 

We began the season with high hopes, but we did have some areas of concern after the off season and through the preseason.  I figured I'd start by looking at each one of those areas of concern after two real games against a decent opponent and a very good opponent.

Area of Concern #1 - The right side of the Offensive Line

Jeromey Clary had received his fair share of lumps, and the unknown of the RG position was a little concerning.  We all agreed that losing Mike Goff was going to help a bit, but were we not sure how much.  Was Kynan Forney an upgrade?  Could the rookie Louis Vasquez learn the ropes in time to contribute?  How much of Clary's problems last year were due to Goff's inadequacies and how much were due to his own abilities and ceiling? 

Turns out Vasquez did come along quick enough to earn the starting job in week 1.  Vasquez's ability, Forney's average play, and some injury problems in camp actually lead to Forney surprisingly not making the 53 man roster.  Unfortunately Vasquez didn't last past the 1st half of the first game and we have seen Mruczkowski and Dombrowski in that spot since them.  Surprisingly, the right side of the line has held up pretty well.  Clary has done pretty well against some decent pass rushers.  He had a little trouble in the Raider game, but overall has done well.  It will be interesting to see him against the Steelers in a few weeks to compare his play to his lackluster playoff game last year.  Dombrowski has taken the majority of the snaps at RG and has looked really good, especially considering he is a second year guy who was on the practice squad all last year.  All in all, I'd say this area of concern isn't worrying me too much right now.  I may change my might after the Steelers game (even the Dolphins have Joey Porter and Jason Taylor and will present a good challenge)

more after the jump...

Continue reading this post »