The Chargers entered Sunday’s game against the Broncos with the fifth seed already secured, but that didn’t stop Brandon Staley from playing his starters.
Most of them, including Justin Herbert, stayed in the game through three quarters in the loss to Denver. But, along the way, Staley’s decision backfired.
Mike Williams suffered back spasms in the second quarter, resulting in him getting carted off the field. Joey Bosa and Kenneth Murray also got banged up, which forced them to get pulled out of the action.
Even though the seeding was known before the game, Staley had plans of playing the starters regardless.
“We felt like the process that we would take, regardless if (the Ravens) had won or lost, we knew what our plan was going into the game, and I thought we executed it today,” Staley said.
Did it make sense to play the starters to fine-tune some things, maybe? Yes. But for as long as they did? No. The approach should have been to play the backups extensively.
When Staley was asked why the starters played as long as they did, this was his response:
We only get two practice squad elevations for the game, and you have to put a team out there, and you can’t decide when you’re having to play a football game who isn’t going to play and who is going to play and how you’re going to subtract this. You got to go out there and play the football game, because this isn’t the preseason when you have 90 guys to choose from. You only have 48 players to choose from, so you have to go out there and you have to field a football team. And so we did it the best we could. We wanted to play well in the game, and then we wanted to be safe for next week. And that’s what we did.
Staley added that other teams took the same approach by playing most of their starters for a large portion of the game.
“I think when you look across the league at the other teams who were playing in the playoffs and what they did this last week, I think you’ll see a lot of high-level players playing in their football games. I think that’s fair to say. I think you’ll see all the big-time quarterbacks, big-time players were out there for their football teams because they have to be.”
Across the league, the Giants, who were locked into the sixth seed, sat starters, including Daniel Jones, Saquon Barkley, Andrew Thomas, Kayvon Thibodeaux and Dexter Lawrence.
The Buccaneers won the NFC South title a week ago, and they still took a cautious approach. Tom Brady and several other starters were pulled before halftime.
The Chiefs and Bills played their starters for the entirety of their respective games, but they had playoff implications.
Williams had x-rays on his back and the results were negative. He will get more tests done tomorrow. If Williams happens to miss next Saturday’s game against the Jaguars due to the injury, all fingers will be pointed at Staley for his decision.