No question Brandon Staley was on a hot seat coming into his third season as Chargers head coach. That seat only got hotter as the season went along and the Chargers were en route to their worst season under his leadership.
Thursday night, everything came to a head with a monumental 63-21 loss to the Raiders on Thursday Night Football.
What came Friday morning was to be expected — Staley along with GM Tom Telesco were both fired.
Thursday night’s game wasn’t the reason, but it was about as much of a slamming of the book as you’ll ever see.
The game wasn’t even as close as the 49-point final score margin. It was 42-0 at the half, 49-0 before the Chargers first score, and 63-7 early in the fourth quarter. All of which only served to make what owner Dean Spanos had to do that much easier.
It was clear after the Chargers went down 21-0 in the first quarter, they packed it in and gave up. The result was three more touchdowns before the half, each one about as easy as one can imagine. They didn’t even try to stop Brandon Bolden on a direct snap run 26 yards for a touchdown.
The Chargers had lost four of their previous five games coming into this one. The only win being an ugly 6-0 game against the hapless Patriots. They were a rudderless ship.
With Justin Herbert, Keenan Allen, and Joey Bosa on the sideline with injuries, this team had no fight in them. It was past time for a reset and now they will play out the string and be in the market for new leadership to see if they can manage to get a pretty talented team to play to the level everyone has expected them to play each season.