The move by the Chargers to part ways with coach Brandon Staley "has been made," as the team also this morning "fired GM Tom Telesco," according to ESPN's Adam Schefter (X, 12/15). The Chargers on Thursday night lost 63-21 to the Raiders, and in L.A., Jeff Miller writes Staley’s firing “felt all but inevitable by the end of this outrageous night.” The possibility of Staley being dismissed before the end of the season “was considered unlikely before his team produced this showing in a stand-alone national television window against its most bitter rival” (L.A. TIMES, 12/14).
OF ONE'S OWN MAKING: In San Diego, Tom Krasovic wrote responsibility from Thursday’s historic loss “begins with owner Dean Spanos and son John Spanos, although you can be sure NFL media will continue to protect them and fixate on Brandon Staley’s potential departure and the search for a new coach.” Krasovic wrote Dean and John Spanos have “wasted” the first four years of QB Justin Herbert’s career. Dean put his son John “in charge of the football front office about a decade ago.” He is the guy who hired Staley, a “smooth talker who’d become a media darling in just one year as the Rams’ defensive coordinator.” Krasovic wrote there were “many people more NFL-and-football qualified than John to fill the Chargers’ president of football operations role.” Unless Dean and John fire themselves the people hiring the next coach “figure to be same people who hired Staley," and former coaches Anthony Lynn and Mike McCoy (SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, 12/14).
CHANGE COMING? SI’s Matt Verderame wrote the fans the Chargers still have will "steel themselves for the next hiring cycle, one that will include hope of a young coach wanting to align himself with Herbert’s prodigious right arm.” Verderame wrote the “problem is Spanos,” who has been “unwilling to pay coaches.” Verderame: “Don’t expect that to change now.” In Staley, the Chargers got a “young, relatively inexperienced assistant" from the Rams, a "cheap, sellable move.” Penny-pinching and poor decisions are “nothing new to the Bolts.” L.A.’s hires before Staley were Lynn and McCoy. Verderame: “Again, two lifetime assistants who weren’t going to command major dollars. And, in true Chargers fashion, neither worked out” (SI, 12/14).
