The San Diego Chargers surprised a lot of people last year when they made the playoffs. This season they won’t have the advantage of catching teams by surprise so the natural question for their season will be: can they repeat the success they had last season and make a deep playoff run? Before we get that far though, there are some questions that need to be solved heading into the preseason.
How Will Their New Secondary Look?
In 2013 the Chargers had the third worst secondary according to PFF (subscription) with a rating of -47.6 on the season. Without a doubt this was an area that needed improving. The Chargers’ front office set out to do just that this offseason. They drafted cornerback Jason Verrett out of TCU and had cornerback Brandon Flowers fall right into their lap when the Kansas City Chiefs decided to cut him. Coming back, of course, is one of the best safeties in the league in Eric Weddle. Their new secondary is one thing to watch for during the offseason. While they won’t give away much schematically, it’ll be a chance to see how well they work together with a few new people at important positions.
Positional Battles
There are two positions that the Chargers will really be focusing on during the preseason to find out who should start once the regular season begins. The first one is at right guard. Jeromey Clary is currently on the PUP list recovering from offseason shoulder surgery but when he returns he’s certainly not guaranteed his starting spot back. Johnnie Troutman and rookie Chris Watt will be trying to steal the starting spot. There is a good chance that both will get first team reps during the preseason to see how they do against the other team’s defensive starters.
The other position is at outside linebacker. There’s a good chance the Chargers have the best group of outside linebackers in the entire league. It’ll be a battle between veteran Dwight Freeney, Jarret Johnson, Melvin Ingram, and rookie Jeremiah Attaochu. This is certainly a good problem to have. The preseason will give the Chargers’ coaching staff a chance to see how each one performs in different situations. Since they will most likely give all four guys significant snaps during the season (barring injury of course), this will help them determine which player should be in for different situations.
Will The Defense Be A Weakness Again?
The Chargers’ defense was downright awful last season. According to PFF, they were second to last in overall defense with a rating of -133.1. Their pass rush was the best part about their defense and their pass rush rating was only a -17.6. As stated above, their secondary is definitely going to be an improvement this season. Also, their pass rush should be better as well with that group of outside linebackers. Their run defense, which was the weakest part of their defense, should at least improve slightly because of their improved secondary. I realize this sounds backwards but last season they were forced to drop more people back into coverage due to their weak secondary. Now that they have two capable cornerbacks, however, they won’t need to drop as many people into coverage.