A COACHING DEBACLE: TIME FOR PAYTON TO LEAVE STUDIO AND REPLACE INEPT STALEY

A weekend that showcased admirable leadership by Pederson and Shanahan was overwhelmed by the continuing failures of the Chargers coach, who must move on for a team to gain any Los Angeles foothold

     Empowered superstars run the NBA. Overweening sabermetricians control Major League Baseball. And badass coaches — or some who are just bad — determine outcomes in the NFL. Do not tell me with a straight face, as we absorb the beginnings of the playoffs, that coaching doesn’t matter much in the totality of a professional football season.

     It matters in the Bay Area, where playcalling savant Kyle Shanahan loses two starting quarterbacks in an injury double-whammy and rushes to make something historically relevant of Brock Purdy, Mr. Irrelevant, the final player chosen in last year’s draft. “PURDY GOT GAME!!!!!!!” tweeted LeBron James after the 49ers rookie accounted for four touchdowns in his first playoff win, to which he replied, “LeBron said that? Ah, that’s sweet.”

     It matters in Jacksonville, where Doug Pederson cleaned up Urban Meyer’s toxic spill and created a culture where a Jaguars team could fall behind by 27 points, then watch Trevor Lawrence overcome four first-half interceptions to direct the third-largest postseason comeback in NFL history. “I am kind of speechless, honestly, just to see what belief can do — to see when a team believes in each other what you can accomplish,” said Lawrence, whose long locks are giving him a Samson profile as he heads to the divisional round.

     And it matters, in an obscenely counterproductive context, on the sideline of the Los Angeles Chargers. They are wasting a generational quarterbacking talent, Justin Herbert, and driving away their few fans in a market that barely knows they exist. As it was, coach Brandon Staley was questioned for his sanity last season, when he became known as the high-rolling gambler who repeatedly tried to convert fourth downs, sometimes to his team’s detriment. Then he cost the Chargers a playoff berth, calling a timeout late in overtime that allowed the Raiders to kick a winning field goal rather than settling for a tie sending both teams to the tournament.

     But those were peccadillos compared to his mind-twisting blunders of recent hours, which led to new lows in the perpetual downward spiral known as “Chargering.” Staley set a reckless tone by continuing to use his starters late in an insignificant game last Sunday in Denver, an unforgivable strategic sin when Herbert’s favorite gamebreaker, receiver Mike Williams, was injured and eventually diagnosed with a transverse process fracture of his back. The Chargers managed to build a 27-0 lead Saturday night without him, but the gods were disgusted with Staley nonetheless, determined to punish his — this cannot be put politely — unpardonable stupidity. Responsible for nothing more than running out the clock and advancing to a compelling, Herbert-vs.-Patrick Mahomes showdown in Kansas City, he once again failed to execute a simple football task.

     He couldn’t kill sufficient time, draining only 15:27 on the offensive side and managing just three points on five possessions over a period of 34:25. There weren’t enough run calls — 23 rushing attempts for 69 yards, against Herbert’s 43 throws — which allowed Pederson, Lawrence and the Jaguars to escape a steel trap. Of all times to abandon his fourth-down fetish, he went for a field goal — missed by Cameron Dicker — on 4th-and-3 midway through the fourth quarter. And wasn’t Staley hired for his defensive prowess? When challenged to show his chops in a quiet stadium against a team hosting its second playoff game in 23 years, his unit allowed four touchdown drives and a field goal in that deadly span. Staley deserved to lose, after two years of coaching malpractice, and the bloodletting won’t be forgotten soon. The Chargers fell 31-30, on a last-second field goal, and to have any chance of ever gaining a foothold in L.A., owner Dean Spanos quickly will fire Staley and the general manager who hired him, Tom Telesco, and start anew with an accomplished coach and leader who lives eight miles away from SoFi Stadium in Manhattan Beach.

     That would be Sean Payton, who might demand $20 million a year from a misfit owner sued last summer by one of his siblings for “financially ruinous” business practices. Pay him. The Saints, who still own his rights, also will demand top draft picks. Relinquish them. The Spanos clan has no choice but to stop the infighting and help a franchise’s future six years after a foolish decision — leaving San Diego for the massive, sports-saturated region to the north. Ownership must bury Staley’s final debacle and give Herbert a reason to commit his signature to a long-term contract. Payton, who has won a Super Bowl and is wasting his own talent in a Fox Sports studio, has been waiting for the right coaching gig. It isn’t in Denver, where he’ll be dragged down by Russell Wilson’s demise no matter how much Walmart money is offered. Once Sean McVay decided not to quit like a bratty millennial and realized life was good with the L.A. Rams, it grew apparent that Payton’s best match is with the Chargers.

     “Anytime you’re up 27-7 at halftime and you’ve got four takeaways and you end up winning the takeaway margin (5-0), it’s going to be a killer,” Staley said. “I’m hurting for everybody in that locker room. It’s a special group of guys, and this is the toughest way that you can lose in the playoffs and certainly with the way we started the game. That’s the team I know we’re capable of being, and in the second half, we just didn’t finish the game.”

     And why didn’t they finish? “Certainly when you have that type of lead, if you can possess the ball effectively enough, then there won’t be enough time (for the opponent),” Staley said. “And we just didn’t do that.”

     You detect the urgency for substantial, imminent change in the players’ pained words. “You can preach only so much,” tight end Gerald Everett said. “It just comes down to what you actually do in the moment and what you don’t allow in the moment.”

     “I don’t even have any words for it right now,” safety Derwin James Jr. said. “I’ve been playing football for 21 years and I ain’t never felt like this. It’s definitely disbelief. Everybody likes to say it’s part of the business, but you’re up four touchdowns, you’re supposed to win. There’s no reason we shouldn’t have got that done today.”

     “It’s embarrassing,” defensive lineman Sebastian Joseph-Day said. “It feels really bad, and it just sucks.”

     For all the flowing recent tributes extended to Herbert — one story called him a “humble, silent killer with great hair” — he must be wondering how he got stuck with such a miserable franchise. He stared blankly at his locker for 15 minutes before, somehow, taking blame. “Obviously, it was a tough go for us,” Herbert said. “As an offense, we need to do more in the second half, and you know that falls on us offensively and as a quarterback. I needed to perform better. I’ve got to give them more than three points in the second half and so I feel horrible for the defense for the incredible effort they put up there today.”

     Joey Bosa contributed to the loss with a horrid unsportsmanship conduct penalty, which allowed the Jaguars to convert a critical two-point conversion from the one-yard line. But his temperamental act — mouthing off to officials and slamming his helmet — also seemed to reflect the team’s general morale and sentiment about Staley. “It’s pretty obvious why we blew that lead,” Bosa said. “Mistakes, penalties all around, me definitely included. I don’t know. I’ve been here a lot where we get up and get a little comfortable and then, boom, it’s the fourth quarter and it’s the final drive and they’re kicking a field goal.”

     Therein lies the very definition of Chargering. Across the field, Pederson was teaching a clinic in how to rally a young quarterback and his emerging team from the depths of defeat. But to win, the Jaguars needed help from the other side, mismanaged by Staley and his staff. “You couldn’t write a crazier script,” said Lawrence, stunned to be gifted an all-time comeback. “I knew it was going to take a lot to turn it around. But I told the guys in the huddle, ‘There’s no 27-point plays. It’s going to be one play at a time.’ That’s what it took. One play at a time, all the way down the field. Just again and again and again. All we can do at this point is just try to score every drive.”

     They did just that. It reminded us why Pederson, who won a Super Bowl five years ago with a daring maneuver known in lore as the “Philly Special,” is one of the league’s premier coaches. He could have buried his head and never returned after the Eagles fired him, a decision that doesn’t look as absurd now that they’re positioned for a Super Bowl run under younger Nick Sirianni. But how heartening to see Pederson re-establish his value with an operation poisoned by Meyer’s hubris. “There’s no quit in our guys,” he said of a team whose win probability, at one point, sunk to 1.5 percent.

    In his post-game speech, Pederson told them: “This is about us. I’m proud of you for this reason. You have faith in yourselves. You have faith in each other. You keep encouraging each other, like we talk about all the time. And you believe. Belief is about understanding that you can get it done, and then, it gets done. It just can't happen, and then you have belief. That's what faith is about, and you guys have it.”

     Damn, he even flies back with his team from road games, one of Meyer’s many failings in a defective Urban Renewal project.

     Jacksonville isn’t a cool enough town — sorry, I’ve been there too often — to have a “Special” play named for it. But Pederson came close on the game-winning drive with 1:27 left, when he called a timeout on 4th-and-1 at the Chargers 40. Instead of having Lawrence reach over the scrimmage line with his 6-foot-6 frame, he put three bodies behind him in the backfield and called for a handoff to his old Clemson teammate, Travis Etienne, who burst outside and rambled to the 15.

     “If they're outside, you go inside. If they're inside, you go outside,” the coach explained.

     Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? If Staley has sabotaged his team, Pederson has turned in the NFL’s best coaching job. He praised everyone but himself, making sure the onus was on the quarterback who never gave up, a feeling that spread through the locker room. “When you see him not blinking and going out there and putting it all on the line, it's easy to get behind a guy like that,” receiver Christian Kirk said.

      “Let me tell you something, man. I think from playing football, watching football, I know a lot of quarterbacks would have folded in the situation he went through,” receiver Zay Jones said of Lawrence’s awful first half. “That's tough for anybody at any level. And for him to be as poised and composed as he was, it showed another side of who we have on this team. I mean, that guy right there, standing right there, that's a special man. And I'm proud to be a part of a team that he's on, and I am glad that he is leading us. He was like, ‘All we've got to focus on is the now.’ Those are his words, and I’ve never been a part of anything like that before. That was something truly special."

     Still only 23, Lawrence is positioned to save more than a football cause. The Jaguars are the one league franchise that seems ill-fitting — why does Jacksonville have an NFL team? — and whispers about a permanent move to London town never go away. Maybe he’s reviving the love affair over there in DUUUVAL County. “It’s easy to say it after, but you don’t win a game like that if you don’t believe in yourself,” he said. “Proud of this group, proud of this city. Special night for a lot of people, and I’m just thankful for everybody that played a part in it.”

     Notice how Al Michaels, who once called a real sports miracle, didn’t go there in the TV booth at TIAA Bank Field. This, you see, wasn’t about the Jaguars winning. This was about the Chargers Chargering, like never before. “We choked,” edge rusher Kyle Van Noy said. Wherever Sean Payton is swinging his golf club at this hour, his services are required immediately, as a waning franchise is swallowed like so much storm debris in a crazy southern California winter. This is the time of year when the best coaches are showcased.

     And the unworthy are exposed.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.