On Tuesday, the team announced that offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi would not return for the 2023 season. Pass game coordinator/QB coach Shane Day was also fired.
Buy Chargers TicketsWe have parted ways with OC Joe Lombardi and Passing Game Coordinator/QBs Shane Day.
— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) January 17, 2023
It ends a tumultuous tenure for the 51-year-old Lombardi, who joined the Chargers as Staley’s offensive coordinator prior to the 2021 season. After piloting LA to a top 5 offense by DVOA, the talk was much more about how high the ceiling could go rather than how hot Lombardi’s seat was.
2022 was, unfortunately, not the sequel Chargers fans were hoping for. After offseason talk about how much more of the offense LA could install, the Chargers plummeted to 19th in offensive DVOA. Injuries certainly played a part: Keenan Allen, Mike Williams, Rashawn Slater, Corey Linsley, and Trey Pipkins all missed multiple games and Justin Herbert, Gerald Everett, and Josh Palmer spent stretches banged up. But Lombardi showed an inability to adjust when those injuries occurred, which resulted in a midseason stretch of Herbert trying to force throws to DeAndre Carter and Michael Bandy running Allen’s routes without much success. Offensive sequencing consistently felt off, the offense fell flat after the opening script concluded, and Lombardi insisted on running the same concepts even after they were proven to be ineffective. Perhaps the cardinal example of this was the refusal to get Justin Herbert on the move, despite generating highlight play after highlight play when they did and facing immense pressure when they didn’t because of the banged-up offensive line.
All this coalesced into a season-long discourse about Lombardi and his viability as offensive coordinator going forward. With Staley’s job also subject to a number of rumors, sacrificing Lombardi to buy himself one more year always seemed like the likeliest outcome.
The Chargers will now embark on a search for a new coordinator, preferably one who can extract the best out of the ascending Herbert.
