The Chargers open their regular season at long last on Sunday with a home game against the Dolphins, another of the AFC’s playoff contenders.
Here’s why Bolt fans should be optimistic about a 1-0 start.
Full capacity
By the time Los Angeles hosted the Dolphins in December, the Chargers were missing Rashawn Slater, Trey Pipkins, JC Jackson, Joey Bosa, Sebastian Joseph-Day, and Austin Johnson. All six are back and operating at 100% for the Week 1 tilt.
Getting Slater and Pipkins back should help manage a Dolphins defense that put together four sacks and seven hits of Justin Herbert in the matchup last season. They, along with Jamaree Salyer and Zion Johnson playing more natural positions at guard, will also aid in opening holes for Austin Ekeler, who averaged just 3 yards a carry against Miami a year ago.
On defense, the Chargers put together one of their best performances of the season against the Dolphins, holding Tua Tagovailoa to just 145 yards passing with a 35.7% completion percentage. Adding Bosa, Joseph-Day, and Johnson back on the defensive line will allow Los Angeles to run their usual gameplan up front. Jackson’s return at corner gives the Chargers more matchup flexibility to cover Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle.
Injuries mounting
Miami is already missing three key contributors, with Jalen Ramsey, Jeff Wilson Jr., and Keion Crossen on injured reserve. Offensive tackle Terron Armstead did not practice on Wednesday, with back, ankle, and knee injuries threatening to keep him out of Sunday’s contest.
With Ramsey and Crossen out and defensive backs Elijah Campbell, Justin Bethel, and Brandon Jones on the injury report in some capacity, the Dolphins may be in for a long afternoon defending the Chargers passing attack. Xavien Howard isn’t the player he used to be, and young guns Kader Kohou and Cam Smith will have a lot on their plates guarding the likes of Keenan Allen and Mike Williams.
If Armstead cannot play on Sunday, the Dolphins’ listed backup at left tackle is Kendall Lamm, who started one game for Miami last season. That’s a noticeable step down that bodes well for Bosa and Khalil Mack, who are making a noticeable impact on this game.
Cohesive gameplanning
The Chargers struggled in the second half of games for much of last season, partly due to former offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi’s disjointed game planning. Lombardi never quite felt like he was setting up plays or stringing them together; it was more a random assortment of choices from the more extensive playbook.
That’s also something that new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore struggled with in Dallas, to be fair. However, the preseason showed nice flashes of a more united identity on offense, an encouraging sign of progress. The playbook has more creativity, which gives the Chargers an out if their game plan isn’t working. But that creativity hasn’t come at the expense of LA’s ability to move the ball downfield as it did in Dallas. Nate Tice of The Athletic put it this way when discussing Mike McCarthy’s comments on how Moore got too “cute” at times: “What I think he meant by that comment is that sometimes they’d have 50 plays in the gameplan and [Moore] wanted to call all 50, as opposed to maybe spamming the same plays over and over.”
Preseason conclusions don’t always carry over to the regular season, but if they do, the Chargers should have no problem moving the ball on Sunday.
Increased aggressiveness
Another of Moore’s biggest jobs this season will be convincing Justin Herbert to break some of his more robotic tendencies and unlock a more aggressive side of his game. Herbert has shown flashes of it in the past, usually out of necessity or in big moments. At the same time, the quarterback’s tendency to find the perfect read as quickly as possible sometimes results in him taking a safer throw with a significantly lower ceiling.
Moore has also shown in the preseason that the Chargers will be much more aggressive in the run game. LA ran the ball forty-one times in their preseason finale against San Francisco and burst through for 214 yards on the ground against the Rams. The Chargers ran for more yards this preseason than they had combined in the last two preseasons.
That new aggressiveness in the run game is something worth monitoring on Sunday. Miami is breaking in a new defensive scheme under Vic Fangio that doesn’t mesh well with the Dolphins’ existing personnel on the defensive line. Christian Wilkins and Zach Sieler are star players in that position group, but Wilkins hasn’t played all preseason. That may cause an adjustment period that the Chargers can take advantage of.
