Mike McCoy's Chargers: Lost In Translation

Bolts Blunders Should Have Called For Drastic Measures

You may not want Mike McCoy to be the Chargers head coach. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on that matter, but in the end the final decision for that topic would come from the Spanos family.

You may not agree with some of the decisions McCoy and his coaching staff have made – especially this season and during the team’s current 6-game losing streak.

But you have to admit he is consistent. Win or lose, McCoy refuses to point the finger. It would be easy to blame certain players or injuries or lack of depth. You could say how newly signed free agents have not lived up to expectations and how many high draft picks have failed to contribute consistently to the Bolts the past few years.

His Chargers went 9-7 in his first two seasons. And while that will not be replicated in year 3 of the McCoy era, one thing you can take away from the current state of the Chargers is this:
McCoy won’t throw his own players or coaches under the bus.

That is to be commended and I respect that. Not every pro athlete or coach operates that way.
Especially in this day and age with social media in 2015 and 24-hour sports networks where one sentence of a soundbite taken out of context can be run 144 times in a news cycle and put up on Twitter or a vine in minutes.

In his daily press conferences, McCoy has a game plan. He’s not going to tell you very much.
Most NFL coaches are this way. They get paid millions of dollars to help their team win games and in this ‘what have you done for me lately’ business, I understand if you want to be very cautious to reveal any information.

So he may speak in sentences at his press conferences, but as any member of the media that regularly covers the Chargers, McCoy doesn’t really say much even though he is technically talking to the media.

You have to put on your Sherlock Holmes hat or your Encyclopedia Brown shoes to translate or unearth what he actually means – by what he doesn’t say or when he actually does mention something out of the ordinary.

It was pretty obvious McCoy was grasping for positive straws Monday.

“Whatever good things we did yesterday, there were too many negatives that overlooked all those things,” admitted McCoy. “The one thing I will say on the positive side of it in the kicking game, Josh’s 52 yarder was huge. One thing we talked to [Lambo] about all week was starting the game with a touchback.”

Really?!?!? The kicker had a good day? In a 33-3 loss? Wow.

“And then Mike [Scifres] had to be the leader in the coverage units this week,” continued McCoy, “and punting the football he had his best game of the year.”

So to recap, the kicker and the punter had great days. Yikes.

But let’s play devil’s advocate. What do you say after your team gets blasted by 30 points? On it’s home field against a division rival – despite extra days to prepare for the Chiefs.

All this after a bye week – where players can clear their heads, get extra rest and have more time to tweak the game plan.

As sportswriter Bill Simmons would say, you need to 'throw the kitchen sink' at an opponent. It’s desperation time. This is when you break out a couple new formations, a half-back toss, a double-reverse, a Stevie Johnson pass on an end-around. Maybe even a fake punt. Pick a gadget play – any gadget play - or three! If it doesn’t work – it’s not different than what happened using the same draw plays and shotgun formations with limited depth and backups thrust into starting roles due to injuries.

The two highlights from Sunday’s humiliating 33-3 loss consisted of LaDainian Tomlinson’s halftime induction ceremony and the moment when his wife LaTorsha sang the national anthem. That was it.

The Chiefs game was definitely an opportunity for a 'kitchen sink game.' Well you could technically say the Bears game, or maybe even the Ravens the week before that were the real kitchen sink games, too.

Right now, most Chargers fans probably just want to throw the kitchen sink at their television.
 

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