- Welcome back to Dorktown, I am Jon
and this is Alex, and we have come back for a very,
very special reason, and that reason is that
Alex told me about a football team that we
absolutely have to talk about.
Alex, what is that football team?
- This is the San Diego Chargers of 2010.
- Right. And on paper, these Chargers were
likely one of the best NFL teams of the Super Bowl era,
of all time.
- Take it back to 1920. NFL history.
- And yet this team did not win the Super Bowl,
didn't make the Super Bowl, didn't win a playoff game,
didn't make the playoffs.
This team missed the playoffs
entirely. Alex, how is this possible?
- They were a team. This is a story that is just
absolutely tailor made for dorks like us.
(energetic synth music playing)
- First, the offense. There was everything to like
about the 2010 Chargers offense.
It was led by Philip Rivers, an absolute goofus-maloofus
who has never received all the credit he's deserved.
In 2010, he finished his 3rd straight full season
with a passer rating above 100, and to this day
Rivers, along with Steve Young and Peyton Manning,
are the only three quarterbacks to ever pull that off.
His favorite target was Antonio Gates,
once a star basketball player who had landed on the Chargers
without ever playing a single game of college football.
It was fitting that a guy with such unconventional
origins would help to upend the convents of his position.
Along with Tony Gonzalez, Jason Witten and Shannon Sharpe,
Gates established his tight end position as a very serious
scoring and receiving threat.
In white, you see all the tight ends who are still active
players today, following the trend Gates
helped to establish.
By the way,
as of the making of this video, Gates himself
still isn't technically retired.
Although Gates led the team with ten receiving touchdowns,
he missed six games due to injuries.
In fact, Rivers receiving targets were constantly
getting hurt. Malcom Floyd was hobbled,
Vincent Jackson was hobbled, and suspended and holding out.
In any case, missed a lot of the season.
But Rivers made due with who he had,
and he ended up assembling the second best passing attack
in the NFL,
completely out of spare parts.
And when balanced with a respectable ground game,
featuring stud rookie Ryan Mathews,
and the perfectly spherical Mike Tolbert,
this made for the NFLs number one offense.
By this, we mean that their offense gained more yardage
than any other offense in the league.
More than the Colts, Saints, Patriots. Anybody.
So how does a team with the best offense in football
miss the playoffs?
Their defense must've been really bad, right?
- [Alex] And especially after coming off a relatively
middling defensive performance in Ron Rivera's
first full season coordinating the unit.
But, led by pro bowl pass rusher Shaun Philips,
and a secondary featuring quarterbacks Quentin Jammer
and first-year starter Antoine Cason,
along with safety Eric Weddle, the 2010 Chargers' D
managed to put it all together.
They allowed the fewest passing yards
and the 4th fewest rushing yards in the entire league.
Add it all up, and they had the very top ranked
total defense.
So with their league-best ability in both
racking up yardage and preventing their opponent
from doing so, a massive chasm forms in the difference
between those two figures.
Overall, their offense gained nearly 2,000 more yards
than their defense allowed.
No one else that season was even in the same
solar system.
Generally speaking, and as we'll underscore more in a bit,
there's a pretty strong correlation between this
metric and winning ball games.
And when that hasn't translated, the turnover
battle's nearly always been the culprit.
And in that department, the Chargers were a
minus six.
Certainly suboptimal, but nowhere bad enough to
reconcile such overall dominance
with whiffing on the post-season all together.
After all, the Colts and Saints were down here too,
and they both cruised to the playoffs.
(upbeat music)
- So, the Chargers had the number one offense,
the Chargers had the number one defense,
and there wasn't anything as far as turnovers
or anything like that, that would explain
all this blowing up in their faces.
So, what phase of the game does that leave?
- I think that leaves special teams, Jon.
- Yeah, my least favorite part of football.
It's all stupid. It sucks, I hate it.
Don't use a foot for anything.
Abolish special teams all together is what I say.
- Especially field goal kicking. That always seemed so
random and arbitrary,
compared to the broader objective of the game.
You might as well just give the offense like,
a Rubik's Cube if they can't score a touchdown,
and the closer you are, the more time you get,
for three points - Sure!
Anything else you wanted to get off your chest
about special teams?
- Doesn't deserve our time.
- No.
And this is how it all fell apart.
(dramatic music)
Here we see all 2,327 plays that made up the Chargers'
2010 season.
Excluding extra point and two point attempts.
For nearly 45% of the season, the Bolts got to trot out
the best offense on earth.
For another 40% or so, they got to trot out
the best defense on earth.
That left just 15% for their special teams unit.
How bad can a special teams unit possibly be?
And how much damage could they possibly do
in so little time?
Let's go to Alex Rubenstein for the play by play.
- [Alex] The Chargers season kicked off in Kansas City,
the back half of a Monday night Week 1, doubleheader
where a couple Chiefs playing in their first
career game had their way with the chargers on punt returns
in the second quarter.
On this one, Antoine Applewhite and James Holt
parted like the Red Sea for Javier Arenas to run through.
Then Mike Tolbert failed to bring him down,
with only punter Mike Scifres saving the touchdown.
Four minutes later, gunner Donald Strickland dove at air,
long snapper David Binn sort of just fell down in
Arenas' general vicinity, and linebacker Brandon Siler
wasn't much more than an inconvenience en route to
another lengthy return.
Then near halftime, the dam completely burst
when Dexter McCluster wanted in on the fun.
San Diego overpursued, let McCluster bounce it outside,
and from there, his speed was simply too much for
any Charger to interrupt his journey to the end zone.
The Chargers lost by a touchdown.
After crushing the Jags to even up their record
at 1-1, the Chargers traveled up to Seattle.
Despite more than doubling Seattle's yardage output,
they just couldn't tread water on special teams.
To kick off the second half, C.J. Spillman
and Strickland took shoddy attempts at bringing down
Seahawks return man Leon Washington, who then shook
San Diego's terrified kicker Nate Kaeding to complete
his hundred-and-one yard romp to paydirt.
But behind Rivers and their league-best offense,
the Chargers rallied late, with Gates scoring a TD
in the waning minutes and followed by a two pointer
that tied the game at 20.
Great shape, as long as they don't allow
a second touchdown off a kickoff return.
Washington hauls it in at his own one,
and after Holt and Jacob Hester take large grasps
at nothingness,
gets momentarily stood up amid a gaggle of Chargers,
only for none to bring him down.
Then we can pinpoint the exact moment
Kaeding is considering a career change.
The Chargers lost by a touchdown.
They'd cruise the next week against the Cardinals,
then came a Week 5 showdown in Oakland.
Despite dominating the offensive and defensive
portion of the proceedings,
they couldn't quite overcome
the early 12-point hole they dug themselves,
thanks to not one, but two blocked punts
in the game's first five minutes.
The Raiders
got nine points from those plays.
The Chargers lost by eight.
- [Jon] Sorry, I'd like to butt in for just a second,
to talk about punt blocks.
Punt blocks almost never happen.
There were only 12 across the entire 2010 NFL season.
Naturally, four of these were suffered by the Chargers,
but what's most incredible is that these two punt blocks,
occurred on back to back drives.
The odds of this happening twice in a row on paper,
roughly 42,000:1. Anyway.
- [Alex] After that game,
San Diego was leading the league in total offense,
with no one else particularly close.
Coupled with an excellent defense,
their total yardage differential of +1,078,
wasn't just far and away the best in the league,
but to this day is a modern NFL record
through five games.
Since the AFL/NFL merger in 1970,
only the '09 Giants have so much as come within
150 yards of the 2010 Chargers' gargantuan figure.
And these Bolts had a losing record to show for it.
In terms of special teams performance,
at least they knew this had to be rock bottom.
Then someone handed them a shovel.
(ominous music)
A few minutes into their Week 6 game in St. Louis,
Danny Amendola alluded gunner Richard Goodman,
and 42 yards later,
he set the Rams up in prime position
for a chip shot field goal.
In the fourth quarter,
Kaeding slipped on his own field goal attempt,
leading to an easy block.
The Chargers lost by a field goal.
The following week,
Hester failed to bring down Julian Edelman on a punt
near the end of the first half.
34 yards later,
Edelman had provided Tom Brady great field position,
again leading to a chip shot field goal.
The Chargers lost by a field goal.
Now, despite outgaining their opponent by
over 125 yards in six of their seven games,
the only post merger team that's ever done so,
they were sitting there with a 2-5 record.
They rebounded down the stretch,
and started turning all these thorough dominations
into actual real life wins.
Seven of them across their final nine games, in fact,
including four blowouts.
But,
their bed was already made and it was too little, too late.
- [Jon] I say this as a lifelong Chiefs fan,
it is tragic that Kansas City took this playoff spot
over the Chargers.
All in all,
they were vastly inferior,
and it showed when they were immediately run off
their own field by the Ravens in the first round.
It also showed in Week 14 in San Diego.
With quarterback Matt Cassel out with an appendectomy,
backup Brodie Croyle was shoved out there to
start for the Chiefs.
So,
yes the Chiefs were short handed,
and yes the Chargers were on their home field.
They took advantage.
They lined up their shot,
and then they blew the Chiefs to hell.
31 zip.
It was the most
lopsided shutout loss in the NFL that season.
The statistical profile of this game is horrifying.
The Chargers held the Chiefs to zero points,
and well under 100 yards.
And they didn't even need a single turnover to do it.
It was matter of fact domination.
This is one of only five such performances in the history
of the league.
It would be more at home in the NFL's Old Testament
than the modern era.
Even there it has trouble making friends.
For one,
it allowed fewer yards than any of the others.
For another,
the rest of these performances came during low scoring,
hard fought, defensive battles.
One ended 13-0,
two ended 6-0,
and one ended in a scoreless tie.
This was a 31-0 pounding.
The indignities did not stop there.
Croyle never started another NFL game.
His final career record as a starter was 0-10.
And he would go down in history
as the first quarterback of the Super Bowl era
to start at least 10 games and never win a single one.
This beat down pulled the Chargers to 1-1
against the Chiefs on the season.
This meant San Diego,
by virtue of their superior record within the division,
would have held the tie breaker if only they could have
pulled even.
They never could.
But for one Sunday afternoon,
they took my poor football team,
and they broke them in half.
It was their only consolation.
When the postseason started,
the NFL's best offense,
and best defense, were nowhere to be seen.
The NFL has been a 32 team league since 2002.
To even rank in the top three
in both offense and defense in the same year
is an incredible accomplishment.
In fact,
these are all the teams in this era to rank in the top three
in either offense or defense.
You can see how far most of these teams sag,
from one end to the other.
Some teams with top offenses also had good defenses,
but more often than not,
their defenses were awful.
The opposite is true as well.
Teams with stellar defenses tend to have weak offenses.
Now in red you can see the teams that missed the playoffs
despite ranking in the top three in either category.
All the red down here makes a lot of sense.
A bad defense can and will totally scuttle
a great offense.
I'm sure Saints fans can tell you all about that.
Naturally,
we see a lot more green up here.
Teams that paired a great defense with,
even a decent offense were almost guaranteed
to make the playoffs.
But only one of these teams ever put it all together.
Look at all that daylight between the 2010 Chargers
and the rest of the field.
No one ever really came close to accomplishing
what they did.
- [Alex] Remember how I talked about how
for the season the 2010 Chargers offense
gained nearly 2000 more yards than their
defense allowed?
Well,
in that same post-merger timeframe,
there were only two other instances of a team outgaining
their opposition by that much.
And their seasons each ended in a Super Bowl,
not even the 16-0 Patriots of 2007
soared as high as these Chargers.
As for teams that wound up missing the playoffs,
no one but the '74 Cowboys
all the way down here has even cracked
a yardage differential of 1400.
On a per snap basis,
their offense generated nearly a yard and a half more
each play than their defense allowed.
That remarkable discrepancy,
also is in its own stratosphere,
with the Steelers barely cracking the one yard barrier
that season,
and no one else reaching even 0.8 yards.
But thanks to their special teams,
none of it mattered.
Especially spearheaded by a punt unit that opponents
feasted on for nearly 19 yards per return,
they shot themselves in the foot
like no other team ever.
If they'd have won just one
of those five maddening losses that they dominated
throughout,
they'd have necessarily been AFC West champs.
The most depressing aspect of this all,
might be surrounding Kassim Osgood,
who for years, wasn't just their special team's
leader and captain,
but also excelled enough to be the AFC's special teams
Pro Bowl representative three of the prior four years.
Then ahead of this 2010 season,
they let him get away in free agency,
and subsequently authored what can only be considered,
the single worst season of special teams,
in the 99 year history of the NFL.
- [Jon] Who was in charge?
Was there anyone in charge of special teams
that year for the Chargers?
- [Alex] So their special teams coach, Steve Crosby,
long time coaching veteran,
spent over 30 years coaching in the NFL.
That was highlighted by becoming Bill Belichick's
offensive coordinator during the Browns'
final couple of seasons in Cleveland.
- [Jon] So like a good coach. He was totally a good coach!
- [Alex] Totally a good coach.
And then he took a team that was one of the greatest
regular season teams ever,
and his unit single handedly sunk them.
- There's something I want to show you.
So I dug up some official team photos of
Steve Crosby, right?
And look at how he changes over the years.
Which is to say, not at all.
- (laughs) Those may have been taken on the same day.
- Those were taken five years apart.
- Or he's just the greatest ager of all time.
- You know, you know what it is?
Is, look at this.
2006, 2007, 2008, 2009,
all of a sudden, barely cracks a smile,
done, out of the NFL.
See, you can't smile if you're a coach.
You can't be happy, you can't have things that you like.
You can't enjoy yourself.
At the end of this I feel bad for a lot of people,
I feel especially bad for Philip Rivers.
And, this is why.
So, Alex, I put together a chart,
that includes every quarterback of the Super Bowl era
who started at least 50 games, right?
This is all of them.
Every dot is one of them,
on the X axis you see how many games they started.
On the vertical axis you see what their
career passer rating was.
And, in green you see the guys who went
to the Super Bowl, and won it.
That's a lot of quarterbacks.
The more the better once you get higher in
passer rating, and then,
in red you see the guys who missed entirely.
In yellow you see the guys who made a Super Bowl
and didn't win it.
That big red star up there on the upper right,
with almost no friends around him,
is Philip Rivers.
I mean, he's probably the best quarterback
never to win one besides maybe,
Dan Marino.
And has to be the best quarterback to
never even go to the Super Bowl, right?
- [Alex] Not only is that true,
but he had a great shot to make the Super Bowl
the season before this. 13 and 3 Chargers team.
And in their first playoff game,
what doomed them was two missed chip shot field goals,
by Nate Kaeding.
And a three point loss.
- [Jon] So Philip Rivers is far from done, right?
And he's still got a few years left before, ya know,
age catches up to him I'm sure.
The Chargers went 12-4 last season,
they figure to contend again this year,
so I would say there'd be a pretty good chance
for a fairy tale ending for these Chargers.
Except we have Mahomes now on the Chiefs,
so nevermind, sorry suckers.
(upbeat music)
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