Brandon Staley’s quest to destroy NFL secondaries in 2023 began with his love of the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s.
Their guard play was exceptional and, when considering their size for the era, most of them were outliers. Michael Jordan, Ron Harper and Scottie Pippen were all 6'6" or taller, allowing the entire offense to play a hybrid style of basketball—multiple players slashing, driving, shooting and playing inside—at a time when the game was more positionally rigid. The team could dictate their own matchups, placing players with advantageous traits on defenders ill-prepared to counter them (a faster guard drawing a slower forward, a bigger guard drawing a smaller guard, etc.).
His hypothesis—that this could be applicable to the Chargers—was solidified during a predraft visit with the Warriors before their Game 3, first-round matchup with the Kings in April (Staley and Warriors head coach Steve Kerr are friends). It’s about being large, handling the ball and spacing it all out efficiently. Size, he says, increases your margin for error.
Staley says over the phone a few weeks into training camp: “I’ve always wanted a receiver group built like that.” During the coaching interview process in 2021, when Staley was a burgeoning commodity, he felt the Chargers were the most fertile place to implement an offense that can “change the spacing on the field.”
A week after the Warriors defeated the Kings en route to a surprise conference semifinal berth, the Chargers were on the clock with a handful of needs and a 6'3" wide receiver from TCU on the board, Quentin Johnston. On tape, Johnston looks a little like Kevin Garnett in football pads. In Staley’s mind, he’s picturing slotting Johnston next to Mike Williams (6'4"), Keenan Allen (6'3"), Donald Parham (6'8"), Gerald Everett (6'3") and Joshua Palmer, who, despite being the runt of the group, is a solid 6'1" with thickness and a diverse route tree, and is discussed by his coaches as a fourth starter of equal importance to what they are trying to present.
Having been a defensive coach for the majority of his career, Staley says he’s aware of how player of that size alters the mathematics of a defense given the extra defenders it likely takes to cover just one person.
“Now, if you’ve got of those guys, what does it do?”
He keeps going …
“Now, if you’ve got of those guys, and one of them is among the best slot receivers to ever play, Keenan Allen, that’s when it gets tough out there. The nickels in this league are 5'10", 5'11" at best.”
There are currently three projected starting cornerbacks in the Chargers’ division who are 6'0" or taller. I asked Staley whether the Chargers mapped out the remainder of the schedule as a kind of analytical exercise heading into the draft. He said—confidently—that they didn’t need to.
“It just doesn’t exist,” he says of the requisite size at the position. We spoke just days after Johnston ran a deep route in the preseason against Rams defensive back Tre Tomlinson, who is generously listed at 5'9", drawing a chuckle from the broadcast crew.
Welcome to Staley’s search for new heights. At a time when one specific kind of receiver and a few specific kinds of offenses are seemingly coveted league wide—more on that shortly—Staley and his staff are borrowing more from modern basketball. It’s not only to use size to stress the limits of a defense physically, but also to space out that size to consistently disrupt the comfort of defensive backs. Size not only gives Los Angeles a margin for error, but it will also lighten the number of players defenses can put in the box, it will force defenses to constantly fear the deep shot (thus hampering their ability to cover option routes being run by the second and third wide receivers), it will result in more pass interference penalties called in its favor and, most notably, it will demoralize secondaries when the true reality of the situation hits. Quarterback Justin Herbert can put the ball almost anywhere, and if all of his receivers are bigger than all of the corners, he can almost certainly put the ball where your defense is not, even if the defense is playing it perfectly.
“Defensively, it becomes a lot more challenging when we’ve got a basketball team out there,” Staley says.
Williams put it more bluntly: “I don’t want to spill too much, but just know there’s going to be some numbers put up.”
