<\/p>\n
San Diego Chargers GM AJ Smith is like a high-school principal.\u00a0 <\/span>He\u2019s ultimately the one in charge but he\u2019s never in the classroom, so it\u2019s hard for the students to listen.\u00a0 <\/span>Recently when Smith called out the team via the media it was a tactic designed to motivate.\u00a0 <\/span>However, as with most things that AJ Smith does, it just ended up creating some hard feelings.\u00a0 <\/span>Shawne Merriman, the Judd Nelson of this high school drama, objected to Smith saying the team was \u201csoft.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>But Smith\u2019s more telling quote- \u201cWe’ve gained absolutely no ground over last year\u201d- suggested that while this rant might have hit some of the team it was more likely that Smith was aiming for the coaching staff.\u00a0 <\/span> Smith\u2019s track record includes firing Marty Schottenheimer coming off a 14-2 season, so presumably even Norv Tuner\u2019s 3 playoff wins might not be enough to save him.\u00a0 <\/span>With that in mind, lets lock ourselves in the library and start talking about who could be coaching the Chargers in 2010?\u00a0 <\/span> Jon Gruden<\/strong> Bucs fans would probably be more willing to watch Chucky lock their team up in the basement again rather than listen to him in the MNF booth.\u00a0 <\/span>For the good of football and football broadcasting, Gruden needs to be back on the sidelines.\u00a0 <\/span>And he has the track record that Charger fans should love: namely of taking a perennial-playoff-underachiever in Tampa Bay and winning the Super Bowl in his first year with the team.\u00a0 <\/span>Ultimately Gruden has the shelf-life of a 16-year-old pop singer but San Diego would be looking for someone who could win immediately, consequences be damned.\u00a0 <\/span>The only question would be if the Chargers really need an offensive head coach when it\u2019s the D that seems to be the weak spot.\u00a0 <\/span> Mike Shanahan<\/strong> Now that the George W Bush look-a-like money is drying up, surely Shanahan is looking to get back into coaching.\u00a0 <\/span>As with Gruden, Shanahan has plenty of experience within the AFC West- and that actually is a benefit because the AFC West is more incestuous than the MaMas and the PaPas.\u00a0 <\/span>Also like Gruden, Shanahan\u2019s weakness might be that he is too much an offensive guy.\u00a0 <\/span>The real strike against him is that he\u2019s never really succeeded without Elway.\u00a0 <\/span>He would be a big get for the Chargers- if they can peel him away from rewatching the America\u2019s Game<\/em><\/span> series over and over again- and he could really improve the rivalries with the rest of the West.\u00a0 <\/span>Ultimately, he might be more of a \u201cname\u201d than a \u201cwinner.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span> Tony Dungy<\/strong> AJ Smith wants the Chargers to be full of good character guys, all evidence to the contrary (steroids, DUIs, and getting shot by the cops.)\u00a0 <\/span>But if Smith is serious that he wants the Chargers to be the Upstanding Citizens of the NFL (aka the anti-Raiders) than Tony Dungy is his man.\u00a0 <\/span>In fact, even between the hashmarks Dungy is probably the ideal solution.\u00a0 <\/span>Hand him a good offense and he\u2019ll immediately turn the defense into a winner.\u00a0 <\/span>Of course if his blabbermouth stint on SNF is any indication, TMZ is more likely to keep a secret than Tony Dungy.\u00a0 <\/span>Last thing the Chargers need is for everyone to hear about how when Philip Rivers\u2019 head turns red they\u2019re running a slant, and if he spits when he audibles they\u2019re going deep. Marty Schottenheimer<\/strong> This would be bold, and frankly unfeasible; tantamount to Paul McCartney getting back together with Heather Mills (in case you were wondering, AJ Smith is Heather Mills in this example.)\u00a0 <\/span>But once you get past the fact that this will never, ever, not-in-a-million-years happen, it actually makes a lot of sense.\u00a0 <\/span>Marty took the Chargers from their bottom-dweller selves and turned them into contenders, and he did it the way he always does it- by making his team Tough.\u00a0 <\/span>MartyBall historically is run, run, pass, punt; but that is because he\u2019s never had the offensive tools that these Chargers have (don\u2019t forget, Antonio Gates set the touchdown record under MartyBall so he does know how to use this team.)\u00a0 <\/span>Marty could turn the Chargers offensive line back to the nasty pass-protectors they used to be, he could turn the defense into the hard-hitting ballhawks that they used to be.\u00a0 <\/span>If AJ is right, and the team is soft, Marty Schottenheimer is the one person in the world that could set them straight.\u00a0 <\/span> Bill Cowher<\/strong> The falling out with Marty makes it ridiculous to think that he would come back, but it also might make his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 unavailable too.\u00a0 <\/span>However, if somehow Bill Cowher were available, he would certainly be the closest thing on the market to Marty-lite.\u00a0 <\/span>As I mentioned earlier, even Marty found a way to take advantage of the weapons the Chargers have but Cowher is creative almost to a fault (remember the Kordell Stewart experiment?)\u00a0 <\/span>And for a team that has become maddeningly predictable on offense, adding some trick plays would cure more Charger ills than universal health care.\u00a0 <\/span>The thing about Cowher is that while he could help the offense he would also add that much needed toughness and aggressiveness to the defense.\u00a0 <\/span>For a team that has so many pass-rushers the Chargers seem to get little pressure on the QB.\u00a0 <\/span>Cowher lives in Carolina and presumably would jump at the Panthers, and as mentioned, the Chargers treatment of Marty is another hurdle they\u2019d have to overcome.\u00a0 <\/span>For him to come out to SD, the Chargers would have to make Cowher an offer he couldn\u2019t refuse.\u00a0 <\/span>They\u2019d have to throw money at him (and pay out Norv\u2019s contract) which is asking too much for the notoriously cheap Spanos family that owns the Chargers.\u00a0 <\/span>But more, to get Cowher, the Chargers would have to also give him full personnel control- in other words they\u2019d have to also fire AJ Smith (which, come to mention it, might be in itself a selling point for everyone ever associated with Schottenheimer.)\u00a0 <\/span> Just a few years ago, firing AJ Smith would have been sacrilege.\u00a0 <\/span>He had just come off two of the best drafts (\u201904 and \u201905) ever- getting Philip Rivers, Nate Kaeding, Nick Hardwick, Shaun Phillips, Michael Turner, Shane Olivea, Wes Welker, Malcolm Floyd, Igor Olshansky, Shawne Merriman, Luis Castillo, Vincent Jackson, Darren Sproles- that\u2019s 13 starters including 5 Pro Bowlers in just two drafts.\u00a0 <\/span>Even the \u201906 Draft netted two more Pro Bowlers (Antonio Cromartie and Marcus McNeil.)\u00a0 <\/span>However the last 3 drafts haven\u2019t quite lived up to the (ridiculously-high) standard that AJ himself set.\u00a0 <\/span>But isn\u2019t that the point- aren\u2019t we judging these picks way too soon?\u00a0 <\/span>Aren\u2019t Chargers fans judging this season way too soon (after all their two losses came on the road to the defending champs and were a 4th down conversion away from beating a very good Ravens team)?\u00a0 <\/span>Or have the many players that are in contract years (which is after all AJ\u2019s department) created an even shorter leash?\u00a0 <\/span>Have AJ\u2019s decisions- to dump Marty for Norv, to dump Brees for Rivers, to hire (then sheepishly fire) Ted Cottrell- created this atmosphere of immediacy and underachievement?\u00a0 <\/span> Merriman hit back at AJ Smith because he knows that his time with the team will be over soon, but if AJ\u2019s not careful, he might be out soon too.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even if you think it’s too early in the season to ask that question, you have to know that at some point it will be asked. Leaky Pipes just got to it first. And he made a list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3087"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3087"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}