On the surface, there are not very many reasons to expect Los Angeles to drop a third straight game this weekend with the lowly Bears on the schedule. But the Chargers have proven this season that anything is possible.
Here are four reasons to be worried on Sunday night.
Soft coverage
166 quarterbacks have taken at least 50 dropbacks in the NFL since 2012. Before the season, the lowest air yards per attempt among those players was Sean Mannion, who averaged 5.3 air yards in 130 snaps between the Rams and Vikings.
Tyson Bagent, in his 51 dropbacks, has averaged 3.7 air yards per attempt.
After being carved up underneath by the Cowboys and Chiefs in the last two weeks, the Chargers have to look in the mirror and see that their defensive strategy of playing off coverage is simply not working. That’s especially true when you pair their results with Bagent’s numbers: continuing to put LA’s corners off the ball only opens up opportunities for Bagent to play the game his way. That’s not a winning strategy against a rookie quarterback, especially not an undrafted Division II backup one.
If Los Angeles stays in their base defense, trying at all costs to prevent the big play with the threat of DJ Moore looming, the Bears could turn this game into a grimy, drag-it-out battle. That does not favor the Chargers.
Wide receiver injuries
Mike Williams had ACL surgery earlier this week. Joshua Palmer and Jalen Guyton are both questionable with knee injuries. Even Keenan Allen popped up on the injury report on Friday with a back injury, although he does not have an injury designation for the game. The only healthy receivers on the team are rookies Quentin Johnston and Derius Davis and gunner Simi Fehoko.
Struggling defense or not on the other side, that’s usually not a winning formula. Johnston has yet to develop any meaningful chemistry with Justin Herbert. Thrusting him into a WR2 role if Palmer can’t go could go a long way toward developing that, but it could also result in another blank stat sheet and struggles in moving the ball. Davis is nothing more than a gadget piece right now – asking him to play legitimate WR snaps is a losing proposition.
Even with Allen playing, he’ll likely draw the matchup with Bears corner Jaylon Johnson, who has been phenomenal this season. Johnson has allowed a 3.4 passer rating when targeted in 2023, the second-best mark in the league, with just a 29.4% completion percentage. Allen is a crafty enough player to get his, but Johnson will likely mitigate the impact LA’s best receiver has on Sunday. As of Friday, the Chargers must get creative to move the ball beyond him.
Run defense
Chicago has one of the worst pass rushes in the league, but their defense has been buoyed by an incredibly successful run unit this season. The Bears are fifth in rushing yards allowed at 82.3 and have yet to allow a 100-yard rusher this year.
Compare that to the Chargers, who are middle of the pack in rushing offense at 111.8 yards per game but have not produced a 100-yard rusher since Austin Ekeler had 117 in Week 1. Ekeler missed a chunk of time with an ankle injury and still seems a bit hindered, but Los Angeles has also struggled to block concepts cleanly and consistently this season. That’s been especially egregious at tight end, where Gerald Everett is nursing a hip injury. Outside of Everett, the Chargers’ options for blocking tight ends are uninspiring: Donald Parham has one functioning wrist, Stone Smartt and Tre’ McKitty have struggled, and practice squadder Nick Vannett has not played all season.
With the injuries at wide receiver, teams would typically tip the scales a bit more in favor of the run game to mask their issues as best as they can. But the Chargers, at least on paper, cannot afford to do that, which could make for quite the slog on offense. If it looks anything like the second half of the Chiefs game, Los Angeles could be in trouble.
Opposite directions
One of the great debates in sports is whether or not momentum is real, and how much it affects teams if it is. Sunday is shaping up to be one of the keystones in the argument for either side.
Chicago has won two of their last three behind a flashy Justin Fields performance against the Commanders and a dismantling of the Raiders with Bagent at the controls. While they’re just 2-5, the feelings around the team seem to have swung entirely in the opposite direction of where they were early in the season when general manager Ryan Poles had to tell assembled media that they “weren’t panicking” in Week 3.
It took the Chargers until Week 7 to get a quote about panicking – Justin Herbert said after Sunday’s loss to the Chiefs that “no one is going to panic” about the rest of their season. The Chargers have lost two straight coming out of the bye week, incinerating any scraps of goodwill they had earned back with sloppy wins over the Vikings and Raiders. The team isn’t on the same page about the amount of zone coverage they’re playing. Injuries force the offense to execute at immaculate levels to function correctly, and it feels like things are careening toward a messy, depressing winter.
The Chargers are the more talented team in Sunday’s matchup, but the Bears are on an upward trajectory compared to the nosedive LA is threatening to take. It’s another obstacle the Chargers must overcome to claw back into relevancy this season.
