The wisdom of moving two NFL teams to LA, a city that doesn’t have a huge appetite for professional football, still looks shaky with both teams struggling to sell out their stadiums. On the field, however, it could easily be argued that the city has the two most complete teams in football – and an all-LA Super Bowl in February isn’t out of the question.
What’s more the Chargers and Rams are eerily similar in terms of output. Both teams are led by their offenses: the Rams rank second in offensive DVOA, the single best measure of offensive success, while the Chargers are third.
Both teams are marshaled by quarterbacks putting up MVP-caliber years. Let’s start with the Chargers. Nobody plays the position like Phillip Rivers, who brings a dash of swagger, mixed with a hint of ferocity, and a stunning lack of athletic ability. This season we’ve seen the best version of Rivers, who turns 37 in December, since his early days. He can figure out any defense if he sees it often enough, and there’s nothing a defensive coordinator can chuck at him he hasn’t seen a million times. What’s more, the pieces around him have kept Rivers looking young. He has explosive wide receivers, an electric running back, and a solid offensive line.
The Rams, meanwhile, have Jared Goff, part of the next generation of great quarterbacks. Like Rivers, Goff is surrounded by a batch of leapers at wide receiver, a dynamic running back (who, for reasons which remain unclear, is garnering some MVP buzz), and an utterly dominant offensive line, perhaps the very best in the NFL. Sometimes you just know a player has made a mini-leap, and Goff has become more refined this season. His completion percentage is up, his yards per completion have ballooned, and his total yards per game are up by almost 50. Goff has always been blessed with a rapid release and awareness, a byproduct of the survival skills he was forced to learn in college (at Cal, Goff was sacked more than any quarterback in college football history).
Indeed, the Rams’ offense has become one of the league’s darlings. They use innovative tactics, a power run-game, quick-strike passing attack, and are unafraid to launch the ball downfield. Players often appear wide-open through play design; defenses look discombobulated by all the pre-snap movement. Just like … the Chargers.
The similarities continue on the other side of the ball, too. The Rams defensive front reads more like an All-Pro list than a team’s roster and their secondary is equally loaded. The Chargers bring Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram to the party, the best edge-rushing duo in the league and their secondary is also dynamite. Derwin James has been the best rookie in the league this year by a pretty considerable distance – he sits above Aaron Donald and Khalil Mack in the percentage of quarterback dropbacks he’s disrupted. I’m not even sure how that’s possible for a safety.
And for the Rams, there’s Donald, a one-man force-field for a defense just about guaranteed to rank in the top five in every major defensive category. Ndamukong Suh and Michael Brockers are chucked in for good measure. The Rams lead the league in pressure percentage, bringing pressure on a whopping 40% of snaps.
There is, of course, one discernible difference between the two teams: people actually care about the Rams. That’s not just in Los Angeles, by the way. You can’t move for TV slots about head coach Sean McVay’s greatness (all true; all earned). Would you even know his Chargers counterpart, Anthony Lynn, if you bumped into him in the street? LA loves winners, so they say. Well, the Chargers are winning and nobody seems to care, nationally or locally. The Chargers are deemed sneaky good, when in fact they’ve been flat-out great.
How many Chargers fans do you see in this image of a Chargers home game pic.twitter.com/F97c2YiQuu
— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) September 9, 2018
The problem for the Chargers is that McVay’s Rams are on another level, a true juggernaut playing in colors the city actually cares for. In contrast, the Chargers are playing in a soccer stadium, the LA Galaxy’s StubHub Center, and sparse crowds make it look like they’re on the road rather than at home. Scenes from games against the Chiefs and 49ers were embarrassing, with opposing fans far outnumbering people supporting the Chargers. Rivers had to use a silent count at home – think about that for a second.
All this has helped the Chargers slot comfortably into the younger brother role. They’re the Clippers to the Lakers. But unlike the Clips, the Chargers are at least competent, on-the-field anyway.
A Super Bowl isn’t scheduled to return to LA until 2022 when the Chargers will be the Rams’ tenant at the soon-to-be-named-by-a-sponsor stadium. But the Lombardi trophy could – probably should – make a return before then. The Rams are the favorites but don’t sleep on that pesky younger sibling. The Rams have a cleaner path: they should have home field advantage; the NFC isn’t as stacked. The Chargers might not even have the best record in their division, such is the power of Kansas City’s offense. Then there’s the small matter of the Patriots to deal with.
Heading into Week 8, the Chargers are 5-2, the Rams 7-0. An all Los Angeles Super Bowl could be on the cards. Fans best start paying attention, because the best football in the sport is being played in the league’s dream destination.
