One of the all-time greatest NFL teams didn't even make the playoffs | Dorktown

welcome back to door town I am John 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 [Music] first the offense there was everything to like about the 2010 Chargers offense it was led by a Philip Rivers an absolute rufus malukas who has never received all the credit he's deserved in 2010 he finished his third straight full season with the 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 conventions of his position along with Tony Gonzales Jason Witten and Shannon Sharpe gates established his heightened 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 10 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 do 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 Matthews and the perfectly spherical Mike Tolbert this made for the NFL's 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 at the best offense in football missed the playoffs their defense must have been really bad right 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 Shawn Phillips and a secondary featuring corner backs Quinton jammer and first year starter Antoine Kason along with safety Eric Weddle the 2010 Chargers D managed to put it all together they allowed the fewest passing yards and the fourth 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 2000 more yards than their defense allowed no one else that season was even in the same solar system generally speaking and as will 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 battles nearly always been the culprit and in that department the Chargers were a minus 6 certainly suboptimal but nowhere near bad enough to reconcile such overall dominance with whiffing on the postseason all together after all the Colts and Saints were down here too and they both cruised into the playoffs [Music] so the Chargers had the number one offense the Chargers had the number one defense and there wasn't anything as far as I turn overs or anything like that that would explain all this blowing up in their faces so what phase the game does that leave I think that leaves special teams John yeah my least favorite part of football it's all stupid sucks I hate it don't use a foot for anything abolish special teams altogether 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 in the closer you are the more time you get for sure anything else you wanted to get off your chest about special teams it doesn't deserve our time No and this is how it all fell apart [Music] here we see all 2327 plays that made up the charges 2010 season excluding extra point or two point attempts for nearly 45% of the season the Bulls 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 the Chargers season kicked off in Kansas City the back half of a Monday night week one double-header we're 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 Antwone 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 ciphers saving the touchdown four minutes later gunner Donald Strickland Dovid air long snapper David bin sort of just fell down in arena says general vicinity and linebacker Brandon Siler wasn't much more than an inconvenience and route to another lengthy return then near halftime the dam completely burst when Dexter McCluster wanted in on the fun San Diego over pursued let McCluster bounce it outside and from there his speed was simply too much for any charger to interrupt his journey to the endzone the Chargers lost by a touchdown after crushing the Jags to even up their record at 1 and 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 CJ Spillman and Strickland took shoddy attempts at bringing down Seahawks returned me and Leon Washington who then shook San Diego's terrified kicker Nate Kaeding to complete his hundred and one yard romp to pay dirt but behind rivers and their league best offense the Chargers rallied late with gates scoring a TD in the waning minutes followed by a 2 pointer that tied the game at 20 great shape as long as they don't allow a second touchdown off a kick for turn Washington hauls it in at his own one and after Holton Jacob Hester take large grasps at nothingness gets momentarily stood up amid a gaggle of Chargers only four none to bring him down then we can pinpoint the exact moment cating is considering a career change the Chargers lost by a touchdown they'd cruised the next week against the Cardinals then came a week five showdown in Oakland despite dominating the offensive and defensive portion of the proceedings they couldn't quite overcome the early twelve 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 sorry I'd like to butt in for just a second to talk about punt blocks punt blocks almost never happen there were only twelve across the entire 2010 NFL season naturally for these were suffered by the Chargers but what's most incredible is that these to punt blocks occurred on back-to-back drives the odds of this happening twice in a row on paper roughly forty two thousand one anyway after that game San Diego is leading the league in total offense with no one else particularly close coupled with an excellent defense their total yardage differential of plus 1078 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 owning Giants have so much has come within a hundred and fifty 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 and someone handed him a shovel a few minutes into their week six game in st. Louis Danny Amendola eluded Gunnar Richard Goodman and 42 yards later he'd set the Rams up in prime position for a chip shot field goal in the fourth quarter cating 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 out gaining their opponent by over a hundred and 25 yards in six of their seven games the only post murder team that's ever done so they were sitting there with a two and five record they rebounded down the stretch and started turning all these thorougly 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 [Music] 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 Kroy was shoved out there to start for the Chiefs so yes the Chiefs are 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 thirty-one zip it was the most lopsided shutout loss in the NFL that season the statistical profile this game is horrifying the Chargers held the Chiefs 2-0 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-nothing two ended six nothing and one ended in a scoreless tie this was a 31 nothing pounding the indignities did not stop there Croyle never started another NFL game his final career record as a starter was zero and ten and he would go down in history as the first quarterback of the Super Bowl era to start at least ten games and never win a single one this beatdown pulled the Chargers to 1 and 1 against the Chiefs on the season this met San Diego by virtue of their superior record within the division would have held tiebreaker if only they could have pulled even they never could but for one Sunday afternoon they took my poor football team and they broke him in half it was their only consolation when the postseason started the NFL's best offense and best defense were nowhere to be seen [Music] the NFL has been a 32 team league since 2002 - even ranked 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 - ranked 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 the 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 miss 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 pair to great defense with even a decent offense we're almost guaranteed to make the playoffs but only one of these teams ever put it all together look at all that day lie between the 2010 Chargers and the rest of the field no one ever really even came close to accomplishing what they did 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 out gaining their opposition by that much and their seasons each ended in the Super Bowl not even the 16 and OH Patriots of 2007 soared as high as these Chargers as four 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 1,400 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 Kasim Osgood who for years wasn't just their special teams leader in 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 who was in charge was there anyone in charge of special teams that year for the Chargers so there's 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 seasons in Cleveland so like a good coach he was he was totally a good coach 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 symptom someone 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 those may have been taken on the same day but 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 you see you can't smile if your coach 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 Phillip 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 it 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 cruder 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 so the more the better once you get higher in passer rating and then in red you see the guys who missed entirely yellow you see the guys who made a suit we won 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 he's probably the best quarterback and never to win one besides maybe Dan Marino and has to be the best quarterback to never even go to the Superbowl right not only is that true but he had a great shot to make the Super Bowl the season before this thirteen and three Chargers team and in their first playoff game what doomed them was two missed ship shot field goals by Nate Kaeding in a three-point loss so Phillip Rivers is far from done right and he's still got a few years left before you know age catches up to him I'm sure the charges 112 in for last season they figured it content again this year so I would say be a pretty good chance for a fairytale ending for these charters except we have mahomes now on the Chiefs so never mind sorry suckers [Music] hey y'all thank you for watching door town if you liked this video check out a few of our others also remember to Like share subscribe and tell all your friends about this video matter of fact share every video you have ever seen with everyone you have ever met thank you

Channel: Secret Base

Views: 1,350,857

Keywords: san diego chargers, los angeles chargers, philip rivers, nfl, antonio gates, football, 2010 chargers, best nfl teams, special teams, highlights, eric weddle, ladainian tomlinson, stats, nfl stats, philip rivers stats, afc west, super bowl, quarterbacks, aaron rodgers, steve young, peyton manning, tom brady, vincent jackson, ryan mathews, charts, football stats, statistics, sb nation, jon bois, dorktown, touchdown, punt return, nate kaeding, chargers special teams, norv turner

Id: UAL5X3TRA2A

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/MilesSanders-BirdBro]

sad lightning bolt noises

[u/king_zacarias]

JON BOIS

Jon Bois can make watching a 6 hour video on paint drying fun

[u/lavinshaven58]

They outscored their opponents that year by 119 points. Only 4 other teams had a higher point differential. Unfortunately the Chargers went 9-7 in 2010 and missed the playoffs. Meanwhile the Seahawks went 7-9 that season getting outscored by 97 points and beat the 11-5 Saints in a playoff game they got to host

[u/PM__ME__STUFFZ]

Not to be overly pedantic but wouldn't having bad special teams inflate and deflate the offensive yards gained and defensive yards allowed, kind of skewing the whole point. Obviously the team must have still been pretty good, but it seems like the difference between them and the #2 defensive yards allowed is more a factor of opponents consistently getting good punt returns and needing few yards on the return drive then skill? Or am I overthinking this?

[u/Warhawk137]

Ironically, 2 years earlier the Chargers beat the Colts in the playoffs based on the strength of their special teams - specifically, their punting. Here were the Colts' starting field positions off of punts: Own 10, Own 19, Own 3, Own 7, Own 9, Own 1.

[u/TDeath21]

Chargers gonna Charger. They were a 12 win team in 2017 with a kicker. Instead they missed the playoffs. Poor Philip.

[u/IseeNekidPeople]

A bad defense can and will totally scuttle a great offense, I'm sure Saints fans can tell you all about that.

And here I was having a nice time watching this video

[u/d36williams]

some of the worst special teams of all time

[u/EricDeCosta]

Hmmm let me guess... same team that led the league in total offense and defense in 2010? The same one that’s on the front page with this exact story?