Los Angeles Chargers’ biggest strength has been a huge weakness

For the second year in a row, the Los Angeles Chargers have started the season with a 1-2 record and have done so with some pretty disappointing play.

Just like last season, the Los Angeles Chargers are 1-2 through three games in 2019. However, unlike last season, the losses that the Chargers have suffered have been gut-wrenching, whereas last year they were at least understandable.

Last year, the Chargers lost to the Los Angeles Rams and Kansas City Chiefs, who were two of the three best teams in terms of regular-season record. While it was still a bummer to be 1-2, it was understandable.

The same cannot be said this year as the team has losses to the Detroit Lions and Houston Texans. The Lions appear to be better than the terrible team we all expected and the Texans are a playoff-caliber team, but those were both winnable games.

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Both games came down to the Chargers driving down the field and in opponent territory, only for it to fall short. Both games saw its own myriad of mistakes and both games saw the Chargers lead at halftime.

The Los Angeles Chargers lost those games in the most Chargers way possible. That we have seen throughout the years. What we haven’t seen, at least in terms of the last two seasons, is a bad pass defense, which has been the team’s strength.

Through three games this year, it is clear that the Chargers’ biggest strength has been a huge weakness.

Granted, the team is battling injuries and is running guys out there that they normally would not run. Derwin James, Trevor Williams, Adrian Phillips and Michael Davis are all hurt, with the first three all being on the injured reserve.

Some guys have stepped up in their absence, such as safety Rayshawn Jenkins, but overall, it has been ugly for the Chargers.

Jacoby Brissett was able to be fairly successful against the Chargers in Week 1 and continually targeted one man on the far side of the field: that man being Brandon Facyson. That first game was a starting point for what has been an awful three games for Facyson thus far.

In what would normally be Williams or Davis’ role, Facyson has ranked 73rd in coverage rating on Player Profiler, has allowed two touchdowns and has an 81.8 percent catch rate, which ranks 72nd.

Facyson has just been one part of a secondary that has underperformed. The Chargers only rank in the middle of the pack in terms of passing yards allowed, so that doesn’t seem too bad, but they have also played two mediocre quarterbacks.

And when it came down to getting key stops the defense was unable to come up big.

A perfect indication of how bad the secondary has been can be seen in the defensive line numbers. Despite having the best edge-rush combo in the league, the Los Angeles Chargers have the third-fewest sacks in the league with four.

The secondary is not the only area that is burning the team as the offensive line has been particularly bad, but we kind of expected that, especially with Russell Okung out.

When the team gets healthy down the stretch then they will likely flip the script on this and return to being one of the best secondaries in the league. We just have to hope that the team stays afloat until then.