All Ball Sports: Rams, Chargers in the playoffs: a sure thing
by Paul Teetor
Parley bets – betting that two, three or even four separate things will happen at the same time in the same game or games – are increasingly popular as corporate gambling takes over the sports world sucker bet by sucker bet.
There are so many variables – player injuries, travel snafus and coach’s moods – that it’s hard enough to win a simple bet that the Lakers will win a game by X number of points or lose a game by Y number of points. To bet that they will win a game against the Golden State Warriors and that LeBron James will outscore Steph Curry and that the two teams combined will score more or less than 250 points – known as the over/under — is even harder to do successfully.
That’s why parley bets pay off so big when they do actually hit: most of the time the bettors lose big because the odds are stacked against them, and the house – also known as a gaming company like FanDuel or ESPNBet – wins even bigger.
But here’s one parley bet that a smart Angeleno could have made a bundle off if they had placed it back in August or September: that both the Rams and Chargers would make the NFL playoffs, which start next weekend.
And they could have won even more if they stipulated that both teams would make the playoffs before the last game of the regular season. But that is exactly what happened last Saturday when both the Rams and Chargers won to clinch a spot in the playoffs with a 10-6 record and one more week to go. Then on Sunday the Rams lost to the Seattle Sea Hawks to finish 10-7 and the Chargers beat the Raiders to finish 11-6.
The Chargers will play the Houston Texans on Saturday and the Rams will host the Minnesota Vikings Monday night.
Before the season started, way back in September, the Rams were the safer bet to make the postseason. They had made the playoffs last season with a 10-7 record, where they lost in the first round to old friend Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions. And they won the Super Bowl three years ago on their home field at SoFi Stadium. So there was a reasonable chance the Rams would advance to the playoffs once again this season.
It was the Chargers who were the longest of long shots to make the playoffs. They finished with a horrendous 5-12 record last season that got Coach Brandon Staley fired – after All ball had called for him to be fired on three separate occasions over his three years with the Chargers. The man simply was an awful head coach and never should have been given the position.
There are really only two kinds of coaches in the brutal, Darwinian, win-or-get-fired world of pro football. First, there’s the nerdy genius type guys who spend all their time dreaming up exotic offenses that can’t be stopped and brick-wall defenses that are so complex you don’t know what scheme they’re running in a particular game until you watch the game film and dissect it play by play. This type of coach watches hours and hours of game film, searching for any little flaw or vulnerability that they can attack come the actual game.
That’s the kind of coach Staley was – a defensive genius who had no clue about how to reach players on a human level because he never played in the pros and knew nothing about the experience. He had no clue about how to inspire them and how to motivate them through methods other than the fear of being cut and losing their huge salary. He lost the locker room early on in his tenure because he never really had it, never had the respect of his players.
Staley also had no clue about running an offense. He had one of the top three quarterbacks in the game in Justin Herbert – slightly behind only Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Buffalo’s Josh Allen – and he used him so much as a passer that defenses were able to bun-rush him on every important play because they knew the Chargers weren’t going to run the ball when it really mattered.
As a result, Herbert frequently got hurt and the defense usually ran out of gas. This trend climaxed in the first round of the 2023 playoffs when Herbert passed them to a 27-0 lead over Jacksonville only to watch helplessly as Staley’s defense fell apart and they ended up losing the game 31-30 thanks to some chicken-shit late-game decisions by Staley.
That playoff collapse was so disastrous that everyone knew Staley was a dead coach walking his next and final season unless he got to the playoffs and advanced at least one round.
But sure enough the team finished 5-12, out of the money and out of the playoffs, and he was immediately fired.
Enter Jim Harbaugh, who represents the other basic prototype for pro football coaches: a big, tough, strapping former quarterback who played in the NFL for many years and has natural leadership qualities that command the respect of his players.
He already was a successful head coach in the NFL with San Francisco, and then he went to the University of Michigan where he coached the Wolverines to the National Championship last January. He was riding high and was smart enough to head back to the NFL when he had all the leverage.
The Spanos family, which owns the Chargers, was smart enough to recognize that they were blowing it with Herbert as he entered his prime years. He had broken all of Dan Marino’s records for a quarterback’s first four years in the NFL, but had nothing to show for it in terms of post-season success. They needed to make a radical change before it was too late.
Harbaugh, with his experience as a college and pro quarterback, was the perfect coach for Herbert at this crucial point in his career. Calling all the shots on the field and in the front office, Harbaugh cut loose the two high-priced veteran receivers – Keenan Allen and Mike Williams – who had helped Herbert set all those records. Then he drafted wide receiver Ladd McConkey in the second round, and the sure-handed rookie immediately became Herbert’s go-to target.
Then he went out and told the press that Herbert was not only one of the best quarterbacks in the league, but one of the best ever. And he had the statistics to back up that assertion – all except the post-season success a quarterback has to have to validate his individual performance.
It’s not fair, but that’s just the way it is.
And he maximized Herbert’s value in a counter-intuitive way: he had Herbert handing off the ball more than in the past and passing the ball less than in the past. That accomplished two goals at once: it took the pressure off Herbert to pass 40-50 times a game with the defensive front-four bull-rushing him every time, and it established a ground game to give the Chargers a tough-guy identity that would carry them through November, December and January – and hopefully even February, when the Super Bowl is played.
Now that would be one hell of a parley bet – the Rams vs. the Chargers in the Super Bowl.
That’s a bet All Ball would gladly make.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com ER