SAN DIEGO, CA-OCTOBER-14: San Diego Chargers football team owner Dean Spanos and his son John Spanos follow the action against Indianapolis Colts at Qualcomm Stadium October 14, 2013 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
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Talent on team
A remark I hear often is about how the Spanos family is cheap and doest’t spend enough money on players. If the NFL was MLB then this might be true, but the NFL has a salary cap and teams are required to spend a certain amount of that. The league combined must spend 95 percent of the cap. So, there is no way to cheap-out and not spend money on players. You are required to.
The next factor in talent is the GM – the guy who drafts players, signs free agents and figures out how to arrange salaries to maximize the use of the salary cap. For me, this is the guy to blame for talent on the team. Many people think John Spanos is making all these calls, but I seriously doubt that. You don’t pay Tom Telesco a butt load of money to do nothing.
If we want to focus blame for talent on the team, put it on Telesco. Now some of that responsibility does go to Spanos for hiring Tom, but to be fair it should be like a 90-10 split as far as blame goes.
Coaches
Most of the same could be said about the GM and owners as far as coaches go, but this is one area where if the owners wanted to cheap-out they could. I’m not saying they did, I’m just saying they could. From what I have seen, the Chargers are trying to find the next great coach. They have consciously steered away from coaches with past head-coaching experience looking for a guy who is ready to make that jump to the next level. And while I would believe the owners might be a little more involved in choosing a head coach, I believe the majority of this decision falls on the shoulders of the GM, Telesco.
