Grading the Los Angeles Chargers’ free agency signings

4. Signing Linval Joseph

The Los Angeles Chargers have had their struggles stopping the run for years. It hasn’t helped that the team has essentially had a revolving door at linebacker, but they haven’t really had a consistent run-stuffing nose tackle in a long time either.

Mebane played admirably but frankly, the team needed more production at the position. They should get all that and more with the signing of Linval Joseph, formerly of the Minnesota Vikings. Joseph came to terms with the Chargers on a two year, $17 million deal.

Joseph can be a game wrecker at times. Players of his size and position aren’t typically very productive because they are taking on double teams all game long, but Joseph has been a disruptive force his whole career. He has over 500 tackles, 24 sacks and 50 tackles for loss in his 10-year career. That is incredible production for someone at his position.

If Justin Jones and Jerry Tillery can each take a leap forward this year, the Chargers should have a much more productive trio of defensive tackles then they’ve ever had. If they are to create more turnovers as a unit, they need to also create more pressure up front and the addition of Joseph should help in that regard as well.

He’s basically averaged three sacks and eight quarterback hits per season over the course of his career. Mebane only registered three sacks and ten quarterback hits total in his four seasons as a Charger.

So while this isn’t as big of an upgrade as going from Tevi to Bulaga, this still represents a big upgrade for the Chargers. Getting him for an average cap hit of $8.5 million is also very good value.

Grading the signing: B+

Linval Joseph showed us that big man 40 times matter. Shout out to this legendary TD. pic.twitter.com/DlfP9Chhic

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) March 13, 2020