Brian Daboll is the fan-favorite to be the next head coach of the LA Chargers.
The LA Chargers have started their head coaching search and will end up interviewing 10-12 candidates when it is all said and done. Of those candidates, the name gaining the most traction with Charger fans is Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator, Brian Daboll.
All season Charger fans have been theorizing a dream scenario in which Daboll was hired by the Bolts to help aid in Justin Herbert’s development. We have gotten one step closer to that as NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported that the Chargers requested to interview the Bills’ offensive coordinator.
Is Daboll worth the buzz? Anthony Lynn also came over from the Buffalo Bills and was shortly their offensive coordinator as well and we all know how that ended up. Daboll has never been a head coach at any level — can we trust him to call the shots and run the LA Chargers?
In short, yes.
The things that Daboll has done with the Buffalo Bills offensive has been remarkable. He took over for the team in Josh Allen’s rookie year and instantly realized what Allen could and could not do early in his career.
It is no secret that Allen was inefficient and had serious holes in his game in the first two seasons. The offense was still not fantastic, but Daboll and the coaching staff built something around a raw, young quarterback that led them to the playoffs in 2019.
Then, things started to click for Allen and the Bills’ offense took off. The Bills ranked second in the league in points per game this season (31.3) and Allen looked like a legitimate MVP candidate. Allen, of course, deserves most of the credit for his progression but Daboll also deserves credit as well.
The difference between Allen in his first two seasons and his third season really is quite remarkable. He still had the intangibles in his first two years but he was nowhere close to the level he is now, let alone being a league-average quarterback.
His quarterback rating jumped from the 40s to the 80s. Football Outsider’s Defensive Yards Above Replacement is a good tool to measure overall quarterback efficiency. Allen ranked second to last ahead of only Josh Rosen in 2018, ranked seventh to last right behind Mitchell Trubisky last season and then jumped all the way to fourth this season.
Allen did the heavy lifting, Daboll is the one that put him in a good situation and nudged him on the right path.
Daboll might not have head coaching experience but he has coached under the best coach at both levels, which may help him in making the leap. He spent 11 years in two stints with Bill Belichick and spent the 2017 season on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama.
You could dissect Daboll’s tenures with teams such as the New York Jets, Cleveland Browns, Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs as reasons against hiring him. And while those teams were poor and did not have great offenses, the talent on those teams was also woeful and he did not really get an extended chance in any of those places to truly build something.
He has built something with this Bills offense. Now the job of the LA Chargers in the interviewing process is to vet out how much of that building was truly Daboll and how much was simply a huge year three jump for Josh Allen.
Just watching how the Bills have conducted their offense and the way that they played to Josh Allen’s strengths in his first two years and minimized the weaknesses, I feel safe in saying that Brian Daboll played a huge role.
Plus, he has a great name. We could call him Brian DaBolts. It is a match made in heaven. Let me know in the comments what you think about
Daboll
DaBolts.