Brandon Staley saves his job with comfortable Chargers win over the Bears

For the first time since becoming the head coach of the LA Chargers, Brandon Staley coached against his former team, the Chicago Bears. With a loss to the Bears, the Chargers also would have likely been a former team, as speculation was flying that Staley would get fired if the Chargers lost on Sunday Night Football.

The Chargers were able to keep that speculation from becoming a reality as the team comfortably put away the Bears in front of a national audience. Fans were worried that the Bolts would blow it in this spot, but it was a relatively easy showing for Staley's team.

Los Angeles moves to 3-4 on the season and while it still isn't anywhere where the team expected to be, this record is enough to buy Brandon Staley's job security. It won't just buy him one week of job security, though, as Staley may have secured the rest of the season.

Brandon Staley may avoid being fired by Chargers after beating Bears

For those that do not know, the Chargers historically do not fire head coaches during the season. The Chargers haven't fired a head coach midseason since the 1998 season. Even when all was going wrong in 2020 the Bolts allowed Anthony Lynn to finish the year.

It would take a truly embarrassing loss against a sub-optimal team for ownership to convince itself that Staley needed to get the boot. A really bad Bears team, who is starting a rookie quarterback who wasn't even in Division 1 last season, would have been such a loss.

Instead, the Chargers inched closer to .500 and that will probably be the story of the entire season. The Bolts are obviously good enough to beat bad NFL teams but are not coached well enough to beat good NFL teams. Los Angeles has a mixture of both types of teams down the stretch.

It seems likely that this will be a recurring theme for the Chargers. The team will fall into a hole that seemingly gets Staley's seat red hot, then will dig out of that hole enough to keep him around but not actually put the team in a playoff position.

Regardless, it was a good four quarters of football for the Chargers and hopefully, it can be something that the team builds on for the rest of the season.