The LA Chargers have a very talented roster heading into the 2022 season that is poised to make a deep playoff run. Ranking the most talented players on the team is already a hard thing to do, so what if we raise the bar and try to rank the most important players on the roster?
Our friends over at the Guilty as Charged Podcast recently did this thought experiment with the 10 most important Chargers on a recent YouTube live stream. Old Bolt Beat writer Steven Haglund had a shocking inclusion at no. 1 that you must check out and it inspired us to put together our own list as well, narrowing it down to the five most important players on the Chargers in 2022.
Let's start with no. 1, as he is the most obvious on this entire list.
The 5 most important players for the Chargers' success in 2022:
1. Justin Herbert
Justin Herbert is the rightful no. 1 when it comes to being the most important player on the LA Chargers. Granted, the quarterback position naturally is the most important on the entire roster, so just being a QB does a lot of the heavy lifting for Herbert's case.
The Chargers are a Super Bowl contender because of Justin Herbert. The front office went all in because of Justin Herbert. If Herbert would have been a bust then there are guys on this list that might not even be on the Chargers as the Bolts would not have been as aggressive, and instead would have looked towards the future.
If you take Justin Herbert off of the 2022 Chargers and replace him with Easton Stick or Chase Daniel then the team, despite having a lot of talent, would win five games at the absolute most. The Bolts will only go as far as Herbert will take them.
2. Derwin James
The most important player on the Chargers is the quarterback and the second-most important player is the quarterback of the defense. Derwin James is the life and soul of the defensive side of the football for the Chargers and if the team is going to accomplish what it is capable of on defense then it needs Derwin James to play and be healthy.
Granted, the defense was one of the worst in the league last season with James being mostly healthy but without him, it could have been much worse. Not only was James moving around the defense and making plays happen but he was operating as the green dot, essentially being Brandon Staley's right-hand man out there on the field.
If James was not on the team last season then the Chargers may have not even finished with a .500 record despite how good the team was offensively. Heck, the Chargers lost the second game against the Kansas City Chiefs primarily because James got hurt.
While there is a lot of talk about how the Chargers should have taken the point against the Chiefs, the fact of the matter is that James was shutting down Travis Kelce and the second he stopped playing is when Kelce went off. Kelce and Patrick Mahomes won that game for the Chiefs late and with Derwin out there, things would have been different.
Yes, there are new pieces on the defense that were brought in to elevate that side of the football from where it was a year ago, but the leader remains the same. The Chargers are 21-14 when James plays an entire game and are 12-18 when he doesn't play.
3. Rashawn Slater
Charger fans have had to watch some really bad offensive line units over the years and things have finally started to change in the 2020s. Justin Herbert's rookie season was a mess and that was an eye-opener for the Chargers, who have since poured in resources to rebuild the offensive line with Brandon Staley as the head coach.
The centerpiece of that offensive line rebuild is none other than left tackle, Rashawn Slater. While the Chargers also signed an All-Pro in Corey Linsley, Slater is going to go down as the foundational piece of this offensive line for his youth and immediate success in the league. As long as the Chargers are smart, Slater will go down as one of the best tackles in franchise history.
His importance to the Chargers also hinders on Justin Herbert's importance to the team. While Herbert showed that he can throw under pressure and is one of the best in the league at doing so, it is still less than ideal to have your quarterback pressured.
Fans are still having nightmares about Maxx Crosby absolutely torching Storm Norton on the right side of the offensive line in Week 18 last season. Now just imagine if Slater were to go down and the Chargers had to play a player of Norton's caliber at left tackle. It would be an absolute mess for the team.
Slater is not just a pass-blocker, either. A lot of the Chargers' success comes from successful RPO reads and having high-efficiency rushing attempts when they do choose to run the football. Slater is also a really good run blocker, which makes that offensive vision possible.
4. J.C. Jackson
J.C. Jackson was the biggest signing that the LA Chargers made this offseason and it is undeniable that he is extremely important to the team's success next season. Is he the most important player on the Chargers? No he is not. But outside of Derwin James, Jackson is the most important player on the defensive side of the ball for the Chargers.
The run defense got most of the blame for the defense's struggles last season and rightfully so. LA had one of the worst run defenses in the entire league and this run defense is what allowed teams to have short third-down attempts, which in turn, led to a horrible third-down stop rate for the Bolts.
That being said, the secondary was not very good, either. Michael Divas took a step back, Asante Samuel Jr. was hurt for a lot of the season and Chris Harris Jr. simply was not good. Tevaughn Campbell played a big number of snaps and he was exposed nearly every single game.
Replacing what the Chargers got last season in the secondary with what they will get this year, led by Jackson, is such a big deal. Jackson is going to have a domino effect on the secondary that will make his teammates better even when he is not the one making the plays on the football.
And when he is the one making the plays on the football he is going to do a great job. The Chargers have struggled with takeaways for awhile now and in Jackson they signed one of the best interception artists in the entire league. That is important.
But again, if we are going back to the thought process of removing a player from the roster and seeing what the record would be, Jackson has to be ranked below the other three on this list. A Chargers team without Herbert, James, or Slater is still worse than a Chargers team without Jackson.
5. Joey Bosa
I love the Guilty as Charged guys. We have collaborated several times and had our fair share of debates on social media about the Chargers. The one thing I cannot wrap my head around about their lists is the fact that two of the three didn't include Joey Bosa at all in their top-10 lists. I know it is easy to fawn over the new players, but c'mon fellas!
Yes, Khalil Mack is going to be very important to the LA Chargers and there are several other players who are very close to snagging this fifth spot. You could make a case for Corey Linsley, Sebastian Joseph-Day and Mack. At the end of the day, Bosa is still more important.
I know that this list looks woefully close to simply being a "five most talented" players list but the fact of the matter is that the more talented players are typically more important. Yes, there are the role players like Joseph-Day, Asante Samuel Jr. and even Gerald Everett who could make this list if we expanded it. When it comes to the top five, though, it is hard to argue against these five.
Joey Bosa makes an undeniable difference on the defensive line and there is a case to be made that we have not even seen the best version of him yet. Bosa has been elite thus far but he is still only going to be 27 next season and has legitimate Defensive Player of the Year potential.
Most Super Bowl-winning teams have two foundational things in common: they have a great quarterback and they have the ability to generate pressure on the opposing quarterback without blitzing.
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As great as it is that the Chargers will be better at stopping the run, their true ceiling lies in how well they can get to the quarterback. How well they can get to the quarterback starts with how well Joey Bosa plays.