LA Chargers Week 2 overreactions: Is the run defense a serious problem?

3. The LA Chargers have a penalty problem

This is where most fans will probably disagree with me. Yes, I do agree that the officiating has been terrible in both games and that the LA Chargers definitely got the worse end of the stick in both games.

That being said, the officiating is pretty awful around the league and the Chargers are not the first team nor are they the last to be hurt by bad calls. The referees have no agenda against the Chargers. Jerry Jones did not pay off the refs. It was a bad day, plain and simple.

And while there were bad calls, it was not like the Bolts were doing themselves a favor, either. It is a popular take to just blame the refs for all of the penalties but a lot of the calls in this game were correct.

And guess what? When a team is getting penalized so much to start the game, and those are justified, then a referee may subconsciously penalize that team more because of how the game has been going. The refs were bad and deserve blame but that does not resolve the Chargers of any blame.

This is a new operation in LA and with so many of the starters not playing in the preseason I am not surprised to see all of the penalties that we are seeing. That being said, the team absolutely has to clean it up or they are not even going to be a .500 football team this season.

Brandon Staley should not be blamed yet, but let's also not pretend like most fans wouldn't be outraged at Anthony Lynn if this was him instead of Staley. Staley is going to have to rally the troops and get them to get their act together or it will start to be a reflection of the coaching staff.

Verdict: Not an overreaction (hopefully will prove us wrong)