What One Move Should the Chargers Have Made in the Offseason?

The SB Nation NFL team sites will be doing theme weeks all throughout the 2017 NFL season. This week’s theme is: “What would your team do today if they could go back and change one move they made in the offseason? Would it instead be a move or addition they didn't make?”

There are a lot of possible ways you could go with this question. The Los Angeles Chargers are 2-4 through six weeks with two tough matchups coming before their bye week, so there is obviously plenty of room for improvement on the offseason they just had.

You could go for the simple fix and say the team should have kept Josh Lambo instead of rolling into the regular season with the untested Younghoe Koo. In theory, the Chargers could be 4-2 and 2-1 in the division had they simply had a kicker who could make kicks in the first quarter of the season. That ignores the fact that Lambo was not great and there is no guarantee that he would have made the kicks that Koo missed. Also, one of those missed kicks was due to a breakdown in the blocking that resulted in a blocked kick.

You could look for a Mike linebacker in the draft instead of Mike Williams or Forrest Lamp who have combined for one game played through six weeks. Denzel Perryman has not been meaningfully replaced while he has been sidelined due to injury and maybe having a defense that could stop the run would have made Koo’s misses irrelevant. Although, if you are looking at fixing the run game, it might be more prudent to look at finding a Brandon Mebane replacement.

Those ideas all have merit, but I think the right answer is the one that is most forward-looking. The Chargers should have taken a quarterback with the No. 7 overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft. Philip Rivers is nearing the end of his career whether we are ready to say goodbye or not. Deshaun Watson already looks like a franchise-changing player for the Houston Texans and it’s hard to imagine a future as bright as the one the Chargers would have if he was backing up Rivers right now. It might not have helped this year, but maybe it would have. Look at how Alex Smith is playing knowing that Patrick Mahomes is ready to take his job if he stumbles. Or, hey, maybe the Chargers should have taken Mahomes and had the added effect of taking that motivation from the division rival’s quarterback.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.