Chargers week 3 snap counts

Week 3 ended up with another ugly game resulting in a 2nd bad loss in a row for the Los Angeles Chargers. With an injury to Adrian Phillips last week and Denzel Perryman being back to full health, there were some significant snap count changes on Defense this week, while the offense saw some smaller changes.

Offense

The Chargers wound up playing 10 more offensive snaps than they did in week 2. The first thing that you’ll notice is Sean Culkin and Lance Kendricks splitting snaps at about the same rate as Virgil Green and Culkin were. Green went down with an injury early and did not return, but the Chargers still kept a rotation between TEs and overall had basically the same % of offensive snaps with a TE on the field as in week 2.

One of the biggest changes this week was that Mike Williams saw a huge bump in usage. In weeks 1 and 2 Mike Will was on the field for 65% and 62% of the snaps respectively. In week 3 he was on the field for 93% of the snaps. The huge increase in percentage, combined with the fact that this game had 10 more plays on offense for the Chargers meant that he played 30 more snaps than he did in week 1 or week 2. This did get him a season high 7 targets (I think it’s actually 8 but his big catch near the end of the game got negated by penalty so I think that erases his target from the official numbers), but he only came down with 3 of them.

Forrest Lamp also saw a 50% increase in snaps!!! from 2 to 3...

Defense

Roderic Teamer, UDFA who made the 53 man roster and kept the Chargers’ streak of an UDFA making the roster alive, went from being inactive for weeks 1 and 2 to playing 100% of the defensive snaps for the Chargers at SS (listed as a CB on this chart, ignore that). He had a very mixed showing. He was tied with Thomas Davis for the team lead in tackles with 7 (6 solo), which was good to see, however he was consistently out of position in pass coverage and gave up some big catches, especially to the Houston TEs.

Denzel Perryman was back in the starting lineup this week. After playing 0 defensive snaps in weeks 1 and 2, Perryman jumped to 38 snaps this week. He wound up with 6 tackles (5 solo) and during the live watch of the game, didn’t look bad.

Unfortunately though, Perryman’s increase in snaps came at the cost of snaps for Kyzir White. White dropped to only 7 snaps this week. I just don’t get that at all. More on that in the AAR later today.

The Chargers found themselves in nickle a lot more this week which meant Desmond King saw an increase of 18 snaps this week over last week. Boy did he make the most of it. He blew up multiple screens, got a big time fumble recovery that he almost returned for a touchdown and set the Chargers offense up with fantastic field position and led to a score. He was all over the field.

Special Teams

Dontae Johnson saw a huge jump in special teams usage this week. After playing 4 special teams snaps in week 2 he lead the team tied with Nick Dzubnar for 23 snaps.

Jatavis Brown also saw his first action of the season. After being inactive in weeks 1 and 2, Brown was active over rookie Emeke Egbule this week and saw 11 special teams snaps.