The Los Angeles Chargers defense has been one of the league’s best so far this season. They are allowing just 13.2 points per game and are third in defensive EPA per play.
They are now preparing to take on surprisingly one of their toughest offenses of the season against the Arizona Cardinals on Monday Night football.
The Cardinals are not particularly a good offense. They are middle of the road by DVOA and EPA. But that is better than most of their competition so far. The only team better than the Cardinals that the Chargers have played is the Kansas City Chiefs. But with the Cardinals, it isn’t what they do on offense that makes them a threat to the Chargers. But rather how they do it.
Chargers Will Face The Most Explosive Team So Far
What makes the Cardinals different is their ability to create explosive plays. They are the 8th-ranked team when it comes to explosive play rate. The Chiefs are dead last. The most explosive team they have faced is the Broncos, who are four spots behind the Cards.
But the Broncos showed that if you stretch the field and have a quarterback who can scramble, that team can put the Chargers in a bind, especially because of the tremendous amount of injuries they have suffered in the secondary.
With Kyler Murray and Marvin Harrison Jr., the Cardinals can do both of those things. Harrison has the second-deepest average depth of target among high-volume receivers, 14.8 yards. 66 percent of his targets are passes of 10 yards or more.
What makes this even more challenging is the Chargers will be without Asante Samuel Jr., who is on injured reserve and could miss Kristian Fulton and Deane Leonard. Both outside corners missed practice on Thursday and Friday. This means rookie 5th-rounder Cam Hart or Eli Apple, who was signed on Thursday, may be forced to cover Harrison.
This will force the Chargers to play with deep safeties, limiting what Derwin James can do and forcing the linebackers to take on a bigger workload.
This is what the Broncos did in the back half of the game when they pulled out the stops in their offense and started airing it out, which opened up a lot of room for Bo Nix. While Nix is a fairly mobile quarterback, he is not Murray. Nix ended up leading the team in rushing yards.
Murray has rushed for 261 yards with the highest yards per attempt among quarterbacks. He has picked up 10 first downs with his legs and has 10 runs for 10 yards or more including four for more than 20 yards. Against San Francisco, he ran for a 50-yard touchdown.