San Diego Chargers Fire Ted Cottrell

National Football League Blogcast, NFL Blogcast

On the heels of a 37-32 loss to the New Orleans Saints at London’s Wembley Stadium this past weekend (NFL International Series), the San Diego Chargers fired defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell and promoted linebackers coach Ron Rivera to take his place effective immediately. Chargers head coach Norv Turner made the announcement at an afternoon presser today:

“There are a lot of things that went into the decision. There are areas that we just have to play better and we have to improve. Over the next 10 days those are the areas that we are going to address. Hopefully we can not only show improvement right away but continue to improve over the next eight games.”

I realize the loss of linebacker Shawne Merriman for the rest of the season was a tremendous blow to coach Cottrell’s troops, but there’s simply too much of a discrepancy between the offense and the defense to not make a drastic change. The Chargers are tied for second in points scored with 28/game but they give up a little more than 25 while ranking near the bottom of the league defensively in yards allowed. I mean, San Diego hasn’t exactly been an offensive juggernaut every week, but they’ve lost games they scored 24, 32 and 38 points in. Even without Shawne, the defense is talented and thus underachieving. If the Bolts have any chance of coming back from a 3-5 start, they’ll need to improve the defense and they’re hoping this is the first step.