With the Chargers releasing Joey Bosa ahead of next week’s start to free agency, it gives us a glimpse of what the team is planning in the coming months.
No matter if you expected it to happen or not, the news of the Chargers releasing Joey Bosa was quite a shock to read when it broke late Wednesday evening. Why not? He was the last remaining member on the team from the San Diego Chargers following Keenan Allen’s trade last offseason and he was one year short of being with the team for a decade.
It’s incredibly sad to see an era like this come to a close, but the writing was unfortunately on the wall for Bosa’s fate this offseason unless there was a massive restructuring to his deal involving his 2025 cap hit. If left unchanged, Bosa was set to have a cap hit of $36.4 million. Now, the Chargers will save roughly $25 million towards their already-sizable cap space.
With Bosa now out, the Chargers edge rusher room currently employs third-year stud Tuli Tuipulotu, veteran Bud Dupree, and then a trio of former undrafted free agents in Tre’Mon Morris-Brash, Caleb Murphy, and Chris Collins.
This obviously does not look great, especially if Khalil Mack does not re-sign with the Chargers, but I’m here to tell you now that I think the release of Bosa all but guarantees Mack’s return.
No, I don’t have some crystal ball that’s feeding me these admissions, but it just makes plain sense knowing who is making the decision. The Chargers had a great defense under Jesse Minter in 2024 and I doubt Joe Hortiz and Jim Harbaugh are going to potentially blow up such a premium position after just one year.
In my opinion, the only reason the Chargers would not have worked towards a restructured deal with Bosa is if they knew that Mack was leaning heavily towards returning for another season. Otherwise, despite the injury history, they would have found a way to make Bosa work in their books to keep the floor fairly high.
As the longest-tenured Charger remaining on the team, we know Bosa would love to play his entire career in the powder blue. He essentially told reporters that earlier this year in January. But in the name of making this roster the best it can be going forward into 2025, the Chargers needed to remove him from the books, save roughly $25 million, and then go hand some of that cash to Mack to make sure he’s back for another go-round.
It just makes too much sense. Otherwise, I have a lot of questions.
Like, the first being how do they plan to build the edge rusher room back up into a solid group? Of course that means utilizing both the draft and free agency, but the team has plenty of other needs all the same.
Interior offensive line. Defensive tackle. Tight end. Wide receiver.
All of these positions need some juice and all of them have been mocked in the first round to the Bolts at one time or another. The free agent class is only so strong in so many areas, and the top players at two of the positions mentioned above were tagged in the last two weeks (Trey Smith and Tee Higgins).
Some notable names like edge rusher Josh Sweat and wide receiver Chris Godwin remain, so it’s not like the Chargers are totally out of options for what an ideal offseason would look like.
The return of Mack to the Chargers would immediately take edge rusher off of the list of positions they could use their first-rounder on. The edge group is deep enough that they could find a young piece late on day two or early day three. That leaves room for them to possibly land a top tight end and offensive guard/center, both of which is sorely needed to keep Herbert on his feet and protected in the most crucial of games.
So again, no crystal ball here, but I trust the moves by Harbaugh and Hortiz were made with the best possible future of the team in mind and that includes getting back one of the unit’s leaders from the past three seasons.