I was sitting in Notorious Burger in Carlsbad when I saw Joey's first game with the Bolts. It was 2016, and the Chargers had been struggling to find a consistent defensive identity since the days Jamal Williams was playing a two-gap in Ron Rivera's 3-4 defensive front. Melvin Ingram and Corey Liuget were the defensive stalwarts of the unit but didn't quite have the juice to make the defense a truly threatening unit without some additional support.

Enter Joey—a prospect many said wasn't a scheme fit for the Bolts, given they were still in a 3-4 base alignment and Bosa's size and past experience made him a better fit in a 4-3 scheme. DeForest Buckner or Jalen Ramsey were names frequently mocked in his place, as they seemed to be safer bets in John Pagano's scheme.

Instead, on that Sunday night in my favorite burger bar, I thought I saw the resurrection of Chargers' defensive football for the first time since those Rivera days. Joey Bosa looked every bit like the "Big Bear" nickname bestowed upon him, leaping off the snap and mauling offensive tackles with relentless ferocity.

He only played 27 snaps that day, 20 being passing plays, and still managed 7 total pressures and 2 sacks. He was an absolute menace... and funny enough, his future teammate Khalil Mack was watching from the other sideline as this one-man wrecking ball wreaked havoc in the offensive backfield.

It was genuinely the most fun I'd had watching the Chargers play defense since Shawne Merriman was striking his "Lights Out" dance. The Bolts finally had a transcendent player again who made watching the defense just as exciting as the offense, bringing an impact that carried to all levels of the defense.

Joey's play was elite for the better part of a decade until the cumulative effect of an injury-plagued career finally took a toll on his body. He played through multiple injuries in 2021, managing 69 pressures and 10 sacks while commenting on how beat up his body felt and how many injuries he was trying to overcome.

In 2022, Joey got off to a hot start, with two sacks in the team's opener and 9 pressures in the first two games. A groin injury forced him out of Week 3, and he didn't make it back until Week 17. Although he initially claimed he was feeling back to 100% and better than he had in years while prepping for their Week 18 matchup against the Broncos, Joey reaggravated the groin and hip again against the Jaguars in the Wild Card round of the playoffs, leading to his infamous double-helmet throw on the sideline.

From there, it's been a quick descent for Joey Bosa, as his peak performance between injuries has still flashed his elite abilities, but at a less and less frequent rate. He finished the 2023 season with only 523 snaps to his name across the previous two seasons. Newly hired GM Joe Hortiz and Head Coach Jim Harbaugh managed to negotiate a pay cut with Joey to keep him in powder blue for one more season, and despite nearly matching the total snaps over the past two seasons, the 503 snaps he took in 2024 still positioned him as more of a solid rotational piece and less of an elite game-changer... making the $26 million Hortiz could save by cutting him in 2025 a no-brainer.