The Los Angeles Chargers aren’t even one full off-season into their new regime’s rebuild, but it’s already been an impressive overhaul backed by a clear vision and plan. The invisible hand that guided much of Joe Hortiz’s decisions in his inaugural off-season was the compensatory formula, a carry-over from his time with the Baltimore Ravens, an organization that has been one of the biggest benefactor of the comp formula over the last decade.

The Chargers let five multiple-year starters starters walk in March, each which netted a humble compensatory pick offering. As it stands, Kenneth Murray is due to get the Bolts a fifth round comp pick, Gerald Everett and Austin Ekeler should net six rounders, while Michael Davis and Austin Johnson contributed 7th rounders that were cancelled out with the signings of Gus Edwards and Kristian Fulton.

An offseason season like this is likely to be the rule, not the exception. Hortiz has made it clear he wants to create a flow of compensatory picks. While five starters departing in one off-season may seem like heavy turnover, we’re likely going to see starters can key role-players departing every season under Joe to keep these draft annuities rolling.

The underlying theme for this strategy to be successful is for Joe to be successful – and selective – is identifying and retaining his “core” players, and building around them. It often means letting productive players in their prime hit free agency if his coaching staff believes they can adequately backfill the departing players production without a major dip in team performance.

The most intriguing Charger in his contract year this season is Asante Samuel Jr. There’s a solid argument that his ball-hawking skills would be an asset on any roster, and players like J.C. Jacskson and Trevon Diggs have shown that teams will be pay a hefty ransom for cornerbacks that create turnovers. He’s had stretches of dominant CB1-worthy play, where he not only is a ever-present threat to get his hands on the football, he’s also locking top receivers down.

Where Samuel Jr’s future with the Chargers gets complicated is he has largely been responsible for blown run coverage in back-to-back seasons, in 2021 and 2022, where costly mistakes and gap discipline were largely responsible for the Raiders and Jaguars game-winning drive heroics.

Doug Pederson specifically schemed against Asante Samuel Jr. in the run gam, as Benjamin Solak illustrates here, and even in a three interception game, Asante still had plays that directly tied to the Jags keeping the game within reach and ultimately winning the game.

This puts Jim Harbaugh, Jesse Minter, and Joe Hortiz in a very unique and difficult situation. Joshua Queipo and I recently wrote an article for A to Z Sports as part of a large project projecting the market for various extensions around the league. After researching the various cornerback contracts, here was my ultimate conclusion (but it would certainly support me and the work I do with A to Z if you check out the whole article here):

Zont’s lack of accolades despite his knack of generating turnovers will drop him to a tier below Trevon Diggs. The gap between Zont and Diggs is similar to that between Jamel Dean and Jaylon Johnson; Dean has a similar catch rate allowed and lower yards allowed per coverage rep than Jaylon Johnson, but Johnson’s single-year of shutdown excellence earned him accolades and notoriety that distanced him from Dean’s crowd.

If Zont tries to get a similar ball-hawk bump over Dean’s valuation as Diggs has over Johnson, the Chargers’ brass can simply point to the fifth year attached to Diggs’ deal that significantly hurt his future negotiating leverage. There’s also a sizable gap from Diggs’ 17 picks and Zont’s 9 – the Chargers will be bidding with some projection to bring a deal together. Dean and Johnson’s deals set the cap-share bracket between 5.78-7.44%, with Zont landing around 6.5% as a happy medium between the two.

Final Contract Projection: 4 four years, $66,400,000 million – $28 million fully guaranteed

The contract Joshua and I estimated landed at an APY of $16.6 million.

The question becomes – will Harbaugh, Minter, and Hortiz pay that size of a contract for a cornerback that has been good-to-great in coverage, but a major liability against the run? Doing so would seem contradictory to the moves they have made since joining the Chargers.

Alternatively, does this make Samuel Jr. a candidate to walk in the offseason for an APY that would likely be worth a 4th round compensatory pick? Doing so would likely prevent the Chargers from signing a top-tier compensatory free agent in a year where they’ll have extra finances, as they’ll want to protect that comp pick from the cancellation chart.

Lastly – would the Chargers be smart to franchise tag Samuel Jr and keep him around for at least one more year? The added year could give him time to add that nose for gap-filling that he’s missed previously, and could also give the Chargers flexibility to trade him in the 2025 offseason or in-season if they can get better value than what the compensatory formula would bring.

What do you think, StormCloud? Do you think the brass will opt to find a more well-rounded replacement, or stick with ASJ and make him a core member of this roster?