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Brandon Staley defended his choice to play the starters in Sunday’s game.

Sunday night saw a match between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Denver Broncos. As the Chargers have already secured their No. 5 seed position in the upcoming AFC playoffs, there wasn’t really any need to go at this game with all guns blazing. Even so, Coach Brandon Staley made the somewhat-controversial decision to play all of the team’s starters against the Broncos. Not only could this potentially stress the team ahead of a much more important game, but they ultimately lost 28-31, which cast him in a bad light. Nevertheless, Staley stayed firm in his position.

“These aren’t easy decisions,” Staley said after the game. “They’re not easy decisions and hindsight is perfect for everybody on the outside, but these games are not easy to manage. They’re not, because you don’t have that many players and we did it to the best of our ability.”

#Chargers HC Brandon Staley decided to play the starters despite being locked in their playoff spot.#BoltUp

WR Mike Williams had a back injury and had to be carted off. He could face some heat if the Chargers don't fair well in the playoffs. pic.twitter.com/ZdnGQ2J50o

— NFL Rumors (@nflrums) January 9, 2023

“We were trying to compete in the game and we only have 48 guys on the team that are active for the game,” Staley added. “So we wanted to make sure that they went a good ways in this football game and competed at a high level and then when we felt like it was right for them to get out of the game, then that’s what we were going to do, slowly phase them out so that we could get ready for next week.”