LA Chargers: Four questions about the 2021 QB room

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3. Is it Chase Daniel or Easton Stick as the backup?

While there’s obviously time for things to change, Brandon Staley seemed to infer that they would only keep two quarterbacks in an April press conference. A competition between Daniel and Stick appears to be underway now.

Tom Telesco did keep three quarterbacks in both 2019 and 2020, but that had more to do with Tyrod Taylor than Stick. In Telesco’s six seasons as GM prior to drafting Stick, he only kept three quarterbacks once with the signing of Cardale Jones in 2017.

The Chargers should want whoever shows out as the best quarterback between the two, but I wonder if the preseason could lead to some funky results. Stick will likely be going against lower-tier players than Daniel if he’s the third-string quarterback in the preseason.

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There’s also a pretty heavy experience gap between the two quarterbacks. Daniel is an 11 year NFL vet with 69 played games and five career starts. It’s through no fault of his own obviously, but Stick just can’t match that.

If you could assure me that Herbert would miss zero snaps in 17 games, I’d pick Stick because he has a long future as a career backup (or future asset). But simply imagining any situation where Herbert has to miss regular-season snaps has me leaning in the direction of Daniel. He also has spent a significant amount of time with both Staley and Lombardi in previous NFL stops.

It’s too early to call the race between Daniel and Stick because training camp/preseason will factor in. However, it’s also fair to say that Stick has some ground to make up.