The Los Angeles Chargers desperately needed their bye week when it came.
After six consecutive losses, none of which felt particularly close, the Chargers offense was in shambles. Injuries had plagued both sides of the ball, and the play calling had fallen far short of where it was expected to be even after back-to-back losses to begin the season. Nothing was working for Los Angeles, and a week off should've represented time to reset, regroup, and make adjustments both for the coaching staff and the players.
Instead, we saw largely the same product on the field today against the Los Angeles Rams that we did for the first six games of this campaign. Sure, there were some encouraging moments for the offense. But they failed, again, to score a single touchdown—and a pair of turnovers from Herbert put the game out of reach for Los Angeles.
Does Mike McDaniel get fired now? It's worth at least seriously thinking about.
But no matter what's transpired to this point, to see no marked or truly tangible improvement on the part of the Chargers offense after the bye could easily be seen as the most disappointing moment of this disastrous campaign. Here are some immediate takeaways from the Chargers' seventh loss.
5 takeaways from the latest Chargers disaster—with the future of the roster and the coaching staff in question
1. Chris O'Leary still deserves all his flowers on the defensive side of the ball
The final score doesn't necessarily reflect it, and there were certainly some rough moments against the run in the second half. But the only reason this game was close as long as it was was because O'Leary has managed to put together a highly respectable unit even as the Chargers' season has fallen apart.
Sure, the Rams offense has had its struggles this season. But to not allow a first down to that unit for almost the entirety of the first half—outside of giving up that explosive pass to Tutu Atwell—was about as impressive a feat as we've seen this season for this team. 10 of the Rams' points, moreover, came on the favorable field-position situations brought on by the pair of interceptions Herbert threw. Stafford finished the day having completed just 15 of his 24 passing attempts for 151 yards, and that should represent another notch on O'Leary's belt as he fights to prove himself as Los Angeles' defensive coordinator of the future.
2. The run game is officially the offense's most concerning deficit
The passing game hasn't been good, and that starts with the offensive line's inconsistencies in pass protection. But unless the Chargers can find a way to consistently establish the run, it's not likely we're going to see much improvement from here.
There were some encouraging flashes from both Omarion Hampton and Kimani Vidal when they were tasked with runs between the tackles today. But the Chargers finished the day with just 64 rushing yards and 2.56 rushing yards per attempt. You don't need any sort of analytics or analysis of the way touches are being distributed in the backfield to show you how abysmal that is. It was the Chargers' third game of the season with less than 100 total rushing yards, and this was against a Rams team that was missing its most integral run defender in Poona Ford.
This team isn't going to get a win until the passing game at least approaches mediocrity, but this offense won't come anywhere near being able to last an entire 60 minutes against a competitive team until McDaniel finds a way to continually get gains on the ground.
3. Where were the adjustments from Mike McDaniel?
We knew McDaniel wasn't going to outright "simplify" the offense—at least not in the sense of completely overhauling his scheme. But outside of a couple trick plays and intriguing sequence of short passes to open the game, this seemed like exactly the same offense we saw in Week 6. And Week 5. And Week 4. And so on.
When McDaniel wasn't fired on Monday of the bye week, it certainly seemed as though the Chargers were going to let him keep his job. And no matter how you want to distribute the blame for the way this season has gone, if he's sticking around, this is his mess to fix. There needs to be something—some set of play calls or some adjustment to the passing game—that can give this team life again and not watch it fizzle out before the end of the first half.
The postseason is out of the picture. Showing even marginal improvement, then, is McDaniel's job over the remainder of the season, and for there to be little change in the on-field product after two weeks of preparation is an indictment on his ability to turn this thing around in any sense of the term.
4. Kayode Awosika can't come back soon enough, but the Chargers need to reset this interior O-line anyways.
Joe Alt came back this week from his neck injury, and that was a major boost for the Chargers' protection. But with Kayode Awosika still out, Los Angeles was left with a pairing of Logan Taylor and Cole Strange at their guard spots—with Aaron Donald lining up on the opposing side. I don't need to tell you how that went.
There were some gaps for Hampton and Vidal to burst through in the run game, but this continues to be one of the worst interiors in the league in terms of pass protection. Awosika hasn't gotten the chance to prove himself as a starting-caliber guard just yet, but he will certainly be an upgrade over the rookie Taylor when he returns.
That shouldn't matter, though, in the long-term. If the Chargers have any hope of resetting this offense this offseason, it needs to start with an overhauled interior—and bargain-bin free agents like Strange and Awosika can't be their first answers.
5. Oronde Gadsden II is starting to work his way back into the offense—as is Charlie Kolar.
I'll end with a positive note here. Gadsden hasn't had the best season after emerging as a dynamic pass catching threat as a rookie in Greg Roman's offense in 2025. McDaniel has been willing to turn to him, sure, but repeated miscues and mistakes have limited his opportunities even when there's been a clear need for an additional 'big slot' type of pass catcher.
In the two weeks prior to the bye, Gadsden posted just three receptions on six targets for 17 yards. Today, even with all of the Chargers' top three receivers back in the fold, he caught all five of his targets for 57 yards, making a couple of nice plays over the middle of the field and flashing some of his after-the-catch dynamism. Charlie Kolar was also involved as a pass catcher, capitalizing on the Chargers' first flea flicker of the game and tacking on three more targets over the rest of the matchup.
Kolar hasn't looked as promising as a pass catcher as many hoped this offseason, but there's clearly still some juice left to be unlocked there for Gadsden. Look for McDaniel to turn to the tight ends over the next couple of weeks as the Chargers try to claw out their first win against a pair of struggling teams.
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