As the Los Angeles Chargers' season has steadily spiraled out of control. many of the hot topics of debate from the offseason have also shifted out of focus.
After all, it's difficult to be concerned about Oronde Gadsden II's targets and the construction of the inside linebacker room when the Chargers still haven't come away with a win. As they head into a Week 6 matchup against a rested and clicking Kansas City Chiefs team, it doesn't seem like they'll get their first one before their bye week, either.
It's not time to write the obituary for the season yet. Well, maybe it is in terms of the team's playoff hopes. But there are still 12 more games left to be played, and there's plenty of room for Los Angeles to show some positive signs, at least in terms of the development of its young players and the resurrection of Justin Herbert, before it's all said and done.
With that said, though, it feels like one of their major gambles of the offseason—bringing Cole Strange in early in free agency with a guaranteed starting spot along the offensive line—can already be written off as a failure. In part, you can likely blame this on ownership and the front office's unwillingness to splurge on protection. But Strange was almost certainly, at least in part, a Mike McDaniel decision, and it's rapidly becoming another blotch on his short resume in Los Angeles.
Cole Strange hasn't looked like a starting-caliber guard to this point in the season—is that too much to ask for?
When the Chargers added Strange on a two-year, $13 million deal this offseason, the justification for the signing was there. Although Strange had fizzled out with the New England Patriots and had looked just as rough in the early portions of last season for the Miami Dolphins, he started to show some signs of life in McDaniel's zone-blocking scheme down the stretch of last year's campaign.
Over his final five games of 2025, Strange allowed seven pressures and one sack, but his effectiveness in the run game showed a marked improvement from where he was at for much of the campaign.
The argument was that McDaniel, with his heavy outside-zone run approach and quick-timing passing game, could scheme around any deficits in interior protection. The Chargers simply needed to upgrade over Mekhi Becton and Bradley Bozeman on the interior, and many believed that Strange's improvement over the back half of last season was a positive sign that Los Angeles had accomplished that.
But even before Joe Alt and Rashawn Slater went down with their respective injuries, it was rapidly becoming clear that Strange wasn't truly a solution at guard for the Chargers. Through five games of the season, he's allowed 10 pressures and one sack on 194 pass-blocking snaps. He's posted a pass-blocking grade north of 50.0, per Pro Football Focus's system, just once this season, and he's graded out on an overall scale as the third-worst guard in the league with a qualified snap count.
For reference, Becton finished last season ranked 79th out of 81 guards according to the same system. Zion Johnson ranked 53rd.
Of course, the injury to Tyler Biadasz hurt the offensive line as a whole, and you can't pin this team's failures solely on the lack of consistency in its protection. But Strange, unlike Jake Slaughter and the rest of the team's left guard candidates, entered training camp virtually unchallenged for his role.
There was clearly faith on the organization's part, which has to include his former coach in McDaniel, that Strange would be able to handle his responsibilities on the right side of the line. With over $100 million in cap space this offseason, the expectation was—at the very least—that Los Angeles would be able to upgrade at least to a league-average interior offensive line.
So far, neither Strange nor any of their either starting options, when healthy, look capable of putting up that type of performance. It doesn't fall fully upon McDaniel's shoulders, but it certainly doesn't represent any sort of boost to his short and botched tenure with the Chargers.
Add us as a preferred source on Google