With another week having passed for the Los Angeles Chargers by without any quantifiable improvements on the offensive side of the ball, it's time for the organization to take a serious look in the mirror.
This is a team that's now 0-6. It's in sole possession of the first overall pick in the 2027 NFL Draft. It's a team that, frankly, has shown almost nothing worth salvaging on the offensive side of the ball.
Sure, Justin Herbert hasn't been at his best this season. Sure, the injuries along the offensive line and in the wide receiver room certainly haven't helped. But at the end of the day, this is Mike McDaniel's mess to clean up. And if the Chargers aren't sold on his ability to do so over the remainder of this season, it's time to move on from the experiment.
As Los Angeles enters its bye week, the most important decision of this regular season takes center stage.
Chargers' urgency on a Mike McDaniel decision grows with season low-point against Chiefs
A poor offensive performance from the Chargers in this game certainly didn't come as a surprise. Kansas City has been one of the league's premier defenses to this point in the season, especially against the run, and it was hard to chart an opportunity for a true resurgence for McDaniel and company in this matchup.
But things looked as rough as they have at any point this season over these 60 minutes in Kansas City. The Chargers did manage 259 total yards on the day—which is better than the mark they posted last week against the Denver Broncos—but they routinely failed to convert their opportunities into points. Two field goals, especially with the chances Los Angeles had at various points throughout this matchup, is plainly unacceptable.
Firing Mike McDaniel, while it might seem like the easy choice at this point, is far from a simple one though. The margins of this roster were re-constructed around the demands of his scheme this offseason. That's the only reason Alec Ingold, Charlie Kolar, Cole Strange, and Keaton Mitchell are here. Los Angeles, in short, committed fully to a West Coast experiment with the way it handled its personnel this offseason. Maybe someone like Adam Gase can do better with these tools, but is there any way he salvages this season?
It's hard to make a true argument, independent of that line of thinking, for McDaniel to keep his job, though. Even with the injuries and the sub-par play of the offensive line, a capable coordinator would've found a way to at least start maximizing a quarterback of Justin Herbert's talents by this point in the season. It's an understatement to say that the fact that there's been little to no improvement through six weeks is disappointing.
The priority for Los Angeles over the remainder of the season should be to evaluate the talent they have left on the roster and attempt to resurrect some of Herbert's morale and confidence. If they don't feel McDaniel is the best coordinator to do that—and are considering moving on from him at any point during the regular season—the bye week is the time to do that. That means that a firing, theoretically, could be coming as soon as tomorrow.
But if they're going to stick it out, they better be willing to do so until the end of the season. The further this thing goes, the less retrievable it becomes. It makes no sense to commit further to McDaniel and then change course later—things simply can't get any worse than they are now.
Perhaps there's a firing during the offseason. Perhaps there's no firing at all.
But if the Chargers aren't internally convinced that there's a way to right this ship in-season, the time to move on from McDaniel is now—as the bye week approaches and this team gets a much needed opportunity to reset.
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