Even after a season in which Justin Herbert was pressured more than any quarterback in the league, the LA Chargers still opted to operate around the fringes with the offensive line. Chargers fans were hoping for fundamental changes on the offensive line, instead, they have to settle for Tyler Biadasz, Cole Strange, and whoever the team can add in the 2026 NFL Draft.
It's not like the Chargers have ignored the position entirely, either. Los Angeles also re-signed Trevor Penning and Trey Pipkins; two backups who were key players in the Chargers having one of the worst offensive lines in recent league history in 2025.
In a move that is so small you could blink and miss it, the Chargers made another offensive line signing. Los Angeles signed five-year NFL veteran Kayode Awosika on Wednesday. Don't know who that is? Don't worry, most of the NFL world doesn't.
Chargers somehow find an even more disappointing offensive lineman to sign
Look, there is nothing wrong with adding depth for training camp that will ultimately end up as practice squad fodder. It is a boring part of roster building but it is still part of the process nonetheless.
However, it's a lot easier to stomach the signing of some random practice-squad-caliber offensive lineman if there were more moves to be excited about around it. But when you are grasping for any kind of promising news from this offseason, well, signing Awosika doesn't quite hit the spot.
It's kind of unfair to Awosika, but it also puts a spotlight on him and the struggles he has had in the NFL. If there were more signings around him, then he would get buried under the headlines and nobody would even bother looking at how he has played in the NFL. But as a standalone signing a week after the Chargers did nothing, well, the numbers start to jump out.
Awosika has primarily been a reserve player who spends his time on the practice squad throughout his career. But he has played exactly 1,000 snaps in his NFL career and let me tell you, the numbers aren't very promising.
The former undrafted free agent has allowed 52 quarterback pressures in his 580 career pass-blocking snaps to this point, per Pro Football Focus. He has a career pass-blocking efficiency rating of 94.7. To compare, the worst guard in the league with at least 500 pass-blocking snaps last season had a pass-blocking efficiency rating of 95.2.
Mekhi Becton, who the Chargers basically ran out of town, had a pass blocking efficiency rating of 95.5. Throughout his entire career, Awosika has been worse than Becton was last season.
And again, in most offseasons, this signing wouldn't matter and you wouldn't be reading about the struggles of a practice squad player. The problem is the Chargers haven't given fans much else to latch onto, so we are forced to spotlight what should be an inconsequential signing.
Kayode Awosika should never have been a headline for the Chargers in an offseason where the team had the most cap space in the NFL. But because he was cheap and didn't count toward the compensatory formula, he became one. Great work.