With two weeks to prepare and a host of players returning from injury on the offensive side of the ball, the hope was that things would look at least marginally different for the Los Angeles Chargers on the other side of their Week 7 bye.
The matchup against the Los Angeles Rams certainly wasn't going to be an easy one, but with the injuries they've faced and the struggles they've seen with their offense, it wasn't unreasonable to think that even a mediocre showing from Mike McDaniel and this Chargers offense could at least result in a close game.
But what we got was essentially a re-hash of what we saw in the first six weeks of the season. Sure, there weren''t as many penalties and pure miscues along the offense to be concerned about. And there were some encouraging moments when Justin Herbert was able to evade pressure and connect with one of his main receivers coming back to the ball downfield.
But the on-field product was largely the same. The Chargers finished the day with zero touchdowns and just 64 rushing yards. They repeatedly stalled in positive field position when they had momentum in the first half, and they had no true answer to the blitzes that Chris Shula kept sending on third down. Herbert, especially in the second half, looked as disconnected and disjointed as he has all season.
And Jim Harbaugh, after the game, unequivocally stated that McDaniel will remain the offensive play caller in Los Angeles.
Given the fact that they didn't fire him during the bye week, that's an unsurprising statement. But if there's not any sort of improvement under these circumstances, when will there be?
The Chargers' hopes for a competitive season are gone—but there still needs to be improvement from somewhere
No one, at this point, is expecting McDaniel to suddenly turn this offense into a top unit in the league. The talent simply isn't there for that, and the disconnect between him and Herbert is to great to be bridged with "4 hours of film" in a bye week.
Moreover, I'll be the first to stand up and say that it makes sense why the Chargers didn't move on from McDaniel during the bye week. They committed much of this roster to him and his scheme overhaul this offseason—even if they didn't break the bank—and they don't have any true play-calling options on the current staff outside of Adam Gase. If anyone is going to turn this season around in any sense of the term, it's going to have to be McDaniel.
It also seemed clear to me, when we reached the end of the bye week and McDaniel still had his job, that the Chargers wouldn't soon be seriously considering moving on from him. If they were going to, the bye week was the time to do it—before the de-evolution of Herbert's game got any more unbelievable.
But this loss to the Rams was another stark reminder of what we might be facing over the remainder of the season. This offense simply has no easy buttons to press—and no true cohesion or identity under McDaniel. Until there's major changes, or everyone on the offense suddenly picks up the scheme overnight, this on-field product is going to remain the same.
The Chargers, more than anything else, need a silver lining to take away from this season. The first overall pick (and Jeremiah Smith) would be a solid consolation prize for most fans. But the organization, among other things, needs to see Herbert looking like himself again, to see its investment in Hampton being paid off, and to see some level of improvement from the offense as a whole.
You can scrap the West Coast scheme this offseason. But you can't erase a completely lost and non-competitive season from the memory of an entire roster. McDaniel needs to give the Chargers a reason to play again, to feel like they can truly compete on a week-to-week basis—and that needs to be the requirement if he's going to keep his job over the remainder of the campaign. Even the worst teams in the league normally have some semblance of that feeling. The Tennessee Titans and Miami Dolphins both have wins to back that sentiment up.
If there was one week where we should have expected real improvement out of McDaniel as a play caller, it was this one. And apart from some well-designed route packages and a pair of back-to-back (?) trick plays, it simply didn't come.
It's likely not reasonable to have expected Harbaugh to say anything else at this juncture, especially coming out of the bye week. But this now needs to be a question asked on a weekly basis for Los Angeles—what has McDaniel done to justify the organization's continued faith?
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