Grading Justin Herbert and the Chargers 2026 QB room

Dating back to 2021, there's never been questions about who the Chargers' starting quarterback is going into opening day. Justin Herbert returns as QB1 after his second Pro Bowl season in 2025. Herbert received an MVP vote for the first time in his career as he largely carried an injured, beat up Los Angeles offense with the worst offensive line in the league.

But while the regular season accolades are always nice, Herbert at this stage of his career will be judged by the media, pundits, and fans by playoff success. And the Patriots game was not pretty for him. He missed open receivers while having a 29.7 PFF offense grade and a 6.7% turnover worthy play rate. With OC Mike McDaniel now in the fold, Herbert looks like he'll have a much better chance on paper at the first playoff win of his career. But it's a stigma he'll have to break.

How the Chargers 2026 QB room grades out between Justin Herbert, Trey Lance, and DJ Uiagalelei

QB1: Justin Herbert

From a regular season standpoint, it's hard to name more than maybe five quarterbacks you'd rather have. From the angle of starting a franchise, there's probably plenty of GMs that would take Herbert. In his last few seasons before his 30s, the expectations are still sky high for the Oregon product. McDaniel was the best coordinator available and it feels like Herbert will have a true top 5-10 NFL play caller on offense for the first time in his career.

Outside of the playoff performance questions which have already been mentioned, the big focus for Los Angeles will be protecting their QB1. Herbert has been hit at rates in the NFL that rival Andrew Luck in his first six seasons. It's up to the offensive line and McDaniel to keep Herbert clean throughout the year in order to play at a higher level down the stretch. The Bolts' QB played with a broken hand for nearly the last two months of the 2025 campaign.

How Herbert adapts to less drop back in the offense and more quick game is also a question to be answered. But on paper, McDaniel and Herbert is a match made in heaven.

Grade: A

QB2: Trey Lance

Trey Lance earned the backup job to Herbert after beating out Taylor Heinicke in the preseason last year. His performance in those four preseason games last year was clearly the best level of his career. Lance avoided turnovers and was given the highest PFF offense (71.1) and passing (69.9) grades of his career. The former 49ers first-round selection threw for two touchdowns and 334 yards. He ran in another score on the ground had the highest big time throw percentage of his preseason career (6.6%).

It was an impressive showing, but Lance still has his limitations as a backup. He proved capable of being able to come into games if Herbert was hurt. Lance relieved Herbert due to injuries vs. Washington and Las Vegas briefly. For a few drives, he's capable of running an offense in an emergency scenario. But he did not impress in his one start vs. Denver. Granted, that comes with the disclaimer that he played with largely backups against a good Denver team. But Lance completed just over 45% of his passes with a 43.4 passer rating. His internal clock and processing looked night and day from the preseason.

And that's how I'd ultimately boil it down. Should Lance be trusted if Herbert is out for a quarter? Probably. Should he be trusted if he has to start a regular season game? Probably not.

Grade: B-

QB3/Emergency: DJ Uiagalelei

Signed as an UDFA from Clemson last year, DJ Uiagalelei didn't have particularly high expectations coming into the 2025 preseason. The former top college prospect had a bad final year at Florida State that ultimately tanked his draft stock.

But if we're just grading him as a Charger, Uiagalelei looked pretty decent in his 3 preseason games. He was able to keep the turnovers low with just one interception and had an 83.5 passer rating.

His San Francisco game contained some decent moments like this strike to TE Oronde Gadsden II:

Will Uiagalelei develop into much more than an emergency third string? Probably not, but he was at least decent enough last preseason to let the Chargers skip out on a relatively weak 2026 quarterback draft class.

Grade: C

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