The Los Angeles Chargers' offseason moves, obviously, haven't paid the dividends that this team was hoping for.
To an extent, injuries can be blamed for that. All three of Charlie Kolar, David Njoku, and Dalvin Tomlinson have now been forced to miss time. Both of Los Angeles' primary options at left guard have also missed the past two games—with Trey Pipkins III on the injured reserve and Kayode Awosika still dealing with a leg injury. Without even factoring in the season-ending ACL injury to Tyler Biadasz, it seems like this free agent class was doomed from the start.
But things somehow found another rock bottom on Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks. All three of Joe Alt, Rashawn Slater, and Trevor Penning exited the game with injuries, leaving the Chargers with just Cole Strange and Jake Slaughter as their two remaining starting linemen on the field. By the end of the matchup, Los Angeles had no healthy linemen dressed on the sideline. Every single option they had remaining was in the game, including UDFA Jacob Spomer and rookie tackles Travis Burke and Logan Taylor.
After injuries and inconsistent play led the Chargers to one of the worst offensive line performances in the league in 2025, Hortiz's plan this offseason was to poke around the bargain bin for solutions—not just in the starting lineup but on the back end of the depth chart as well. There's other places we can put the blame for the way this season has gone, but if any of these new injuries turn out to be serious, it's safe to say that Hortiz's offseason approach has officially backfired.
Chargers fans, at least, should start to brace themselves for another rough week against the Denver Broncos.
The Chargers are officially scraping the bottom of the barrel with their offensive line—and that's an unacceptable outcome
Of course, if everyone was healthy along the offensive line, things would look a lot different. Jake Slaughter would likely have been able to claim the starting left guard spot, offering some semblance of consistency between Biadasz and Slater. The Chargers would then have had three (or even four) options to slot in at guard if Slaughter either suffered an injury or simply was struggling with the positional switch.
Hortiz obviously can't control injuries on the field. But this is the gamble the Chargers took this offseason.
In 2025, the Chargers allowed the second-most sacks in the entire NFL. The protection simply wasn't good enough, even if Alt and Slater were healthy, to sustain a top offense. The front office then, with over $100 million in cap space at their disposal, was tasked with re-structuring the interior and banking on the full returns of Alt and Slater. Hortiz decided to add the following pieces to the roster:
1. A top 12-15 center in the NFL who had been cut by his organization at the start of the offseason (Tyler Biadasz)
2. A guard who had fizzled out of two organizations and hadn't had an extended stretch of successful NFL play in his four-year career (Cole Strange)
3. A top college center who hadn't played a single snap at guard in his career (Jake Slaughter)
4. A career backup with middling production over 11 starts with the Detroit Lions (Kayode Awosika)
5. A Day 3 rookie tackle with high upside but inconsistent fundamentals (Travis Burke)
6. A pair of sixth-round tackles who were listed as guards on draft day (Logan Taylor & Alex Harkey)
7. A UDFA center (Jacob Spomer)
Let's not forget they also brought back Trevor Penning, who allowed five pressures in each of the two games he played significant snaps for Los Angeles last season.
In theory, the Chargers entered this season with as many as 13 or 14 roster-caliber linemen. There was certainly a world where everything worked out in their favor, assuming each of these pieces played to their ceilings. But for a roster that's constructed and built around its depth, how many of these players would you truly trust to take snaps over the course of an entire game? If Alt or Slater is forced to miss time, would Los Angeles truly have any recourse even if Pipkins were healthy?
Now, that list doesn't tell the whole story. The Chargers certainly weren't forking out the $80-some-odd million it would've taken to nab Tyler Linderbaum, and they probably weren't re-signing Zion Johnson. But this team may very well now need to live or die by the depth additions that Hortiz did make this offseason, and the organization nickel-and-dimed its way to landing their starting options, let alone filling out their depth chart.
The ceiling of this line, with everyone healthy, was likely a top 10-15 unit in the league, which would've been sufficient if everything was going right for the Chargers offense. But Hortiz, again, was willing to gamble on health and performance from players without proven pedigrees of success.
No matter how the injury updates unfold over the next couple of days, it's safe to say that plan has backfired spectacularly.
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