After the Los Angeles Chargers left their Week 6 matchup with the Kansas City Chiefs with another disastrous loss slapped on their résumé, the prevailing feeling around the team was abundantly clear. This offense wasn't good or consistent enough to compete, and almost no one would've been surprised if Mike McDaniel lost his job on Monday morning.
And yet here we are on Sunday, almost a full week later, and McDaniel is still intact as the Chargers' offensive coordinator. However you might feel about that decision, one thing is clear.
If McDaniel was going to be fired during the Chargers' bye week, it would've happened on Monday or Tuesday. And if he was going to be fired at all in-season, it likely would've happened this week. With the way the offense has looked so far, why wait any longer to turn play-calling duties over to someone like Adam Gase? It can't get any worse from here, can it?
Of course, this has nothing to do with McDaniel's long-term job security. With the way things have gone, it's hard to imagine he makes it very far into 2027 with Los Angeles unless there's a miraculous turnaround in store for his unit.
But even if he's going to be here just until the end of the regular season, he still needs to justify that lifeline. It's high time for him to make some major adjustments to his scheme.
Mike McDaniel has tried to fit a square peg in a round hole—it's time to show some versatility
The way I see it, the Chargers are stuck in a bit of a conundrum with McDaniel. They committed to building the roster around his scheme this offseason. It's why players like Cole Strange, Alec Ingold, Brenen Thompson, and Keaton Mitchell are on the roster in the first place. They've also now committed months on end to trying to help acclimate Justin Herbert to the demands of a passing attack that depends primarily on anticipatory throws. They've changed his shotgun stance, and they've altered the way he plays the position quite significantly.
That's a rather large investment to just throw the bath water out after six weeks.
At the same time, though, this team—and especially Herbert—just needs a glimmer of hope between now and the end of the season. As appealing as the first overall pick might be, the Chargers simply can't afford to enter the offseason completely downtrodden and beaten in terms of morale.
If the Chargers are going to keep McDaniel on, they need to believe he's the right person to deliver that over the remainder of this campaign. But it's going to take some major adjustments on his part.
McDaniel was able to maximize Tua Tagovailoa, despite his limitations, during his time with the Miami Dolphins because Tagovailoa's best attribute—his anticipatory throwing—fit perfectly into the scheme. Whoever you want to blame, whether it's the receivers, Herbert, or McDaniel, that simply hasn't worked in Los Angeles. McDaniel needs to be willing to give Herbert more opportunities to play his game, seeking out the open receivers and working more loosely within the structure of the passing game, if he wants to find any sort of success over the remainder of the season.
This also entails more consistent underneath targets for Ladd McConkey and Tre' Harris (when he returns). This offense simply doesn't have any easy buttons to press for Herbert currently like they did under Greg Roman, and that's related to the point enumerated above.
There also needs to be a full-on commitment to using Omarion Hampton as the team's lead back. Sure, he's led the team in touches to this point in the season. But for a squad with three backs with variable skill sets and a clearly distributed workload, Los Angeles has had far too predictable and underwhelming a run game to this point in the season. As much as McDaniel likes to get fancy with his runs, it's time to start taking the ball under center more and allowing Hampton to leverage his talents between the tackles on a consistent basis.
Neither of these things are hallmarks of McDaniel's West Coast-style scheme, and they're not what made him popular as an ascending offensive mind in the NFL. But who cares?
This is the week where the Chargers should be plotting a path toward salvaging this season in some shape or form. And that starts with a signifcant shift in McDaniel's overall mentality on the offensive side of the ball.
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