Mike McDaniel and Justin Herbert together are a cheat code. McDaniel was coaching the Miami Dolphins with lowered sliders with Tua Tagovailoa as his quarterback and still saw success. Justin Herbert has been playing on All-Madden behind a decrepit LA Chargers offensive line.
Together, Herbert and McDaniel are lowering the difficulty to rookie ahead of a 2026 season that Chargers fans hope results in real hardware.
There's no denying that McDaniel is excited about coaching a quarterback like Herbert, even if his end goal is still to be a head coach. Herbert is undoubtedly better than anyone McDaniel has coached throughout his career, head coach or otherwise. And if you ask McDaniel, Herbert hasn't even touched his ceiling as an NFL quarterback.
"I think his best football is in front of him, not behind him. "Mike McDaniel on Justin Herbert
Justin Herbert should play the best football of his career under Mike McDaniel
Mike McDaniel clearly thinks Herbert will level up with this new partnership and it's hard to argue against that hypothesis. After all, McDaniel turned a Dolphins offense with a much more limited quarterback into one of the scariest in the league. Just imagine what McDaniel can do with Herbert under center.
It's not even about making Herbert better, either. It's about getting all the pieces around him to improve. McDaniel has consistently deployed a successful rushing attack, which is something the Chargers have lacked in previous years.
Omarion Hampton was the best running back on the Chargers' roster last season and he ranked 19th in EPA per rush among running backs with at least 100 carries.
McDaniel is also a master in making things simple for a quarterback. For much of his career, Herbert has had to act like literal Super Man to make the Chargers' offense productive. While that is great in moments, the Chargers, even unintentionally, have relied too much on his superhuman presence.
McDaniel has already touched on how he doesn't want to use Herbert's excellence as a crutch and wants to develop an offense that, theoretically, a third-string quarterback could operate in. That doesn't mean Herbert won't have superhuman moments, but his mortality only takes him so far. And we've seen that time and time again.
It's safe to say that this is an exciting marriage between an exciting offensive mind who wore out his welcome in a bad situation and a quarterback who has made the most out of less-than-ideal situations in the past.
On paper, this should be a pairing that brings special outcomes to the Chargers. Hopefully, McDaniel is right in his read that Herbert will only get better from here on out.