Sports

How Mike McDaniel Can Supercharge the Chargers' Offense

By Doug Farrar Athlon Sports

The Los Angeles Chargers' 2025 offense was an unexpected disaster.

Put simply, this was not how things were supposed to go.

The Chargers had two tentpole tackles in Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt. The receiver combination of Quentin Johnston and Ladd McConkey were supposed to present major problems for defenses. Rookie first-round running back Omarion Hampton, perhaps the best back in that class, surely would give head coach Jim Harbaugh the ground game he needed, and this was all to the great benefit of Justin Herbert, who had struggled throughout his career for the most part behind a series of reductive offensive minds who did him few favors.

Instead, Slater missed the entire season with a torn patellar tendon, and Alt was out from Week 9 with a high ankle sprain. Their replacements "helped" Herbert to become one of the NFL's most-pressured quarterbacks; there were times where he couldn't even get the ball out of his hand before defenses had converged upon him. Hampton missed seven weeks in the middle of the season due to his own ankle issues, and while Johnston and McConkey had good seasons along with veteran Keenan Allen (who is now unsigned and may return to the team), but it wasn't enough.

The results were... underwhelming. The Chargers ranked 21st in Offensive DVOA, and 24th in Weighted Offensive DVOA, which meant that things got worse as the season went along. That was down from 12th in 2024, Harbaugh's first season with the team, and it represented a complete disappointment. The season ended with L.A.'s 16-3 wild-card loss to the New England Patriots, in which Herbert completed 19 of 31 passes for 159 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions, and six sacks, which brought his net yardage total down to 120.

The offseason response was clear and obvious. It wasn't offensive coordinator Greg Roman's fault per se, but Harbaugh chose to replace Roman, with whom he's worked on and off since the duo's days Stanford in the late 2000s, with former Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel, who had constructed one of the NFL's highest-flying offenses before things started to fall apart.

So, how will this all work? Potentially, like a veritable charm.

Two one-offs, working together

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The pairing of Harbaugh and McDaniel puts two of the NFL's more interesting personalities together. Harbaugh is all about the power of positive thinking - as Alex Smith recently told me, "like a real-life Ted Lasso." McDaniel can be all about that as well, but he's more likely to go into the weeds with schematic designs, and he looks more like a guy who would be handing out venture capital money or playing in Jack White's band than coaching in the NFL.

But Harbaugh, after years of working with Roman and thus knowing exactly what he was getting out of his offense, is pretty excited for the new blood.

"Awesome," Harbaugh said of working with McDaniel when at the league meetings in late March. "Awesome with a capital A. Where to really start would be just how his mind is. Just how much football information, how good it is, his expertise at all positions, and on defense, too. He's a real expert in how defenses play different coverages, schemes, fronts, blitz patterns.

"The receivers, the timing between the quarterback, offensive line play, the running backs being tied into the blocking scheme … [I've] really been doing a lot of listening, a lot of learning, just leaned in to how he sees football."

Harbaugh concluded that McDaniel has given him "paradigm shift in ways I've thought about football," and said of the advancement, "How do you make a better candle? Make a light bulb."

Well, if the Chargers are going to take the torch in the AFC West, no matter what it's made of, that'll have to start with keeping their quarterback upright. Because that didn't happen nearly often enough in 2025.

Giving Justin Herbert enough time to do... anything

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Losing Slater for the whole season and losing Alt for most of it were the obvious culprits here, but Herbert was pressured on 43.6% of his dropbacks last season including the playoffs - the highest rate in the NFL - and that's no way for any quarterback to be efficient.

Not that Herbert didn't do his best, but any quarterback seeing pressure on nearly half of his dropbacks will see obvious dips in performance and efficiency.

Per Sumer Sports, the regular-season numbers were enough to tell the story.

When Pressured (250 dropbacks):

  • Attempts: 174
  • Completions: 85
  • Completion %: 48.9%
  • Passing Yards: 1,139
  • Yards per Attempt: 6.55
  • Touchdowns: 12
  • Interceptions: 7
  • EPA/Dropback: -0.339

When Not Pressured (365 dropbacks):

  • Attempts: 338
  • Completions: 255
  • Completion %: 75.4%
  • Passing Yards: 2,588
  • Yards per Attempt: 7.66
  • Touchdowns: 14
  • Interceptions: 6
  • EPA/Dropback: +0.324
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Another change happened in the building regarding the offensive line - the Chargers replaced former line coach Mike Devlin with Butch Berry, who was McDaniels' line coach in Miami from 2023-2025. Which means that Berry is intimately familiar with the McDaniel's varied and highly effective ground game.

For all of his high-flying passing concepts, it's important to remember that McDaniel fut his teeth as the San Francisco 49ers' run game specialist in 2017, before becoming their run game coordinator from 2018-2020, and Kyle Shanahan's offensive coordinator in 2021. This is crucial, because nobody runs more 21 personnel (two running backs, one tight end, two receivers) than Shanahan, and last season, McDaniel ran second. The 49ers were in 21 on 395 plays, while the Dolphins used it 234 times. And of the teams that used 21 in the run game more than 100 times, only the Baltimore Ravens (5.13) had a higher yards per carry rate than the Dolphins did.

Hampton, who had 544 yards, scored four touchdowns, and broke 32 tackles on just 125 carries in his rookie season, should love all of this.

"I would say it's a very freeing offense to play in," Alt said in early June. "From the beginning, you've got your assignments and technique. But from therem it's turn, sprint and run as hard as you can. You're able to play fast, play physical and kind of unleash, and not think as much as I have in the pas. It's really just "Go", and I think that's a lot of fun for an offensive lineman."

McDaniel's idalized version of 21 personnel is one reason he jokingly put old-West style "Wanted" posters featuring former Ravens running back Keaton Mitchell, and former Dolphins fullback Alec Ingold, in general manager Joe Horitz's office. Horitz got the message, and signed both Mitchell and Ingold.

Like Miami running back De'Von Achane, Mitchell is a smaller back (5-foot-8, 191 pounds) capable of making all kinds of big plays as a runner. He and fellow smallback Kimani Vidal can each get that done both on their own merits...

...and with the help of Ingold, who may have been the secret sauce in the Dolphins' run game last season. When the Dolphins gave Achane a new four-year, $64 million contract extension with $27.378 million guaranteed this offseason, they might have thought about leaving a few bucks behind for Ingold, who the Chargers got for $3.75 million over two years.

The need for speed

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When the Dolphins' offense was humming, McDaniel had both Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle as his primary deep receivers, and he scalded defenses with plays designed to get those two speed guys open all the time. That worked well with a quarterback in Tua Tagovailoa who isn't exactly the NFL's best deep passer; Herbert has much more potential in this regard.

Still, the deep game didn't work as well as it should have for the Chargers last season. Part of that is the fact that a quarterback needs more than 0.0000001 seconds before pressure if he's to get the ball to receivers actually going downfield, and part of that is that the offense wasn't really set up for explosive plays. That didn't stop Herbert from taking his shots - he ranked sixth in the league last season with 70 attempt of 20 or more air yards - but he completed just 27 of those passes. Still, his eight touchdowns to one interception, and his 109.0 passer rating on deep passes, speak to what a real deep passing game could become in Herbert's hands.

Last season, Quentin Johnston led the team with 21 targets of 20 or more air yards, catching 10 of those targets for 338 yards and four touchdowns. Johnston seemed to have solved his formerly prominent drops issue in this regard - he had no drops on those targets - and he's one of two primary deep targets that McDaniel can weaponize right away.

The other is 2025 rookie tight end Oronde Gadsden II, who led all NFL tight ends in deep receptions, and was about as efficient as anybody could be in that regard: Eight catches on eight targets for 235 yards.

McDaniel also designs concepts that allow his faster receivers to get the ball quickly and get yards after the catch, as Herbert pointed out in early June.

"That's kind of his big emphasis in getting the ball out and getting the ball in the receivers' hands at a time where they can go up field and make something happen," the quarterback said. "We turned on the tape of Miami the last few years and how many plays they had with YAC - guys catching the ball, and breaking for a touchdown. The better I can do at getting the ball quicker in their hands and into a position they can run with it, I think the better our offense will be."

That could requite an adjustment or two. Herbert was surprisingly inefficient on short passes last season: on throws from 0-9 yards from the line of scrimmage, he completed 206 of 266 passes for 1,706 yards, nine touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 95.8.

It's time for the big payoff

Amanda Perobelli/Reuters via Imagn Images
Amanda Perobelli/Reuters via Imagn Images Amanda Perobelli/Reuters via Imagn Images

Herbert is coming into his seventh NFL season, and there have always been questions about his ability to marry his otherworldly attributes to what actually happens on the field. The good is more than good enough to make him a Top 5 NFL quarterback; the bad has mostly been blamed on his coaches, his receivers, and his offensive line.

Now, Herbert has the best and most comprehensive offensive coach in his career. If he can make the most of that, the Chargers could be a very serious threat to the rest of the league.

If not, and the questions remain, the gap between potential and production will still haunt a Chargers offense that should be better than it is... for all kinds of reasons.

Copyright 2026 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This story was originally published June 11, 2026 at 4:55 AM.

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