Chargers’ Weird Mike McDaniel Decision Starting to Feel Like a Tank Job

The Chargers are keeping everything the same. What's the goal?

Mike McDaniel | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

One could confuse the Los Angeles Chargers as a team purposely tanking for the top pick in the NFL draft right now. 

Jim Harbaugh and the Chargers aren’t tanking, not really. But a real tank job wouldn’t look much different from what they have done so far. 

Harbaugh’s Chargers are, after all, 0-6 and somehow getting more injured coming out of a bye week. They’re continuing to ruin Justin Herbert while Mike McDaniel gets a regression from every single piece of the offense while largely mishandling players like, say, former first-round pick Omarion Hampton. 

And to top it all off, the Chargers just made a weird call with Mike McDaniel. 

Chargers’ tank keeps rolling with Mike McDaniel Verdict 

Mike McDaniel | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Maybe everyone should have seen this coming when Harbaugh and the Chargers did nothing with McDaniel to start the bye week. There wasn’t even a hint of, say, someone else taking over play-calling duties, or even getting more involved with them. 

To start the week after the bye, Harbaugh even stepped to the podium and defended McDaniel while saying the coordinator would remain the play-caller of the offense. 

"We're very confident in Mike and his talent, his work ethic and his ability," Harbaugh told reporters. "We continue to be."

And in the ultimate form of professional player-speak, Herbert then got to the microphone and pointed the blame not at McDaniel, but at the players themselves. 

"It's not [McDaniel's} fault, it's our fault as an offense," Herbert said. "We have to do our job. It's not Mike's fault. The guys are open, plays are being made. It's on us to run, to block, to catch, to throw. It's on us as an offense."

The issues with McDaniel are many. There’s poor injury luck mixed in, as usual in Los Angeles. But his arriving and reworking Herbert’s throwing motion and/or footwork from certain formations didn’t help. Neither does trying to run his Miami-looking offense with dramatically slower, worse skill position players. And his mentioned avoidance of Hampton in favor of a middling running back rotation is another one of those weird issues he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to fix. 

And look, firing McDaniel now, or ripping away play-calling duties, would push the notorious Adam Gase into a bigger role. Maybe not ideal. Firing McDaniel now or after the season probably won’t be all that different. 

Even so, just keeping McDaniel amid all these regressions and problems sends a pretty poor message to the locker room. If the players keep not buying into the message or things get even worse, it runs the risk of offering up the entire coaching staff as a sacrificial lamb after the season, not just McDaniel. 

Maybe there’s no stopping that anyway. But sticking with McDaniel while "simplifying" the offense probably isn’t the fix most fans wanted to see during a bye week for an 0-6 team. That is, unless they’re fans only fixating on the No. 1 pick now, anyway.

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