The Jim Harbaugh–Mike McDaniel–Justin Herbert Marriage Is a Failure So Far

The Chargers made big changes leading into 2026, but so far we’ve seen an endless loop of the same old team.

Justin Herbert had an early lead in Buffalo, but lost for the third consecutive week. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

A whip-smart, iconoclastic youngster with a pronounced sense of style joins a group of talented individuals bent on changing the world, but the entire plot goes south when we discover that, beneath all of the hubris and personality, no real plan exists as to how they plan to accomplish the goal.

No, this is not the Netflix one-liner on the Theranos documentary about the fake blood-drawing machine. It’s an introduction to a piece about the Mike McDaniel–era Chargers, a team that has taken our sense of imagination and bludgeoned it behind a remote Siberian woodshed. 

Of all the winless teams after three weeks of football in 2026, the Chargers feel especially hopeless. Sunday’s loss to the Bills came despite the Bills losing five turnovers, three of which occurred in their own territory. The Chargers sacked Josh Allen four times, hit him three other times and broke up five passes. The Chargers held a 10–0 lead at the end of the first quarter and a 13–10 lead at the end of the third quarter. The interim was filled with a concoction of moments that would make this improbable loss understandable: a bad Justin Herbert pick, another nauseating Quentin Johnston drop, a gutless fourth-and-goal field goal attempt and consecutive procedural penalties inside the red zone. You guessed correctly that there is a posterizing statistic associated with this loss: Since 2013, teams that have forced five turnovers and led the turnover margin by four are now 81-3-1 in these games. The Chargers have suffered all three of those losses, per Evan Abrams.

Those already dead inside are ready to say I told you so—and for good reason. The preseason hype about the Chargers was divided along the lines of true idealists and realists. Combining McDaniel with Herbert, getting tackles Joe Alt and Rashawn Slater back, and patching the loss of DC Jesse Minter with one of the most inventive defensive play-callers in the FBS last season was catnip for those susceptible to mid-level marketing scams, extended warranties and Iraqi currency swaps. 

Ninety-six percent of the teams that have gone winless over the first three weeks of the season since the expansion of the playoff format in 2020 have missed the playoffs. Only the 2025 Texans, who finished the season on a furious nine-game winning streak, have managed to overcome this severe of a deficit. The Texans also did not have an outlook quite like Los Angeles, which now takes on the Seahawks, Broncos, Chiefs, Rams, Texans and Ravens next. 

We bring all this up not to rehash some of the obvious but to point out that a Chargers meltdown has a few major consequences. For one, the McDaniel-Herbert-Harbaugh relationship question isn’t going away. The casual belief was that McDaniel would make the 2026 season a one-stop journey en route to a head coaching job of his choice after getting Herbert to score arcade-high pinball numbers. Herbert would finally be in a replicable system that would remove his worst impulses and surround him with a double-barreled running game that would delete the need for him to turn into Dark Herbert. That running game would also take pressure off a defense that was dependent on some aging players to contribute significant snaps and still be generationally great. 

Instead, the Chargers are looking at a situation in which McDaniel must improve simply to earn another year. Given that Harbaugh has never called plays at the NFL level before, and his forever companion Greg Roman is now the run-game coordinator for the Giants, there aren’t many administrative levers for Harbaugh to pull at this point in the year. It’s unlikely that he would be on any kind of prospective “hot seat” after a failed season, following back-to-back 11-win campaigns to start his tenure in Los Angeles, but the sheen will wear off quickly. He is not that much more successful than Chargers predecessors Anthony Lynn, who had 9–7 and 12–4 seasons before back-to-back losing campaigns and Brandon Staley, who posted 9–8 and 10–7 seasons before his own sharp decline. Only Lynn, whose masterful game plan against Lamar Jackson in 2018 edged the Chargers over the Ravens, has posted a playoff victory. 

Back to the question at hand: What happens after promising that the blood machine instantly diagnoses your most serious ailments and can change the world, but ends up just being about as valuable as a sputtering HP InkJet printer? This was the kind of swing the Chargers took at the 2026 season by playing the coordinator sweepstakes and landing the top prize. Herbert has completed only one of 12 passes of 20 yards or more this season and three of those passes have been intercepted. The Chargers are dead last in the NFL in EPA per rush and 25th in rushing success rate, making a clean sweep of any of the great McDaniel promises entering the year. 

It’s almost easier at this stage when the head coach is a goner at season’s end. When you can wipe the palate clean of every nuance from the doomed season and begin a new dream with new characters, new heroes and new possibilities. The Chargers have wedged themselves into something far more perilous: an endless loop of the same follies that will churn on and on, with the only hope of a turnaround being slightly less probable than the creation of a miracle medical machine.  

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