What a fiasco the Los Angeles Chargers have become.<\/p>\n
L.A. has lost twice by the same 26-14 score to open the season, dropping each game as a large favorite, first against the Arizona Cardinals and on Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders.<\/p>\n
Oddsmakers put L.A. sixth on Super Bowl boards entering the season. Now its playoff bid now appears on life support. A tougher schedule looms over the next seven games. And the football really has been that bad.<\/p>\n
Jim Harbaugh and Mike McDaniel head the list of culprits, and while that\u2019s surprising, it\u2019s indisputable.<\/p>\n
Where Harbaugh\u2019s other L.A. teams began the season 2-0, his third Chargers club has appeared ill-prepared, leading to the first 0-2 start for Harbaugh in his five head-coaching jobs.<\/p>\n
McDaniel\u2019s offense looks too complicated for L.A.\u2019s players, making the unit look mentally constipated and harried overall.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s way too much pre-snap chaos, and scrambling as the play clock nears zero.<\/p>\n
Devoid of flow and rhythm, it\u2019s a stunningly disjointed look. Only one offensive player, receiver Ladd McConkey, has looked comfortable across the two games, and he sat out most of Sunday\u2019s game due to a rib injury.<\/p>\n
Along with San Diego\u2019s schadenfreude crowd, the football goods must be laughing.<\/p>\n
McDaniel was widely expected to lift Harbaugh\u2019s program beyond its first-round defeats upon the past two winters, while benefiting quarterback Justin Herbert in particular.<\/p>\n
So far, the offense coached by Greg Roman early in his L.A. tenure appeared far better prepared than McDaniel\u2019s crew has across eight quarters, rushing for 179 yards and 219 yards.<\/p>\n
Did Roman benefit from having worked several years with Harbaugh elsewhere, notably in San Francisco where their second 49ers team reached the Super Bowl and their third returned to the NFC title game?<\/p>\n
Perhaps.<\/p>\n
Harbaugh fired Roman last winter after L.A.\u2019s offense failed to score a touchdown in the playoff loss in New England one year after bombing in Houston.<\/p>\n
He replaced him with McDaniel, an expert in the Shanahan offense who\u2019d become available after the Miami Dolphins fired him as their head coach.<\/p>\n
Immediate success was expected.<\/p>\n
After all, the Dolphins and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa started fast after McDaniel became their head coach and offensive mastermind entering the 2022 season.<\/p>\n
With Tagovailoa throwing on time and receiver-rusher Tyreek Hill thriving in McDaniel\u2019s freewheeling attack, Miami opened 2-0 with a 20-7 win over the New England Patriots and a 42-38 win at Baltimore over the favored Ravens.<\/p>\n
How comfortable was Tagovailoa?<\/p>\n
He threw for six touchdowns in the win at Baltimore. Whispers followed, suggesting McDaniel was a genius.<\/p>\n
The L.A. story has been altogether different.<\/p>\n
A reputed brainiac, the 28-year-old Herbert has looked like a student who crammed for a calculus test without getting any sleep.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s spending too much time trying to get his teammates up to speed. Though he\u2019s made a few top-level throws, he appears to have taken a large step backward from his early-season performances. And those came under four different coordinators: Shane Steichen, Joe Lombardi, Kellen Moore and Roman.<\/p>\n
In another red-flag sign that McDaniel hasn\u2019t prepared this unit well, bright right tackle Joe Alt had the worst game of his three-year NFL career Sunday.<\/p>\n
While the Harbaugh-McDaniel connection gets top billing going into Week 3 and will become a national story,\u00a0 Harbaugh\u2019s promotion of Kevin O\u2019Leary to defensive coordinator hasn\u2019t panned out either.<\/p>\n
The pass coverage blew several assignments Sunday, resulting in big plays for the Raiders. If not for the Raiders missing a pair of gimme completions, the final margin would\u2019ve been greater.<\/p>\n
Finally, it appears that oddmakers overrated the team\u2019s roster.<\/p>\n
Several players are off to a poor start, including right guard Cole Strange, cornerback Cam Hart and Alec Ingold, the fullback who followed McDaniel over from Miami.<\/p>\n
The drop-off off from McConkey has been steep. With three regulars looking overmatched and others failing often, little wonder the franchise is off to its worst offense start since the 2007 team\u2019s sputterings under first-year head coach Norv Turner.<\/p>\n
Harbaugh and McDaniel\u2019s track records argue for patience.<\/p>\n
But in the sunken Kroenke Dome, which was dug out 100 feet below street level to meet FAA regulations for air traffic, Harbaugh\u2019s third-year program could hardly have plumbed greater depths to begin the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
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