{"id":433605,"date":"2026-01-27T22:51:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T22:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/433605\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T22:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T22:51:07","slug":"mike-mcdaniel-critical-that-we-dont-rely-too-heavily-on-justin-herbert-going-above-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/433605\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike McDaniel: Critical that we don’t rely too heavily on Justin Herbert going above and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike McDaniel held his first press conference<\/a> since being hired as the Chargers\u2019 offensive coordinator on Tuesday and quarterback Justin Herbert was a major topic of conversation. <\/p>\n

McDaniel was effusive in his praise of Herbert\u2019s talents and said the \u201cshort answer\u201d is that he hasn\u2019t worked with a quarterback who has the same capabilities as his current one. He\u2019s not the first to wax on Herbert\u2019s skills, but the Chargers have not been able to translate that into playoff success to this point in Herbert\u2019s career. McDaniel said one of the things he hopes to do is create an offense that\u2019s less reliant on Herbert\u2019s individual talents. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think not relying too heavily on Justin\u2019s ability to do above and beyond I think is critical to maximize those types of opportunities,\u201d McDaniel said. \u201cThat\u2019ll be one of the first things that we\u2019ll try to do is take a little off his plate so that he is free to do that when his greatness is required.\u201d<\/p>\n

McDaniel did not share all the ways he plans to do that, but he did emphasize that offenses need to \u201ctake advantage of that space\u201d provided by defenses before snaps in order to both protect the quarterback and build momentum as a unit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of incredible plays that Justin has made,\u201d McDaniel said. \u201cHe\u2019s firmly capable, and sometimes as a coach you can rely upon that a little too much. There\u2019s schematic ways to get completions that maybe all three quarterbacks on your roster would be capable of doing. Easier completions, not putting so much \u2014 It can be taxing over time for a player to necessitate an incredible play too often to be able to score points and win football games. So you try to take it off of him by creating some low-cost, high-reward offense that he\u2019s firmly capable of doing but maybe a player of lesser talent would be capable of doing as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

McDaniel said that Herbert has not \u201cneared the ceiling\u201d of what he can do in the NFL and the Chargers are banking on their new coordinator helping him get closer to that level in 2026. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike McDaniel held his first press conference since being hired as the Chargers\u2019 offensive coordinator on Tuesday and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-433605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}