Suggesting that the Chargers fire Mike McDaniel as the team heads into its bye week at 0–6 is very different than suggesting that McDaniel is not a good offensive coordinator. In the coming days and weeks, you’ll see these two ideas conflated—especially if the personnel change actually happens. McDaniel is an outlier personality who, instead of inspiring us all to be a little truer to ourselves, splits us into camps either defending his absolute genius or warring against the glasses-wearing nerd. It’s beyond tiresome.
In reality, I think that over the course of six weeks, we’ve discovered that McDaniel is almost certainly not the right coordinator for Justin Herbert. The anti-Herbert crowd will take the following as elite Herbert excuse making, which I understand. The pro-McDaniel crowd will demand mentioning that the Chargers’ offensive line was almost 100% a collection of mid-to-late-round rookies, with the unit absolutely in tatters once again in Sunday’s loss to the Chiefs.
