Justin Herbert’s first interception of training camp didn’t bother Mike McDaniel at all — in fact, he liked what he saw.

On the surface, it was a mistake. Herbert tried to work through his reads, came back over the middle to Tre’ Harris, and safety Kendall Williamson jumped the route and came away with the ball. Just like that, Herbert's clean start to camp was over.

But for McDaniel, the result didn’t matter nearly as much as how it happened. Herbert was doing exactly what the offense had been drilling — sticking with his progression, trusting the timing, and not bailing out of the play when things weren’t immediately obvious.

He threw a pick simply because he’s leaning into the process and getting comfortable with all the things we’re asking him to do.

That’s not the kind of quote you usually hear attached to a quarterback who’s spent his entire career being praised for taking care of the football. Herbert has built his reputation on avoiding mistakes and keeping things afloat when everything around him gets messy. Now, McDaniel is asking him to do something a little uncomfortable: trust the structure earlier, throw with anticipation, and accept that a few training camp interceptions might actually be a sign of progress.

Herbert even admitted he’s still getting used to letting some of those throws go before he’s completely sure they’ll be there.

And in a way, that might be the most encouraging part of all this.

Herbert Has Made Broken Football Look Normal

There was a point last season when Herbert’s “he can just survive anything” superpower stopped feeling like a strength and started feeling like the whole plan.

He got sacked 54 times, took a league-high 263 pressures, and spent the final month playing with a fractured left hand. His average time to throw crept up to 2.9 seconds — the slowest among qualified quarterbacks — and once Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt went down, the Chargers were basically cycling through offensive line combinations like they were trying to find a working Wi-Fi password.

And still, Herbert put up 3,727 yards and 26 touchdowns. He even ran for a career-high 498 yards, mostly because the pocket kept collapsing before anyone else could get open or do anything useful.

Some of the pressure stats are honestly absurd. He tied for the league lead with 10 touchdown passes under pressure, led the NFL with 10 touchdowns outside the pocket, and had seven plays that lasted longer than four seconds.

It’s impressive. It’s also kind of the problem.

A four-second touchdown looks amazing on a highlight reel. It’s not something you want to build an entire offense around. The more Herbert had to scramble, reset, take hits, and improvise his way through every drive, the more the Chargers leaned on him to do things only a handful of quarterbacks in the league can even attempt.

McDaniel saw that up close in Miami. When the Dolphins played the Chargers last October, Herbert escaped pressure and hit Ladd McConkey on one of those throws that make defensive coordinators question their life choices.

Most coaches watch that and immediately think, we need more of that. McDaniel’s takeaway was basically the opposite.

I think not relying too heavily on Justin’s ability to go above and beyond is critical to maximize those types of opportunities. Take a little off his plate so he's free to do that when his greatness is required.

That’s the key idea. He’s not trying to take Herbert’s creativity away. He’s trying to make sure the offense isn’t depending on it just to function.

Every system he's had has had a different idea of what Herbert was supposed to be. The results? Big passing numbers, plenty of highlight throws, stretches where he looked like one of the best pure talents in football… and still no playoff win.

And yeah, Herbert isn’t blameless in that. He threw four interceptions in the 2024 wild-card loss to Houston. This past January, he went 19 of 31 for 159 yards with no touchdowns in a 3-point outing against New England. He’s now 0–3 in the postseason with two touchdown passes and four picks.

But the talent around him hasn’t exactly helped. Los Angeles scored one touchdown across two playoff games with Roman calling plays. They finished 12th in total offense and 20th in scoring last season, and then got smacked 16–3 by the Patriots while Herbert was sacked six more times.

That was enough for Roman to get fired, and it opened the door for McDaniel.

The Chargers are already more stable under Harbaugh. They’ve gone 11–6 and made the playoffs in both seasons. The next step is the hard one: building an offense that actually holds up in January.

McDaniel Wants The Ball Gone Earlier

McDaniel’s whole idea for Herbert really comes down to one number: 2.4 seconds.

That’s the window he keeps coming back to when he talks about the passing game. In his mind, if the ball is out that fast, you’re usually sitting around an 80 percent completion rate and, just as importantly, the pass rush never really gets a chance to ruin your day.

Last year, Herbert was closer to 2.9 seconds. And you don’t fix that by just telling a quarterback like him to “speed it up.” That’s not how this works. So instead, the Chargers are changing the environment around him — and in one pretty subtle but important way: his starting point.

They tweaked his shotgun stance so his left foot is now forward. It sounds small, but for a right-handed quarterback like Herbert, it lines up his natural throwing motion a little quicker. Less extra movement, less reset after the snap, just catch and go. The team thinks that alone can shave off a meaningful chunk of time on certain throws.

From there, it’s been a lot of timing work. Not just “read it and throw it,” but throw it before the receiver is even looking. Trust the spot, trust the concept, and let your feet tell you when it’s time to move on instead of waiting for everything to feel perfect.

As Herbert put it during OTAs:

I think getting the ball out quick and the emphasis of getting the ball out before the receivers are even looking for it, that’s the new part. In years past where you rely on your arm strength to put the ball exactly where you need to instead of trusting and throwing it to a spot and letting them go and get it, I think that part is different.

At the end of the day, it’s pretty simple. If Herbert hits McConkey five yards downfield right away and McConkey turns that into eight, now you’re sitting on second-and-2. The defense didn’t get home, the playbook is wide open, and Herbert didn’t have to take a hit to get there.

The Chargers just didn’t live in that world enough last year.

McDaniel’s system is built to mess with defenses before the snap and then hit them immediately after it. In Miami, that meant motion on almost every play — 78 percent in 2022, then 80 percent in 2023, which was the highest rate the league had ever tracked.

That motion isn’t just for show. It forces defenses to declare things, adjust on the fly, communicate under pressure, and sometimes just be a half-step late figuring out what’s happening. Even when it doesn’t “fool” anyone, it slows them down.

Last year, the Chargers were often the ones reacting instead of dictating. McDaniel wants to flip that.

McConkey's going to have quite a busy year if things go the way McDaniel wants them to. He can line up anywhere, get open fast, and do damage after the catch. He’s not Tyreek Hill — and nobody is pretending he is — but he is the kind of receiver who can punish a defense for being even a little late to adjust.

Quentin Johnston brings the size and vertical speed. Tre’ Harris adds physicality and versatility. The tight ends give Herbert reliable middle-of-the-field answers. And Omarion Hampton can turn short throws into chunk plays if you get him the ball in space.

Camp has basically been about speeding everything up mentally. One of McDaniel’s early messages to the team was “Conviction over Perfection,” which is just a way of saying: stop thinking so much and play fast. Because you can’t play quick if everyone's trying to be perfect.

There'll still be deep shots — plenty of them. McDaniel knows Herbert can make those throws. And once defenses start flying up on the quick stuff, those shots downfield are going to open up in a big way.

That’s when Herbert gets to be Herbert.

Harbaugh And McDaniel Want The Same Thing

The easiest concern is whether McDaniel’s offense can actually live in the same house as Jim Harbaugh’s old-school, run-the-ball, punch-you-in-the-mouth style.

On paper, it sounds like oil and water. In reality, it’s probably not that dramatic.

A lot of people think of McDaniel as the “motion, speed, Tyreek Hill flying down the field” guy, and yeah, that’s part of it. But that’s only the surface-level version. Before Miami, he spent years inside the Shanahan system in San Francisco, where the run game isn’t just important — it’s the foundation everything else is built on. He wasn’t just around it either. He was deep in it as the run-game coordinator.

So when McDaniel talks about football, he’s not really talking about “pass vs. run” like it’s some philosophical war. He’s talking about the line of scrimmage. That’s where he and Harbaugh actually meet in the middle. Both of them want the same end result: control the game late, keep their defense off the field, and run the ball against the lighter boxes that show up because the passing game is dangerous enough to demand respect.

And if you look at Miami at their best, it wasn’t just a track meet through the air. The 2023 Dolphins averaged 5.1 yards per carry, which set a franchise record, and they tied for the league lead with 27 rushing touchdowns. De’Von Achane was ripping off video-game numbers at 7.8 yards per carry, and Raheem Mostert punched in 18 touchdowns on the ground.

That’s really the key. All that motion, all that shifting, all that pre-snap movement wasn’t just window dressing. He  wasn’t using the run to take the ball out of his quarterback’s hands. He was using everything around the quarterback to make the run game easier — and vice versa. It all fed into itself.

And honestly, that’s not far off from what Harbaugh has always wanted either.

The Chargers are already leaning more into wide-zone concepts, which is a different world from what Greg Roman was running. It asks offensive linemen to move laterally, sometimes for seven or eight steps at a time, just to stretch the defense horizontally before cutting it back inside. Joe Alt even mentioned how much more ground they’re covering on some of these plays.

But that doesn’t make it less physical. It just shifts where the violence happens. Instead of smashing straight ahead every snap, it’s about movement, angles, and then hitting people when they’re off balance.

And the personnel actually fits better than you might think. Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt are both rare athletes at tackle. Tyler Biadasz brings stability and experience at center. Cole Strange already knows pieces of this system from his time with McDaniel in Miami, so there’s some familiarity baked in.

Then you get to Omarion Hampton, and that’s where it gets interesting. He’s not just a power back, and he’s not just a space player either. He rushed for 545 yards and five touchdowns in a shortened rookie season, and you can already see how this system is going to try to use him — inside runs off wide zone, downhill cuts when the defense overcommits, and even quick throws where he can show off those one-on-one moves.

The point is, this isn’t Miami 2.0. McDaniel has already said he doesn’t want it to be. The idea is to build something that fits this roster, not recreate something from memory.

All stats courtesy of NFL Pro.

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