The Chargers somehow lost the same game twice.

Not in a “well, it felt familiar” kind of way. Literally the same stadium. The same 26–14 score. The same zero points in the fourth quarter. Two opponents that won three games last season walked into SoFi Stadium and walked out with surprisingly comfortable wins.

You can chalk one loss up to Week 1 weirdness. But when it happens again, it starts to look less like a fluke and more like the problem Los Angeles spent the entire offseason insisting they'd fixed.

The Raiders didn’t exactly steamroll the Chargers on Sunday. That’s what makes this loss so frustrating. Los Angeles held the ball for more than 32 minutes, outrushed Las Vegas 127–57, and finished with five more total yards. The Chargers turned both red-zone trips into touchdowns and held Ashton Jeanty to 48 yards on 21 carries.

That should be enough to win that game.

Justin Herbert completed 15 of 27 passes for 192 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. The offense committed three turnovers, fumbled six times, punted five times, and couldn't even score in the fourth quarter. One of their biggest third downs ended when the snap hit a receiver motioning across the formation.

That's a pee-wee-football level mistake.

The Chargers aren’t getting blown off the field. They’re just making simple offense look way harder than it should.

That’s a pretty serious problem for a team that hired Mike McDaniel specifically to make life easier for their quarterback.

The Numbers Aren’t Hiding Anything

Los Angeles has scored 28 points through two games — 14 against Arizona and 14 against Las Vegas.

And it doesn't stop there. The list of stats where they rank 20th or worse in the league is staggering:

That’s not what anyone pictured when McDaniel came to Los Angeles.

The Chargers fired Greg Roman after an 11-win season because the offense started leaning too heavily on Herbert to make something happen after the original plan broke down. They scored 15 total points across their last two playoff losses under Roman. Herbert was sacked 54 times in 2025 and faced a league-high 263 pressures.

McDaniel was supposed to bring better spacing and a running game that could make defenses pay for focusing too much on Herbert.

Instead, Los Angeles has managed just 578 total yards through two games and turned the ball over five times.

The Week 2 box score is especially weird because there's just enough decent numbers to make you wonder how this offense scored only 14 points. The Chargers had 17 first downs and averaged five yards per play. Omarion Hampton rushed for 94 yards. Herbert hit Tre’ Harris for 53 yards on the opening drive of the second half.

That one completion was doing a lot of work, though.

Harris finished with one catch. Quentin Johnston caught one of his five targets for seven yards. Ladd McConkey caught all three of his targets, but three targets for the team’s best receiver just isn’t enough. Herbert’s other completions were scattered mostly between tight ends and running backs.

Los Angeles put together two real touchdown drives. The rest of the afternoon was a mix of stalled possessions and loose footballs.

Herbert Isn’t Blameless Here

There’s going to be a natural urge to protect Herbert because the problems around him are so obvious.

The interior offensive line is struggling. The receivers aren’t consistently winning. Guys are dropping passes and missing assignments all over the field. Herbert's spent years trying to rescue broken plays, so it’s easy to watch another ugly offensive performance and decide everyone except the quarterback is to blame.

That’s not really fair, though.

Herbert hasn’t played well enough through two weeks. There's just no way around it. His first interception Sunday went through David Njoku’s hands, but Herbert still gave fifth-round rookie Hezekiah Masses another chance later in the game. Masses finished with two interceptions after allowing only two catches for 16 yards on six targets.

Herbert also fumbled three times, even though the Chargers recovered all of them. He’s missed throws he normally makes, and he hasn’t looked comfortable once the first answer disappears.

The bigger issue is that this offense isn’t giving him many clean answers to begin with.

Johnston has three catches for 24 yards on 11 targets this season. Harris has four catches for 73 yards on nine targets, and 53 of those yards came on one play. McConkey's still the most dependable receiver in the offense with eight catches for 117 yards, but he basically vanished from the plan after that long completion to Harris.

Herbert isn’t Tua Tagovailoa, and he shouldn’t be asked to play exactly like him.

Tagovailoa’s biggest strength in McDaniel’s offense was his anticipation. He could make a decision before a receiver had even opened up the window and trust the speed around him to finish the play. Herbert's always played a little differently. He holds the ball longer, looks for chances downfield and uses his arm strength to reach parts of the field most quarterbacks simply can’t.

Herbert’s average time to throw last season was 2.9 seconds, which ranked 32nd among qualified quarterbacks. McDaniel spent the offseason telling Chargers receivers to expect the ball in 2.4 seconds or less.

That half-second might not sound like much. In an NFL offense, it’s basically a personality transplant.

Herbert has to adjust. But McDaniel has to meet him halfway, too.

Nothing About This Looks Easy

When McDaniel was introduced, he said one of his first priorities was to “take a little off” Herbert’s plate.

He talked about building the offense around Herbert’s strengths and protecting him with quicker completions. McDaniel even pointed to the RPO package he built for Tagovailoa as an example of how willing he was to shape his system around a quarterback.

Two games in, though, the system looks like it’s making everyone think too much.

The clearest example came late in the third quarter against Vegas. The Chargers were behind 17–14 and were staring down a third-and-1 from their own 32. Harris went in motion behind the formation right as Jake Slaughter snapped the ball.

The snap hit Harris in the leg. Herbert recovered it eight yards behind the line of scrimmage, and they had to punt.

That wasn’t some complicated read or a great defensive play. It was a basic operational mistake at one of the biggest moments of the game.

And it wasn’t a one-off.

Herbert and Hampton had trouble with the exchanges. Joe Alt, usually one of the most reliable tackles in football, had three false starts. Receivers struggled to get lined up. The Chargers were credited with six fumbles.

Rashawn Slater called the issues “technical errors” and “stupid stuff like getting lined up.”

That’s an execution problem. But it’s also fair to wonder why so much of the offense looks uncomfortable all the time.

Motion is supposed to give the quarterback more information and create leverage. Condensed formations are supposed to help receivers avoid press coverage and find open space. The quick passing game is supposed to protect an offensive line that struggled last season.

Right now, those tools aren’t helping Los Angeles play faster. They’re making this team look overwhelmed.

Hampton Was The Closest Thing To A Plan

Hampton gave the offense something they badly needed against the Raiders: a little stability.

He carried the ball 15 times for 70 yards in the first half and finished with 94 yards and a touchdown on 23 attempts. When Herbert couldn’t find a rhythm early, the Chargers leaned on Hampton and finally put together a 10-play touchdown drive.

They didn’t completely forget about him after halftime. He just stopped being the thing holding the offense together.

Hampton had eight carries for 24 yards in the second half. His last run ended with Nakobe Dean knocking the ball loose just after Los Angeles got past midfield. Jeremy Chinn returned the fumble 43 yards, and the Raiders scored three plays later to make it 24–14.

Hampton owned the mistake afterward. He should. That turnover ended the last possession where the Chargers had a real chance to take the lead.

Still, the fumble shouldn’t erase the bigger point.

Hampton is the one part of this offense that, at least a little bit, looked capable of calming everything down. The Chargers need to build more of the passing game off him instead of treating the run and pass plans like two separate projects.

McDaniel built his reputation as a run-game designer before becoming Miami’s head coach. His best offenses used motion and outside-zone action to get linebackers moving the wrong way, then punished that hesitation with crossers and throws into space.

The Chargers have Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt, two tackles athletic enough to make that kind of scheme actually work. What they don’t have is much stability inside.

Tyler Biadasz, the center Los Angeles signed to a three-year contract during the offseason, suffered a season-ending knee injury in August. Slaughter has been pushed into the starting job. Kayode Awosika suffered a fibula injury against the Raiders, and Trevor Penning played most of the second half at left guard. Cole Strange was also evaluated during the game.

This timing-based offense was already having trouble getting everyone on the same page. Now they have to replace even more pieces.

This Isn’t Just A Weird Start Anymore

Arizona came into Week 1 off a 3–14 season and nine straight losses. The Chargers were 9.5-point favorites.

Las Vegas went 3–14 last year, fired their coach, and showed up Sunday as roughly a touchdown underdog.

Los Angeles lost both games by double digits.

According to OptaStats, the Chargers are the first team in 100 years to lose consecutive home games by double digits to opponents that finished the previous season below a .200 winning percentage. The only other was the 1926 Racine Tornadoes, who played one more game before folding the franchise entirely.

You generally don’t want your closest historical comparison to be a team that disappeared a century ago.

Jim Harbaugh is 0–2 for the first time in his college or NFL coaching career. Only 12.2% of teams that have started 0–2 since 1990 made the playoffs. And only two teams have recovered from an 0–2 start when both losses came at home.

And to make matters worse, the schedule isn’t exactly doing the Chargers any favors.

Los Angeles travels to Buffalo and Seattle over the next two weeks. Then they get Denver at home, Kansas City on the road, and the Rams at SoFi. Those first two home games were supposed to give the Chargers a little breathing room before the schedule got tough.

That breathing room is gone.

All stats courtesy of Fantasy Points Data.

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