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t 0-8, the Los Angeles Chargers‘ playoff hopes for 2026 are all but over. In what has been their worst start to a season since 2000, a year where they went 1-15, nothing has gone right for the team in 2026. The Chargers are among the league’s worst offenses, with quarterback Justin Herbert struggling to look like the player he has in the past. Most of the issues on offense fall on offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel. Hired this offseason, his scheme is not a fit in Los Angeles and while he is an elite offensive mind, he has failed to mesh with Jim Harbaugh and company.
At the midway point of the season, SportsNaut.com released an article naming the worst offseason moves heading into the 2026 NFL season. McDaniel’s hire is among the worst, and is the only move that does not involve a player.
McDaniel’s Hire Named Among Worst
McDaniel was expected to revitalize the Chargers, a team that had fallen short of its goals in recent seasons. The Chargers finished 11-6 in each of Harbaugh’s first two seasons at the helm, but lost in the AFC Wild Card playoffs both times. Instead, the Chargers look worse than they did before and have failed to move the ball or score points when it matters most. McDaniel’s future is now in question after just one season. Sports Naut listed McDaniel’s hire as the third-worst move of the offseason, and did not hold back when explaining why.
“Some of the moves NFL teams made in 2026 were disasters waiting to happen and easy to criticize at the time,” Sports Naut’s Matt Johnson wrote. “Just about everyone around the National Football League or who followed it closely, outside of Miami, was enamored with Mike McDaniel taking over as the Los Angeles Chargers’ offensive coordinator. The end result has been one of the biggest disasters in modern NFL history.
“It’s truly impossible to exaggerate how bad the Chargers offense is this season. Entering Week 10, the Chargers rank last in EPA per play at -0.219 (Minnesota Vikings are 31st at -0.156), they are one of only two teams with fewer than 20 red-zone trips this season (Vikings, 17) and one of just two clubs with a scoring rate under 30 percent (Philadelphia Eagles are last at 25.5 percent). Infamously, Los Angeles just saw its streak of going 37 consecutive drives without an offensive touchdown snapped. Is McDaniel entirely to blame for this? No. But when a two-time Pro Bowl quarterback sees his career interception rate (1.7 percent) more than double in 2026 (4.7 percent) and his passer rating plummet (96.3 career to 70.4 this season), the new play-caller deserves a majority of the blame.”
McDaniel’s Coaching Career Thus Far
McDaniel came to the Chargers after spending the previous four seasons as the head coach of the Miami Dolphins. He went 35-33 with two playoff appearances in his tenure there. Before that, he served as an assistant for various teams. Starting his coaching career in 2005 as a coaching intern with the Denver Broncos, he became an offensive assistant for the Houston Texans from 2006-2008. McDaniel was an assistant in the United Football League from 2009-10 but returned to the NFL in 2011 as an offensive assistant for two seasons for the then-Washington Redskins. He became the wide receivers coach in 2013 before moving onto the Cleveland Browns to serve as their wide receivers coach in 2014.
After two seasons with the Atlanta Falcons as an offensive assistant in 2015-16, he joined Kyle Shanahan’s staff on the San Francisco 49ers and was the run game specialist in 2017. From 2018-20 he served as the run game coordinator before becoming the offensive coordinator in 2021.
Chargers Hiring of OC Mike McDaniel Leads the Way in One of the Worst Moves of 2026