Mike McDaniel: Critical that we don’t rely too heavily on Justin Herbert going above and beyond
Mike McDaniel held his first press conference since being hired as the Chargers’ offensive coordinator on Tuesday and quarterback Justin Herbert was a major topic of conversation.
McDaniel was effusive in his praise of Herbert’s talents and said the “short answer” is that he hasn’t worked with a quarterback who has the same capabilities as his current one. He’s not the first to wax on Herbert’s skills, but the Chargers have not been able to translate that into playoff success to this point in Herbert’s career. McDaniel said one of the things he hopes to do is create an offense that’s less reliant on Herbert’s individual talents.
“I think not relying too heavily on Justin’s ability to do above and beyond I think is critical to maximize those types of opportunities,” McDaniel said. “That’ll be one of the first things that we’ll try to do is take a little off his plate so that he is free to do that when his greatness is required.”
McDaniel did not share all the ways he plans to do that, but he did emphasize that offenses need to “take advantage of that space” provided by defenses before snaps in order to both protect the quarterback and build momentum as a unit.
“There’s a lot of incredible plays that Justin has made,” McDaniel said. “He’s firmly capable, and sometimes as a coach you can rely upon that a little too much. There’s schematic ways to get completions that maybe all three quarterbacks on your roster would be capable of doing. Easier completions, not putting so much — 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’s firmly capable of doing but maybe a player of lesser talent would be capable of doing as well.”
McDaniel said that Herbert has not “neared the ceiling” 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.
