On Being Wrong: The 2026 Los Angeles Chargers
Well, it's week 7 in the NFL calendar, which means we're one third of the way through the NFL regular season, and almost halfway through the fantasy football regular season. By now, you should have a good idea of where your team stands - not only what your strengths & weaknesses are, but what it might cost to turn things around. In dynasty, now is the time to decide whether you are a contender or a rebuilder, and take action. If you have a Sleeper account, you can sync your league for free with our My Team tool, and get a grade of "Contender" "Pretender" "Middling" or "Rebuilder", including analysis like lineup checks, waiver wire targets, and our league-customized Trade Desk. But enough about all that...let's talk about the Los Angeles Chargers.
It's probably not smart to write on the fantasy football analytics website that you were wrong, but if I were smart, I would have seen this coming, right? The Los Angeles Chargers are 0-6. Justin Herbert leads the league with 8 INTs. He's only thrown 5 TDs. None of his pass-catchers have had a 100-yard game, and none of the running backs have stood out behind a battered and struggling offensive line. In year three with Jim Harbaugh, after back-to-back 11-win seasons (their highest win total since 2018 with Philip Rivers), the Chargers are sputtering, and all signs point towards first-year OC and (alleged) offensive mastermind Mike McDaniel.
(Mike McDaniel is Leo in this scenario, and Harbaugh is Jack Nicholson)
Being wrong isn't always your fault. Sometimes a player gets hurt, and it ruins their season, even if they only miss a few games. That's not "being wrong", that's being unlucky. That's football. Unless the bet you are making is that Jayden Higgins would specifically not get hurt, you shouldn't feel "wrong" because you took a shot on him in the 16th round. Injuries happen, football happens, but with the Chargers, why couldn't I see this coming?
I will be the first to say I thought adding McDaniel would only be a positive for Herbert and the Chargers. In his time with the Miami Dolphins, McDaniel did the impossible: he made Tua look good. In 2022, Tua led all QBs in Touchdown Percentage, Yards per Attempt, Air Yards per Attempt, and Passer Rating. In 2023, he led the NFL in passing yards with 4,624 and led the Dolphins to 11-6, their best record since 2008. Even in 2024, as the Dolphins came back down to earth, Tua led the NFL in Completion Percentage at 72.9%. See for yourself. For years before that, McDaniel was attached to Kyle Shanahan at the hip, from Houston to Washington to Cleveland to Atlanta, and finally to the 49ers, where the duo took a Jimmy Garoppolo-led offense to a Super Bowl. This guy Mike McDaniel, whose offensive scheme can make a middling-to-bad quarterback not only look good but win games, surely the sky is the limit for the 2019 Offensive Rookie of the Year and 2-time Pro Bowler Justin Herbert, right?
Wrong.
Maybe the first sign should've been the talk about Oronde Gadsden in the offseason. After a rookie year where the tight end flashed before a mid-season knee injury hampered the rest of his 2025, dynasty managers like myself were excited about the future. Then the Chargers signed Charlie Kolar and David Njoku in free agency. Fine, the offensive line struggled last year, we want to lean on the run game, let's get some dudes to block. Right? Nope, wrong again. The talk started in camp that Gadsden was lower on the depth chart and not being featured in the offense. As a limited blocker, maybe he wasn't a fit for McDaniel's scheme, which would likely prioritize Ladd McConkey and Quentin Johnston, as well as second-year running back Omarion Hampton, who (as my colleague Matt often points out) is really good in the screen game.
That's where I first went wrong. I sought to hedge my Oronde Gadsden shares, and talked myself into Charlie Kolar being a sneaky sleeper in the Chargers offense. I went back to his rookie profile from the 2022 draft. In a year where Trey McBride was the clear TE1, Kolar had enough receiving upside that most people were shocked when he was drafted by the Ravens, who already had their pass-catching tight end in Mark Andrews. In his 2022 edition of his draft guide The Beast, Dane Brugler writes the following about Kolar:
"The only three-time All-American in Cyclones history, he holds every tight end record in school history and his 23 career touchdown catches ranks third-most at Iowa State (behind Todd Blythe and Allen Lazard). Kolar is a quarterback’s best friend because he makes himself available, has a large catch radius and is strong to the football. He is one of the smartest, most competitive players in this draft class, but needs to improve his point of attack and sustain skills as a blocker to expand his role. Overall, Kolar won’t threaten defenses vertically and his blocking leaves a lot to be desired, but he is a big, dependable chain-mover and his ability to finish in contested situations is his calling card."
- Dane Brugler, The Beast 2022 NFL Draft Guide
Here's what I ignored when trying to find that sliver of upside: Charlie Kolar never caught more than 10 balls in a season. Sure, he caught an average of a touchdown a year, but what blocking tight end doesn't? I ignored the actual game data, and tried to find upside in the narrative that he would finally break out as a receiver after four years sharing a team with Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely. Kolar has caught 3 passes per game for the last 3 games, for an average of about 26 yards per game. He will surely break his career record for catches in a season, but those are not rosterable numbers, especially for a sputtering offense.
So, I was wrong about McDaniel, I was wrong about Herbert, I was wrong about McConkey, and Kolar. While I wasn't high on Omarion Hampton, I was excited about Keaton Mitchell's speed, especially after McDaniel admitted to printing out "wanted" posters for the ex-Ravens running back and fullback Alec Ingold.
That's a lot to be wrong about, so what am I doing about it?
Well, for starters, I'm not giving up on Justin Herbert or Ladd McConkey. If McDaniel really is the problem, the Chargers should act soon and try to salvage what's left of their season. I don't know enough about what's going on in Herbert's head, obviously, but he looks uncomfortable. He's making poor decisions that seem dictated by the scheme, and he's continuing to take hits and commit costly and inexplicable turnovers. If he can get back to playing a bit more free, I think he can at least regress to the mean this year.
I was wrong about the Chargers this year, I'll be wrong about plenty of other things too, I'm sure. When it comes to fantasy football, and probably life in general, I try to examine how I arrived at the conclusion I was wrong about, and see if I need to change my process moving forward. My Charlie Kolar process was bad. I believed he could be a sleeper candidate, and I ignored 4 years of NFL performance to find something that fit what I wanted to be true. Moving forward, I'll probably be less inclined to believe in a breakout based almost exclusively on coachspeak, free agency, and 5-year-old rookie profiles. I wanted to be right so bad that I walked right into being wrong.
My friends will tell you one of my weaknesses in fantasy football is getting way too excited about an offensive playcaller. As the season goes on, I'm going to continue to inspect that tendency and see if I need to change my approach for next year. I'm still excited about the Liam Coen/Grant Udinski offense in Jacksonville, and Ben Johnson might finally be cooking again now that Caleb Williams is back in the picture, so I don't want to discount playcalling entirely, but maybe the harmony between scheme and talent is more important than each in a vacuum. Justin Herbert and the Chargers were cooking for the last 2 years. Mike McDaniel made bad quarterbacks look good with his play design. Both things can be true, but it does not mean that one will inherently bolster the other. Maybe I should have realized that an old-school Head Coach like Harbaugh may not mesh well with McDaniel, and that maybe consistency was more important for a quarterback finally finding his footing again.
There's still a lot of football to play, and the Chargers could turn things around. Maybe I'm writing an update after 6 more games and they are 6-6 and looking better than ever with Adam Gase at OC. Maybe not. Probably not, but that's why I play fantasy football; to see what happens. It's fun to have a take, it's fun to have a sleeper, it's fun to draft a guy that you believe will outperform ADP, or avoid a guy that you think is going to suck, and it's even more fun when you're right! But, being wrong doesn't need to be a final state. We all lose matchups; we all have bad seasons, bad lineup decisions, or bad trades, but if we look at what the process was that got us to our conclusion and evaluate that rather than the conclusion itself, maybe we can be right more often in the future.