Mike McDaniel knows why people are calling for his job. One day after Jim Harbaugh said McDaniel will keep calling plays for the 0-6 Los Angeles Chargers, the offensive coordinator was asked on Thursday whether he felt he deserved more time. “I don’t feel entitled to anything,” McDaniel said. “I’ve always approached my jobs in the NFL as a privilege. I don’t want to be anything but holding a position because I’m the best person for the job.”
The Chargers come out of their bye week to face the Rams on Sunday at SoFi Stadium, where they will be the road team. McDaniel, defensive coordinator Chris O’Leary and special teams coordinator Ryan Ficken all met with reporters.
“In this league, you have to produce results”
McDaniel said the heat after the loss to Kansas City fit his expectations. “When you’re 0 and 6, quite frankly, all people interested in the Chargers really want the results to be different,” he said. “You’re new on the team and the team’s not doing as well as they’ve done in the past. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Incredibly fun job, a ton of responsibility. And in this league, you have to produce results or there’s going to be heat.”
He said he does not spend time thinking about what is being said. “Everything’s an opportunity cost, and if I’m spending time worrying about things that I would assume would occur, that is an absolute waste of time,” he said. He added that a slow start does not have to decide the season: “If you start below your expectations, that doesn’t mean you have to finish that way. Six out of 17 means there’s 11 guaranteed left.” And he said he would not cling to the job if he could not win the room: “If you don’t earn the belief, you shouldn’t hold everyone hostage.”
Four hours with Herbert
McDaniel said there “wasn’t really necessarily as much of a bye week” because there were problems to solve. He spent about four hours watching film with Justin Herbert, in two sessions of two hours, looking for “the commonalities” of what went wrong. “The thing you want to do when things aren’t working, you want to throw it in a trash bin and just do something else,” he said. “But you take the time to do due diligence.” He said the talking was “probably 50/50,” with him asking Herbert on every play what he saw, what he was comfortable with and which players he trusted.
He said part of the work is getting Herbert to stop carrying all the blame. “He tends to put the burden and blame all on his shoulders, and that’s not fair or realistic,” McDaniel said. “He has to own his job, which is the hardest job in football, and that’s playing quarterback and distributing to eligibles. It’s not his sole job for us to be awesome on offense and score points. Everyone needs to do their jobs in an 11-person, compounding-variable game.”
Asked about some of Herbert’s out-of-character interceptions, McDaniel said it “takes two to tango” and that he is looking at how clearly he explains the quarterback’s reads. He said nothing he asks of Herbert is “super unfamiliar,” and that he has leaned on assistant coach Shane Day, “the longest-tenured coach he’s ever had,” to keep things in familiar “buckets.”
Simplifying, the line and play action
McDaniel said he simplifies every week, looking for patterns in missed assignments and asking whether a play is “reasonable to expect guys to execute.” “If it’s not, it doesn’t matter what type of idea it is, it’s not a good enough idea to run,” he said. He said the goal is to be “to the level of simple that guys can play fast,” without giving up the advantages of motion and alignment. He said he would not blame a single player: “That’s not my style.”
He said the young offensive line, which at one point had four rookies and now looks to have three, has moved defenders in the run game, and that he does not see the off-the-ball technique as the problem. On play action, he said protection has given Herbert room but the plays have not produced the big gains he wants, and the bye-week review found “a little gray” he could remove from the reads. “Just because something does work doesn’t mean it’s good, and just because something doesn’t work doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad,” he said, adding that he has seen growth in the passing game over the last week and a half.
On the Rams defense, he said: “They play variances of dime and base defense to the same offensive personnel, and they make everything look the same pre-snap, whether they’re playing two-shell, single-safety zone or they’re blitzing.” He said he knows the coaching staff “all too well” and that there are “a lot of gold jackets on the team,” players who will one day be in Canton.
O’Leary: “We’re all desperate for a win”
O’Leary said the bye-week review told the defense to “stay on the path that we’re on” and add a few new wrinkles. The focus now, he said, is putting 60 minutes together: “throwing the first punch, handling two-minute at the end of the half and then closing games out.” Asked if a team can press too hard to get its first win, he said it happens when one player, or the play-caller, tries to win the game alone. “We’re all desperate for a win. I’m desperate for a win,” he said. “Every night, the anger inside is there. But the only way to address that is to double down on the process.”
Safety Derwin James, who has not played since Week 3, had a setback in his hamstring rehab this week, and Harbaugh said on Wednesday he could go on injured reserve. “You can’t replace Derwin. It’s not possible,” O’Leary said. “He’s one of the best in the league, if not the best in the league.” He said the message has always been “team defense,” with personnel groups moved around to cover his absence.
On the Rams, O’Leary called Matthew Stafford “one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL” and Sean McVay “an unbelievable play caller and coach.” He said he does not think of the week as a one-on-one battle with McVay, but said having McDaniel, who comes from a similar offensive tree, in the building since the offseason has helped: “It’s definitely a cumulative effect.”
Ficken said he liked how his unit covered kicks before the bye and wants cleaner, penalty-free football. Asked about the energy of a winless team, he said: “These guys are the best competitors I’ve ever been around. It’s a contagious atmosphere once you get that first one.”
The Chargers play at the Rams on Sunday, November 1, at 1:05 p.m. PT, which is 11:05 p.m. in Cairo.
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