The Chargers are digging deep for help.
After falling to the Broncos and slipping to 0-5, Los Angeles is tied with the Tennessee Titans and Miami Dolphins for the NFL’s worst record, and the injury situation keeps getting uglier. The Chargers had 18 names on the injury report before the Week 5 game against Denver, then watched Tre Harris and Bud Dupree get hurt in the loss. With Week 6 looming, there’s little reason to expect the roster to look much healthier.
So the team brought in a long list of veterans for workouts, trying to patch together some depth during this stretch. The most notable additions to the workout group included JuJu Smith-Schuster and Jake Browning, along with Quinton Bell, Kahlef Hailassie, Tejhuan Palmer, and Kyle Trask. Luke Grimm also worked out and was one of the two players to end up signing with the practice squad.
Smith-Schuster was the biggest name in the group. A former 1,400-yard receiver, he has been in the league since 2017 and built a career as a dependable role player across three teams.
He spent the offseason with John Harbaugh in New York but did not make the team. His 345-yard season in 2025 still gave him more production than everyone else on the workout list combined.
Browning brings a far different kind of résumé. The former Washington quarterback entered the league as an undrafted free agent with the Vikings in 2019, then found his footing with the Bengals.
His 2023 stretch standing in for Joe Burrow included seven starts, a league-best 70.4% completion rate, 1,936 passing yards, 12 touchdowns and seven interceptions. His 2025 run was rougher: three starts, 771 yards, six touchdowns and eight interceptions.
He spent this offseason with the Buccaneers before losing the QB2 job to UDFA Jalon Daniels, but the Chargers liked enough of what they saw in the workout to sign him, especially with Trey Lance now on injured reserve after a practice injury.
Trask was the other quarterback in the mix and likely Browning’s competition. A second-round pick in 2021, he was expected to take over after Tom Brady’s retirement, but that never materialized.
He has largely been viewed as a bust, though his size and his production at Florida keep him on the radar. In the 2026 preseason with the Panthers, he threw for 252 yards with two touchdown passes and two interceptions.
Bell also got a look. The former seventh-round pick by the 49ers in 2023 played two seasons in San Francisco, catching eight passes for 90 yards and three touchdowns.
He then spent 2025 with the Saints, where he had two catches for 23 yards and a touchdown. His Michigan background gives him a connection to Jim Harbaugh, which likely helped his case.
The other receivers and defensive backs on the list each come with their own path. Armour-Davis was a fourth-round pick by the Ravens in 2022 and made three starts over three years before spending 2025 with the Titans, where he started 10 games and finished with 34 tackles before a season-ending injury.
Hailassie was a rookie free agent after the 2026 draft, first signing with Washington before landing with Green Bay and then being cut after a preseason that included a drop but no receiving stats. Palmer, a 2024 sixth-round pick by Arizona, spent time on the Cardinals’ practice squad in both 2024 and 2025 and was elevated once in 2025 before catching three passes for 33 yards with New England in the 2026 preseason.
Grimm’s path is a familiar one for Chargers fans. He spent both the 2025 and 2026 preseasons with Los Angeles, built a reputation as a reliable slot option, and even added a special teams return touchdown. That helped him stick this time, as the Chargers made him one of the two players from the workout group to land on the practice squad.
For a team already buried by injuries, the message is clear: Los Angeles is looking everywhere for answers.
In Other News...
Chargers Collapse Is Putting Ownership Under A Brutal Spotlight
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What makes the frustration linger is that this is not just about one bad month or a few close losses. Around the team, the conversation has drifted toward ownership and the broader budget approach, with the sense that the current path leaves little margin for improvement and even less patience for the people tasked with fixing it. [Read more 🡒]
Justin Herbert Trade Talk Shows What Chargers Fans Are Really Debating
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For the Chargers, though, the conversation appears to be more noise than real negotiation. Herbert has a no-trade clause, he recently signed a five-year extension through 2029, and the organization has made clear it has never discussed moving him and has no intention of doing so. Still, the buzz says plenty about the tension fans live with: when a team has a quarterback this talented, every hypothetical trade offer becomes a referendum on how much faith should be placed in the player who is supposed to define the next era. [Read more 🡒]
Chargers Collapse Has Put An Unthinkable Justin Herbert Debate In Play
An 0-5 start has turned the Chargers season into something much bigger than a bad October, because the losing has now pushed the conversation from short-term fixes to the future of Justin Herbert. Los Angeles has spent heavily on coaching and player personnel around him, building the roster with the expectation that the quarterback would be the constant, the face of the franchise and the player everything else was supposed to support.
Justin Herbert is 28 and still under contract for four more years, which is why any talk of a reset still sounds jarring. Even so, the way this season has unraveled has left room for an uncomfortable question that did not exist when the year began: if the struggles keep going, could the Chargers eventually consider a much larger overhaul, one that changes the direction of the entire team? [Read more 🡒]