The Los Angeles Chargers did not get the kind of opening-night performance they were hoping for, and tight end Charlie Kolar didn’t waste time pretending otherwise.
After a 26-14 loss to the Arizona Cardinals at SoFi Stadium, Kolar offered a blunt evaluation of the Chargers’ offensive showing. “Just overall offensively, just a dogsh*t performance.
And that starts with myself and the leaders on this team. That’s just a bad performance.
It’s embarrassing.”
It was the kind of postgame comment players usually try to avoid after a rough one. Most of the time, the language is softer: clean it up, learn from it, move on. Kolar went the other way and called it exactly what it looked like - a bad day from start to finish.
The Chargers had entered the 2026 season with real expectations. With Justin Herbert at quarterback, a new offensive system in place and a roster built to compete, Week One was supposed to be the first step toward something bigger. Instead, Sunday exposed a long list of problems that were hard to ignore.
Los Angeles never found much rhythm on offense and missed chances to swing the game back in its favor. Arizona made the Chargers pay for those mistakes, turning errors into points and making every failed opportunity feel heavier. The fourth quarter brought another damaging moment when a blocked punt helped set up another Cardinals score, pushing the comeback further out of reach.
That’s the kind of loss that leaves a mark, especially for a team with postseason ambitions. The Chargers now have to deal with the fact that the opener wasn’t just a stumble - it was a game filled with the exact sorts of errors that can bury a team if they linger.
Still, one game doesn’t define a season. Los Angeles has plenty of time to recover, and Herbert and the offense will get chances to show that Sunday was a bad night rather than a warning sign. But if the Chargers are serious about competing, the fix has to start with honesty.
Kolar gave them that.
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