The Chargers may have something different brewing this season, and it starts with the guy calling the offense.
Mike McDaniel has arrived in L.A. with the kind of reputation that makes people lean in. He’s 5-foot-9, 175 pounds, but his impact comes from somewhere much bigger: the way he teaches, designs and calls an offense. That’s why his presence has raised hopes that the Chargers can build on the two-year base Jim Harbaugh has established, starting with next Sunday’s season opener against Arizona.
The argument for a real leap is pretty straightforward. If Joe Alt and Omarion Hampton are healthy, and Justin Herbert is running McDaniel’s quick-hit, highly creative passing game, this offense should be better equipped for the kinds of games that have undone Chargers teams in the playoffs the past two winters.
McDaniel’s track record gives that idea some weight. As an assistant under Kyle Shanahan, he was part of the staff that helped Matt Ryan reach an MVP season and the Super Bowl in Atlanta, and he also helped Jimmy Garoppolo get to a Super Bowl in San Francisco with a strong ground game behind him.
In Miami, he spent four years helping revive Tua Tagovailoa’s career before his dismissal in January.
McDaniel’s connection to San Diego football history is hard to miss. He has become the most intriguing offensive coordinator to come through the franchise since Bill Walsh in 1976 and Joe Gibbs three years later.
Walsh spent one season running the Chargers’ offense under Tommy Prothro, while Gibbs arrived under Don Coryell. McDaniel’s own reaction to being grouped with them was classic dry humor.
“Who’s that?” McDaniel dead-panned when Hall of Famers Walsh and Gibbs were mentioned in early August, before the Chargers’ final session at USD.
“Just kidding,” added the coach, whose sense of humor is a strength.
Walsh’s San Diego stint was short, but it mattered. In his lone year there, fourth-year quarterback Dan Fouts improved across all major categories, and the offense moved from 26th to 19th in points. Walsh was 38 when the Chargers hired him from Paul Brown’s Bengals staff, and McDaniel said that history mattered to him.
“I was aware that he coached for the Chargers in the ’70s, which fired me up as well in my job search,” said McDaniel, whose Dolphins had a .515 win rate and two playoff losses as an underdog.
The echoes don’t stop there. McDaniel said the structure of his passing game traces back to Walsh’s ideas, especially the relationship between timing, route depth and the quarterback’s drops.
“Ironically, much of what I’ve been talking about the whole offseason - timing and pass game and the depth of routes being tied to the quarterback’s drops - that is the starting point principle of what Bill Walsh really did,” he said.
“To me, the West Coast offense as it’s referred to when you’re referencing Bill Walsh, that’s what it is. My direct connection to him and his teaching was through Mike Shanahan.
But (Walsh) set the vision of how I try to create pass game across the board. It’s gigantic.”
Gibbs left a similar mark in San Diego. The Chargers finished second and fourth in points scored in the AFC West in 1979 and 1980 under him, then fell in the postseason as a favorite each time. McDaniel, who was 43 when he came to San Diego for a one-year run as Tampa Bay’s coordinator, said he studied Gibbs’ “Hogs” and their physical approach up front.
“Some of the principles the Hogs used in terms of attacking the line of scrimmage and playing physical are things that are very much intertwined into my run game beliefs,” McDaniel said. “What they were doing was, running plays that the defense knew what was coming.
They still couldn’t stop it. That level of execution, of technique and fundamentals is the bedrock, really, of what I believe in and line of scrimmage football play.”
Harbaugh and McDaniel give the Chargers a pairing that looks unusually well matched. Harbaugh has pushed the team toward more physicality and toughness, and that has shown up over his two seasons.
McDaniel, meanwhile, brings the creativity. Veteran guard-tackle Daniel Brunskill, who played for him last year, told ESPN last fall:
“Mike is creating new ways to do the actual plays,” veteran NFL guard-tackle and San Diego State alum Daniel Brunskill, who played under McDaniel last year, told ESPN last fall.
“People are going to steal from him because he’s actually creating new things that have never been done before.”
Harbaugh also sees the fit with Herbert clearly.
“He’s so intelligent,” Harbaugh told the Rich Eisen show this week. “Book smart, football smart, all the smarts.
Street smart. And, kind of the mirror reflection of that is Justin Herbert in intelligence.
It’s such a great fit.”
There’s one more wrinkle to all of this: if McDaniel succeeds, the Chargers probably won’t have him for long. Walsh and Gibbs each moved on quickly after their San Diego stops, one year and two years after arriving, and both eventually won three Super Bowls as head coaches. McDaniel was asked whether he saw the resemblance.
“Are you saying you’re seeing a pattern?” cracked McDaniel, standing in USD’s west end zone before a practice. “Because I’d be lying if I didn’t think about that once or twice before you just said that.”
If the offense clicks and the Chargers finally beat the thing that has haunted them for years, McDaniel’s phone may not stay quiet for very long.
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