The San Diegans who cheer against the Los Angeles Chargers haven’t been burned yet.
L.A. owns no AFC West titles or divisional-round victories from its nine seasons since the club’s relocation from San Diego into the country’s No. 2 media market.
Delighting the San Diegans who wouldn’t be able to stomach Roger Goodell handing Dean Spanos a Super Bowl trophy, L.A. has tasted four brutal defeats in the playoffs and missed five cuts, while also seeing the Los Angeles Rams win a Super Bowl inside the Kroenke Dome.
“The Judases always choke in the end,” one former San Diego Chargers fan emailed me last month, after Los Angeles trained at the University of San Diego before a supportive crowd.
This year, L.A.’s trophy pursuit looks more capable than any of its others thanks to the addition of a 5-foot-9, 175-pound assistant coach who drew San Diegans’ cheers last month.
Mike McDaniel, one of the NFL’s brighter offensive coaches, inspires confidence that, beginning with next Sunday’s season opener against Arizona, L.A. will build upon its two-year foundation put down under head coach Jim Harbaugh, the team’s first coach since Norv Turner in 2009 to reach consecutive postseasons.
The logic goes like this:
Due to McDaniel’s expertise as a teacher, designer and playcaller and the return to health of tackle Joe Alt and running back Omarion Hampton, an L.A. offense quarterbacked by Justin Herbert, 28, will handle tougher challenges much better than Bolts units that flopped in first-round playoff losses the past two winters.
After all, with McDaniel earning high grades as an assistant under offensive guru Kyle Shanahan, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan had an MVP season in leading Atlanta to a Super Bowl; and Jimmy Garoppolo, bolstered by a ground game coordinated by McDaniel, took the 49ers to a Super Bowl.
Considering also that McDaniel helped to revive the career of accurate but physically fragile Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa in his four-year run as Miami’s head coach and playcaller, before his dismissal in January, the powerful-and-accurate Herbert ought to thrive in McDaniel’s creative quick-pass game married to a well-disguised, versatile ground attack.
I’ll put a San Diego spin on the McDaniel hire while also noting that the L.A. Chargers don’t feel to me like an extension of the San Diego Chargers.
McDaniel stands as the most interesting offensive coordinator to debut with the franchise since Bill Walsh took over San Diego’s offense in 1976 under Tommy Prothro and Joe Gibbs arrived three years later under Don Coryell.
“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.
In Walsh’s lone year in San Diego, fourth-year quarterback Dan Fouts improved in all major categories, while the offense jumped from 26th to 19th in points.
Walsh was 38 when the Chargers hired him off Hall of Fame coach Paul Brown’s staff with the Bengals.
“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.
McDaniel traced core elements of his precise pass game, meant to get the ball out of Herbert’s hands fast and trigger big gains after the catch, to Walsh-coached units.
“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.”
Under Gibbs, the Chargers finished second and fourth in points scored for AFC West winners in 1979 and1980 before crashing out of each postseason as a favorite.
At 44, Gibbs was a year older than McDaniel, 43, in his San Diego arrival following a one-year run as Tampa Bay’s coordinator.
McDaniel studied Washington’s famed “Hogs” — the blockers who powered 1990s offenses under Gibbs, who in the mid-1960s coached San Diego State’s offensive lines under Coryell.
“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.”
Individually and as a tandem, Harbaugh and McDaniel look capable of guiding L.A.’s AFC team to new heights.
Harbaugh, a former NFL quarterback and the son of a longtime coach, excels at building up physicality and toughness throughout the team, an area where the Chargers have improved in his two seasons.
McDaniel said attention to fundamentals and technique anchor his approach, but he may be best known for his creativity.
“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.”
McDaniel earned a history degree at Yale, where he played wide receiver.
He worked under Super Bowl-winning head coaches Mike Shanahan and Gary Kubiak who, along with McDaniel’s longtime mentor Kyle Shanahan and his former Washington colleague Sean McVay, favored an offensive system that continues to enjoy widespread NFL success.
“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.”
Knowing that McDaniel will attract job offers if he succeeds, the Chargers may not be able to count on employing him for a long time.
Walsh and Gibbs weren’t long for the job, leaving for head-coach positions with Stanford and the NFL’s Washington club, just one year and two years after moving to San Diego. Each coach went on to win three Super Bowls as a head coach.
“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 McDaniel’s offense overcomes the Chargering bug, the job offers will be too numerous to count.