Andy Reid had his team ready for this NFL season.
Jim Harbaugh did not.
Each trend deepened Sunday in Missouri, where Reid’s Kansas City Chiefs, improving to 6-0, won a 22-6 decision that dropped Harbaugh’s Los Angeles Chargers to 0-6.
Reid team’s latest fast start is easy to comprehend.
Harbaugh club’s worst six-game stretch, by far, is more nuanced because of a nasty spate of injuries.
Even so, Harbaugh has come up quite short. Shockingly so.
His hire of offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel has been a complete bust. That’s one factor in quarterback Justin Herbert going through his own worst six-game stretch by far.
Herbert, 28, has gone from being a consensus top-five to top-10 NFL quarterback to the NFL’s No. 1 enigma.
Sunday, he threw another mystifying interception.
Harbaugh needs to turn this around, and that probably begins with firing McDaniel going into the bye week Monday.
Reid, meantime, has reprised his knack for solving problems.
When Week 1 arrived for the Chiefs, it didn’t really matter that Reid’s quarterback was coming off reconstructive knee surgery. Or that an offseason trade for draft picks had removed Reid’s All-Pro cornerback months before a back injury shelved his left tackle.
Reid and the scout he’d hired long ago, Brett Veach, the team’s general manager, had created a talent cushion.
They made the smartest move of the past NFL offseason by signing running back Kenneth Walker III.
Reid then ran a brutal training camp even by his ultra-demanding standards. Chiefs veterans called it the toughest summer they’d endured, saying it was worth it.
Now, look at Reid’s team.
Walker, thriving in the coach’s reconfigured offense, stands as an NFL MVP candidate. He’s averaging six-plus yards per rush. Sunday, he popped a 33-yard touchdown run, abetted by guard Trey Smith hammering and pancaking L.A. star Khalil Mack.
The fast start has Reid’s club alone atop the AFC race for the first-round playoff bye.
Ho-hum. It’s the sixth time a Reid team has begun 5-0. The only other NFL coaches to do it: Hall of Famers George Halas and Paul Brown.
This was not ho-hum:
Harbaugh’s team has opened the season looking disjointed, disorganized and not physical.
The Chargers have twice lost as heavy favorites opposite rookie head coaches.
From there, another injury wave and a toughening schedule compounded the challenges.
Herbert wasn’t to blame for the 0-2 start, but did throw ill-advised, crucial interceptions in each defeat. It turned out that those weren’t flukes.
In the four games that have followed, Herbert has continued to throw one pass per game directly to a defender. And former NFL quarterbacks who work now as TV analysts have blamed him for it, saying he’s not seeing what he should see or forcing a pass..
This week brings a timely open date for Harbaugh’s team.
Dismissing McDaniel would allow his replacement — former NFL coordinator and head coach Adam Gase is on LA.’s staff — a head start.
But firing McDaniel would not absolve Harbaugh, even if the McDaniel-Herbert fit excited many NFL experts. Harbaugh surely knew that McDaniel would alter Herbert’s footwork and run a quick-pass, horizontal pass-offense. As a former longtime NFL quarterback who was in his third year with Herbert, Harbaugh perhaps should’ve known better.
Paying Harbaugh top NFL dollar three winters ago, Dean and John Spanos hope to have hired their version of Reid.
Harbaugh started well, leading a pair of 11-6 seasons. His second team beat Reid’s Chiefs twice,
But Reid has reasserted himself, paining the many San Diegans who still root for the lightning-bolt club (but also delighting the many San Diegans who revel in every Los Angeles Chargers’ defeat).