OMG! Chargers 0-3: Five Takeaways, Still Lost… Fire Mike McDaniel

0–3. Five Takeaways. And Justin Herbert Still Found a Way to Lose.

The Chargers are 0–3. They lost to Arizona. They lost to the Raiders 26–14. On Sunday they lost to Buffalo 24–16 after forcing five turnovers. Five. Josh Allen put the ball on the ground. The Bills took 10 penalties. Los Angeles led 10–0 after a quarter and 13–10 later with the ball at the Buffalo 28. Then Herbert threw a third-and-5 dart into the end zone that Chauncey Gardner-Johnson jumped like he had the playbook. Pick. Game flipped. Season sliding toward the sewer.

This is Chargering with a new coordinator and the same disease. Last year they were 3–0 with Greg Roman calling it. This year Mike McDaniel is on the headset and they cannot score 20 on a defense that had already given up 62 points in two games. That is not bad luck. That is an offense that wastes gifts.

Herbert has been horrible enough to own this start

Stop protecting him with “the supporting cast.” Through three weeks he is completing 59 percent with a 3-to-4 touchdown-to-interception ratio. Against the Raiders: 15-of-27, 192, one score, two picks. Against the Bills: 20-of-34, 226, one score, one pick — the pick that mattered. Tom Brady called that throw a meatball sub. He was being kind. It was a franchise quarterback seeing a covered receiver and throwing it anyway because the offense has no answer for third-and-medium that is not hope.

Herbert almost threw two more picks that were dropped. He had a fumble that got reversed. The numbers look “blah,” which is the scouting report on a $50 million arm that will not close. When the defense hands you the 28, you do not go hero ball to Valdes-Scantling with a safety sitting on the route. You take the points. You take the first down. You put the game on Allen to chase two scores. Herbert put it on Gardner-Johnson instead.

He is not the only problem. He is the one who cannot use five takeaways.

The defense is not the hero of this story either

Yes, five takeaways in Buffalo. Write it down. Then write the other two weeks. This unit has been sloppy, late, and allergic to getting off the field when it actually mattered in September. You do not start 0–3 with a Harbaugh defense unless the front seven is getting moved and the secondary is gambling into explosives. Buffalo still scored 24. Allen still left with a win. A defense that needs five takeaways to keep a game in reach is not a good defense. It is a desperate one that finally punched back and watched the offense fumble the gift.

You want to talk sloppy? Ten Bills penalties and you still cannot put them away. That is both sides of the ball playing like they left the assignments in SoFi.

McDaniel and Harbaugh

McDaniel was hired to make this offense look like Miami without Tua’s body. Through three weeks it looks like a team that cannot run, cannot protect the third-down throw, and cannot finish a red-zone snap. Disconnect with Herbert is already in the stories. When the quarterback and the play-caller are searching for the same page in Week 3, you do not have an identity. You have a press conference.

Harbaugh does not get a pass because he won at Michigan. 0–3 with this roster, this quarterback, and this schedule coming — Seahawks, Broncos, Chiefs, Rams, Texans, Ravens — is how you turn a “contender” into a 4–13 conversation before Halloween. The next six is a graveyard if Sunday’s red-zone pick is the standard.

The bottom line

The Chargers did not get robbed. They got 10–0, they got five takeaways, they got Allen sloppy, and they still found the one throw that ends decent teams. That is on Herbert. That is on McDaniel. That is on a defense that spent two weeks playing down to every opponent and one week creating chaos it could not cash.

0–3 is not a slow start. It is a statement. The statement is this offense cannot be trusted with a lead and this quarterback cannot be trusted when the game is a single throw. Fix the call sheet. Fix the protection. Stop throwing meatballs into covered sidelines. Or keep Chargering and let the rest of the AFC West lap a team that was supposed to be good.

Five takeaways. Sixteen points. Go home 0–3. That is the article. That is the season until somebody in that building plays like it bothers them.