| Projected Record | 10-7, Wild Card Loss (ACTUAL: 3-2) |
| Weighted DVOA Offense* | 19th |
| Weighted DVOA Defense | 17th |
| Early Down Yards | 1st Down – 4.79 (26th), 2nd Down – 5.61 (10th) |
| Explosive Play Rate (As of Week 4) | Offense – 11th (Run 6th, Pass 17th), Defense – 12th (Run 23rd, Pass 6th) |
| Red Zone TD Rate | 38.46% (30th) |
| Turnover Differential | -3 (tied-26th) |
| Key Additions | Trey Lance QB, Najee Harris RB, Nyheim Hines RB, Keenan Allen WR, Tyler Conklin TE, Mekhi Becton OT, Andre James IOL, Naquan Jones IDL, Da’Shawn Hand IDL, Clelin Ferrell EDGE, Donte Jackson CB, Benjamin St-Juste CB |
| Key Departures | Easton Stick QB, Gus Edwards RB, J.K. Dobbins RB, Simi Fehoko WR, Josh Palmer WR, D.J. Chark WR, Hayden Hurst TE, Stone Smartt TE, Poona Ford IDL, Morgan Fox IDL, Joey Bosa EDGE, Nick Niemann LB, Kristian Fulton CB, Asante Samuel Jr. CB, Eli Apple CB Marcus Maye S |
| Rookies to Watch | Omarion Hampton RB, Tre Harris WR, Oronde Gadsden II, Jamarree Caldwell IDL, Kyle Kennard EDGE |
Players on IR: Omarion Hampton RB, Najee Harris RB, Rashawn Slater T, Josh Fuga IDL, Khalil Mack EDGE, Junior Colson LB, Deane Leonard CB, Jordan Oladokun CB, Josh Harris LS
Quarterback
Is Justin Herbert playing the best football of his career? An argument could have been made for this over the first two weeks of this year’s season: over those weeks, Herbert threw for 560 yards, 5 TDs, no INTs, over 70% completion percentage, and ran 16 times for 63 yards, including an iconic slide to defeat the Chiefs during the opening week. It was majestic, it was incredible, and the 2-0 Chargers looked like a team to beat. Herbert has since cooled: 3 TDs to 4 INTs, two games under 60% completion percentage, and two heinous losses in a close one to the Giants and a not-close-at-all loss to the Commanders with a braced up Jayden Daniels. In the Broncos victory, the cracks started showing on the offense: Trey Pipkins at RT allowed 9 pressures, and the team combined for 26 pressures. Then, 20 against the Giants and finally an improved 11 against the Commanders (though 4 got home for a sack, which means they were instant wins typically). When you consider that Herbert endured just 15 pressures in a signature Week 1 win against a good front and just EIGHT in a coasting win over the Raiders, you see where the problem lies. The team around Herbert is crumbling quickly, and he looks genuinely confused and off-kilter on the field. It’s now a trend that concerns longevity. The stats showed up on Twitter this week: Herbert has taken 525 hits since 2020, 35 more than the next-closest Russell Wilson. He is now on pace for 625 hits on his person in his career, 45 more than ANDREW LUCK in his 6th year. Luck retired after Year 6, citing continued injuries (the podcast about this is extremely good).
The consequence of Herbert’s beating is an offense that is starting to produce less and less explosives. Look anywhere and you’ll see it: Herbert had an average depth of target of 10.3 in Week 1. He dropped to 9.3 in Week 2. Then, in order: 8.6, 6.5, and last week a nightmarish 4.7. He had 7 receiver drops in Weeks 3-5 as opposed to 2 in the first two weeks. He dropped his time to throw from the high 2.85-3.05 second range of a big play hunter in the first 3 weeks to 2.54 and 2.50 the last two weeks. Injuries have played a massive role, as both skill talent and line players have shuffled in and out, but this is a QB who is not at all confident and is pressing more and more. The Chargers are once again turtling their generational talent into a game manager, and finding that the game manager is not managing the game, with sacks and INTs far higher than they need to win. Sadly, this is a trend consistent with last year, when the team dropped Herbert from the 672 and 743 attempts he had in 2021 and 2022 to 536, finding that he was generally no more efficient on the reduced touches: 2024 was a career low for TDs in a healthy season, completion percentage, and a career-high in PFF charted turnover worthy plays. His best NFL passer rating is still 2020, his rookie season when he was thrust into a starting role. In many ways, the Chargers are still chasing the magic of 2020: they missed the playoffs at 7-9, but the QB threw for 4000 yards and 31 TDs, and he looked incredible doing it. Herbert’s game features staggering throws in both touch and distance from all arm angles to anywhere at all on the field. And yet late-game INTs, playoff collapses, and a team that squanders opportunities too often is still the Herbert legacy. 2025 is a chance to rewrite the narratives and accomplish more. They have an easy opponent this week to get back on track.
Coaching
Jim Harbaugh is nuts. Every single quote you get from the guy is more insane than the last: he’s a true CEO, empowering coaches and coordinators in a system from his design. He has an excellent eye for position coaches, seems incredibly hard to work with from above but protective of those below him, and winning is his expertise. At 61 years old, Harbaugh is 63-31-1 in the NFL and 144-52 at the college level. He has Coach of the Year trophies in both college and pro football. His only losing record comes as an actual pro QB, where he played until he was 37, with two seasons of 10 or more wins in 1990 and 1991 as his true claim to fame (the latter, he threw more INTs than TDs like any true Bears QB). Jack Harbaugh, the true Elder Kennedy of the family, gave Jim his break into coaching, bringing him in to consult at the Group of 5 conference level. At this time, Jim was unpaid as he was still an NFL QB for the entire tenure at Western Kentucky. So this man finished football practice and went to football practice. Retirement from playing allowed him to quickly step into a QB coach role with the Raiders with his essential peer Rich Gannon. Harbaugh was an early hire for OL legend Bill Callahan, and the team quickly made the Super Bowl. Harbaugh’s destiny was to be a Head Coach, so he took the first offer available: after finishing his career as a starter in San Diego, Harbaugh took the job as University of San Diego head coach in the Pioneer League. Nepo Baby Magic took him from that role in 3 years to the Head Coach of Stanford football, a major step up to the PAC-10. After quickly stirring a fight with Pete Carroll in the media by saying he had one more year at USC (Carroll responded by spending 3 years at USC, likely out of spite, before going to Seattle), Harbaugh shocked the world by BEATING the #1 USC Trojans despite coming into the game as 41 point underdogs. It is, according to Wikipedia, still the greatest underdog upset win in college football history, and led to the two screaming “WHAT’S YOUR DEAL?!” over and over at one another post-game later in the rivalry. Anyway, it’s a long history for Harbaugh, so I’ll hit fast forward: Harbaugh continued to win at Stanford, though never sniffing the big game, and teams courted him (like the infamous Stephen Ross Flight To See Jim with Tony sitting at home) and he eventually chose San Francisco due to his strong roots in SoCal. Insanely, he fully rehabbed former bust Alex Smith’s career, ditched Smith for Colin Kaepernick after an injury, and played his brother (and lost) in a Super Bowl. A power struggle with Trent Baalke led to his dismissal, with Harbaugh claiming he was fired weeks before the season, but stuck around to see it through. True psycho shit. He lands at Michigan, immediately turns around the program, and then finally broke through to win the Big Game against OSU in 2021. He won it all in 2023, though under a cloud of major suspension after recruiting and sign-stealing scandals. Wild as this is to believe, Harbaugh is not allowed to coach a college football team until 2038. So it’s pros or bust! Luckily for him, he made the playoffs and went 11-6 last year, losing a Wild Card game. He is Extremely Weird Football Coach politically, simultaneously extremely anti-abortion and testifying before Congress for the need to build services for low-income individuals facing criminal charges and marching for BLM protests. Harbaugh is weird!
That’s a lot of page space for a long career that can be summed up thusly: Jim Harbaugh is a crazy person who could be a Batman villain, but instead is a football coach, and he’s really good at it. Upon his hiring, Harbaugh brought in a host of interesting coaches, headed by Greg Roman and Jesse Minter. Roman is another NFL old head and a Harbaugh Enthusiast: Roman was the OC for Harbaugh in San Francisco, then stayed in the NFL with John to be the OC for the rise of Lamar Jackson, then got fired by John and got hired by Jim. Gotta be weird conversations there. Roman was a hero for getting an insane amount of juice from the Kaepernick squeeze, but his ideas of condensed formations and a TE-centered pass attack were DOA by the time Lamar came into being. Ravens fans blamed Roman for their inability to move the ball in the playoffs, and they certainly had a point: Lamar has shredded in the spread game to the tune of a 2023 MVP year that may be one of the great all-around QB seasons of all time and probably should have been the 2024 MVP. Roman has not gotten that level of success as OC in LA, but his style is shifting: Herbert may still play out of tight formations frequently, but the team does still throw the ball plenty. There is nothing Greg Roman likes to do more than establish the run, and Miami will suffer as a result. If Roman is a guy near retirement enjoying his last major gig, Jesse Minter is the exact opposite: at just 42, Minter is also a coach’s son and used his connections to get an intern role at Notre Dame before bouncing around small colleges and landing with, you guessed it, John Harbaugh and the Ravens. Learning from Wink Martindale, former successful DC with the Ravens, Minter became fond of blitzing from absolutely anywhere on the field and using aggressive, downhill players to attack offenses with speed. His addition to the team last year was revelatory for his stars: Derwin James looked at times like the best safety in football with 5.5 sacks and a ton of disruption. Want to understand Minter? Derwin is the way to do it: last year, he lined up in the box 305 times, on the defensive line 105 times, at free safety 250 times, and in the slot 385 times. For fun, he went to corner 14 times. Other DBs who were castoffs from other teams also looked great in Minter’s system: Tony Jefferson, Eli Apple, and Elijah Molden were all former busts who became competent pieces when on the field. This year, with another round of DB castoffs from other teams, Minter’s guys are still playing well.
This is the section to discuss a major Harbaugh Bros trade that went down on Tuesday: Jim and John swapped Odafe Oweh, a good but often under-achieving pass rusher for the Ravens, and Alohi Gilman, a safety who was incredible for the regime prior to Harbaugh in LA. With Khalil Mack still returning, the Chargers are lacking depth at the edge position and got better this week. The Chargers are focused on finding ways to disrupt, but disruption is difficult when you don’t have the players to do so. Tuli Tuipulotu has 27 pressures and no one else has more than 8. Not good. Minter’s scheme looks unrealized without defensive reinforcements, and Roman’s looks unrealized with an injured OL. Both coaches need to rally to stop the 2 game skid, especially with a 3-0 division record that serves as a phenomenal cushion.
Offense
We’ll start in Hell here with the offensive line. The Chargers are in a disastrous position at the offensive line due to a preseason injury to Rashawn Slater, whose Pro Bowl talent was lost to a knee. Joe Alt, last year’s top pick, slid from RT to LT to compensate, and did a fantastic job with just 3 allowed pressures in four weeks before exiting with an ankle injury of his own that will keep him sidelined. This leaves the Chargers with Austin Deculus and Trey Pipkins III to play extremely important roles as the tackles in the quality starters’ absence. Deculus is a former 6th-round pick who bounced around practice squads and got to the Chargers on the classic waiver-wire-turned-trade for a conditional 7th round pick. What the Chargers see in him is beyond me: in his first two starts for the team, he gave up 11 pressures to the talented Giants front and the not-so-talented Commanders front. Both games were bad: instantaneous sheds, terrible feet, the guy looks utterly overmatched. He’s big, so you’d hope he could get run game push, but little stuck out there on film. Pipkins may be a bit better about allowing pressure (4 over the same period as Deculus above), but he doesn’t have the Backup excuse: after spending last year at guard, Pipkins was needed to slide into Alt’s RT spot when he moved to LT and has been a very poor player at the position. Pipkins, of course, is out this week. They do have a utility lineman, Jamaree Salyer, with some good starting tackle experience, but he hasn’t shown anything in his spot starts since his rookie year. Inside, it isn’t better. He’s also questionable, with two straight days of being downgraded to Did Not Participate. If he doesn’t play, I have genuinely no idea who plays RT. Zion Johnson, a former Boston College 1st-round pick, has never lived up to his athleticism and been a game-changer at guard. In Year 4 with yet another year of chaos, it’s safe to say he’s a bust. His 6 pressures have him on pace for a career best, but there’s little push from that position. It doesn’t help that Former Raven (again) Bradley Bozeman has fully fallen apart at center. The 30-year-old center’s claim to fame is that he stays average and makes few mistakes, but his run game play has fallen off in a big way and he’s on pace for his 3rd 30 pressure season in a row, TERRIBLE for a center. In 2020 and 2021, he looked like a perfectly adequate center who made the right calls. Then he went to Carolina and has looked broken both there and in this scheme. Those two have at least (or unfortunately, for the Chargers) played all their snaps. Mekhi Becton came back from rehabbing his image in Philadelphia’s plug and play scheme and has stunk. Becton is a 6’7” 370 pound former top pick for the Jets. Injuries, weight issues, and general malaise led to an early release from New York, and the Super Bowl ring allowed him to sign a $20 million dollar deal with LA. He is not going to see the second year at this rate. Slow, injured with both a hand and concussion, and yet another guy with no oomph, the Chargers are not getting line play that allows them to be versatile or even hunt deep shots. It’s bad. Luckily, Miami has the worst pass rush win rate in the league. What happens when a stoppable force meets a moveable object?
At the skill positions, the Chargers at least have a ton of excitement. Before rookie Omarion Hampton suffered an injury that will keep him out for an extended time, he was playing awesome football. He was slow to start, with just 72 yards in his first two games, but he got his first TD against Denver and then exploded for 128 yards on 12 carries against the Giants. He also was helping to deflect pressure, catching 20 of his 21 targets for 136 yards. After Najee Harris tore his Achilles, the Chargers are down to two backs who have combined for 9 carries for 31 yards. Not ideal! Hassan Haskins is most likely to be the starting back, but the Chargers will rotate him with Kimani Vidal. Between a bad offensive line and some inexperienced RBs, Miami has no excuses in the ground game this week. The issue for Miami will be covering a very skilled and multiple group of receivers. Keenan Allen is back after a yearlong stint running routes for nothing in Chicago, and he and Herbert picked up like it was 2020 again. Allen has 29 catches for 289 and 3 TDs, the perfect Slot Guy numbers. He’s not a guy who will get you much in terms of YAC now that the speed is down a bit, but he’s a big target down low and a future Ring of Honor guy having a lovely resurgence. He leads the team in catches. The leader in yards is Quentin Johnston, who is a former 1st-round pick totally shedding his bust label. Johnston has 14.5 yards per catch to go with 4 TDs and has already eclipsed his career high in jump balls. At 6’3” with speed for days, the physicality and body control was all that was missing for Johnston. His connections with Herbert, like Mike Williams in previous team incarnations, is in streaking deep at an angle downfield and getting the often-insanely thrown ball on the run caught by any means necessary. If you’re seeing a crazy Herbert highlight, you’ll likely see Johnston on the end of it. He had 70+ yards in his first 4 games before finally quieting in last week’s dismal showing. Ladd McConkey is the last major player, and he’s in a bit of a sophomore slump with teams keying on him more. Last year, with no clear threat coming into the season, McConkey ran those deep crossing routes you saw Waddle and Hill doing all the time to lethal success, with 91 catches for 1,346 and 8 TDs. The 5.2 yards after catch per catch and 2.59 yards per route run were both top 15 numbers in the league for high-volume receivers (Y/RR there was actually 4th behind god-tier seasons from Puka Nacua, Nico Collins, and A.J. Brown), but those numbers have plummeted as he’s failed to fight through contact and get the same favorable looks. He also has Allen for target competition now. One issue: only those three receivers have TD catches this year: no RB or TE has one, which makes the terrible red zone TD percentage clearer. Lastly, Will Dissly appears to be out again, so a Guy Who Will Make You Feel Ancient, Oronde Gadsden II, is the TE now. The rookie 5th-rounder has been a lesser pass game option, with 8 catches for 76 yards, but he possesses his father’s knack for one handed catches and is comfortable all over the field. The Chargers have played him as a traditional TE due to injuries, but he’ll eventually be all over the field. Wildly talented kid. The other Chargers TE are bit players as of now.
Defense
The Chargers are playing decent defensive ball, with the 7th best yards allowed mark and tied for the 6th best points allowed mark. The underlying numbers are less flattering, however, as there’s a lack of playmaking across both the secondary and front 7. I mentioned above that Tuli Tuipulotu is the only player with more than 8 pressures, and his 27 mark is actually 4th in the league right now. That’s pretty insane to be honest. Still, interestingly, PFF has him with the lowest win percentage against pass blocking of any player with more than 14 pressures. He’s on pace to shatter his career high in pressures, but many of those are simply due to QBs having all day to throw. The starter across from him is Bud Dupree, a 33-year-old who looked great in a part-time role last year but is struggling with the full complement of snaps. Once a volume sack king in Pittsburgh, Dupree is now just a guy. Oweh is the wrinkle: with no sacks on the year and a diminished snap count, we’re clear at this point that he’ll never be a consistent 10-sack, 70-pressure top of the line player like the Ravens hoped they had, but he can get to QBs. He’s a quality rotational player who may benefit with a new start and less expectations, and Harbaugh compared him to Mack this week. In the interior, LA is getting good play from two former Weaver Dolphins, Teair Tart and Da’Shawn Hand. Tart has been an absolute killer in the run game after Miami released him in the 2024 preseason (Omar Kelly called him “the laziest player I have ever seen” for the record), but if the team can ensure he doesn’t go full Tasmanian Devil in the locker room, then he’ll give you what you need from a pure on-field destruction level. He’s made most of the splash plays I’ve seen. Hand leads the defensive line in run stops, but will miss the game with injury. Luckily, the rotation is four deep with Justin Eboigbe and Jamaree Caldwell. Neither player makes a huge difference, but both are disciplined. At LB, the Chargers have stuck with Daiyan Henley and Troy Dye as the full-time starters. Henley had a great camp, leading him to be a breakout candidate in his second year in Minter’s defense. He’s allowed a few too many completions, but ultimately has been solid. He doesn’t miss many tackles or allow much after the catch. Dye is a Harbaugh acquisition from Minnesota stepping in after an injury to Denzel Perryman, and he has also avoided major disaster, though he offers nothing as a pass rusher or coverage guy. In fact, he has allowed 52 of 60 passes in his area to be caught over his career. Yeesh. Luckily for the Chargers, in their only good injury news, Denzel Perryman will return to the lineup this week after a Week 1 injury and August arrest for having All Of The Guns. Perryman was a Chargers star back in 2020, but the former 2nd round pick has managed 900 snaps in his career just once as a Raider in 2021. He can fill the run well at his best, and was a nice blitzer for Minter, but the book on him is he gets roasted in coverage.
With Khalil Mack out and Joey Bosa in Buffalo, Derwin James is the last of his LA Chargers difference-making generation left playing for the team besides Herbert. He’s a Swiss Army Knife, all over the field and instrumental in making tackles and causing havoc. He is second on the team in tackles and first in run stops. In coverage, he’s allowed no passes of more than just 9 yards and keeps forcing completions. It’s another good year for the previously-oft-injured safety. Alohi Gilman was playing fine before his trade to Baltimore, 2nd on the team in pass breakups, but the team plans to elevate Tony Jefferson and Elijah Molden to complete the three safety look. Both are best playing deep and neither have many tackles. Overall, this is a solid safety unit. At CB, Tarheeb Still continues to be excellent. Drafted in the 5th round last year, the 6’1” corner was deemed slow and lacking in length to be a true starter. He was suddenly called into action due to injury to Asante Samuel Jr., and was quickly better than Samuel has been in years. He snatched 4 picks and allowed just an 80 passer rating to opposing CBs while committing just 1 single penalty. That’s technically sound football. He was targeted 75 times, too, so teams tested him and he didn’t blink. Still mainly plays with Donte Jackson, signed from Pittsburgh in the offseason and currently allowing just 6 catches on 14 targets with an INT, and Cam Hart, who was drafted in the 5th round with Still and has also played fine enough to not be picked on. James is the primary slot player, so the corners mostly stay busy with outside play and rotate as matchup and play demands. Still will hop into the slot before the others.
Special Teams
Dicker the Kicker has returned to Pro Bowl form in his 3rd season: he is 9/9 on both FGs and XPs. A kicker with remarkable skill, the introduction of K-balls (specific footballs maintained by teams for kickers) has allowed him to bang through plenty this season. Harbaugh tends to avoid long FGs, so he’s just hit one from 50+. Like any good college coach who loves Discipline, Harbaugh loves a good punter and J.K. Scott has been that: a 50.2 average and 43.6 net punt average is stellar. 8 of his 17 have landed inside the 20 with just 1 touchback and a remarkable 4.81 second hangtime that leads the league. He is outkicking his coverage a smidge, with a 13.1 yards per return average that is 9th most in the league. That’s also on his teammates to make the tackle, as Marvin Mims made them look silly against Denver. New starting RB Haskins had been the special teams ace so, with him stepping off the unit, it will be interesting to see if there are breakdowns. LB Del’Shawn Phillips is now the de facto ace. With Derius Davis, the gadget receiver, out with injury, LA has used a committee for returns, with Still taking most of them. He’s not a threat to return anything deep. No one has managed to take a kick return more than 30 yards, so Chargers have great kickers and an otherwise pedestrian special teams unit. I would also characterize them as the worst return game team I have watched this year.
Game Prediction
Dolphins lose. Because of course they do. Because they’re looking across the field at a real coach with a mindset and philosophy that undergirds success in the league and they’re operating with a slipshod and haphazard plan. The Dolphins are 4 point underdogs in their own building, meaning Vegas thinks they’ll lose by a touchdown. Yes, the Chargers are reeling and beatable right now. Yes, both teams desperately need a win to salve some serious wounds. Who do you trust, in a game where both teams are desperate, to win a game? I trust Not The Dolphins. This is a beaten down team who now was forced this week into the realization that they suck. They should have learned that after Week 1. Instead, hopeless and frustrating delusion convinced them that they were a bounce away from beating their division rivals and they proved who they are against the Jets. Getting drubbed for 250 yards on the ground against the Panthers backup line will disabuse you of many notions about what you can and cannot do. The Dolphins suck, which is not a headline, but the Dolphins KNOW they suck. And that is most certainly news, perhaps for the first time in the McDaniel tenure. So now the position coaches send out their “Who’s hiring?” texts under the table, the players talk to real estate agents, the executives go to war with the coach about who is to blame, and a musical chairs effort begins in full for Boss Ross. How many friendships will be disregarded in the painstaking effort to get one more chance to inevitably fuck this shit up again? Already, media sources friendly to McDaniel are hemming and hawing: “He’s doing the best he can with a limited QB.” We can’t understand what is REALLY in Mike McDaniel’s mind because the roster, and the GM, and the QB, and blah blah blah. There’s no way of knowing what Mike is feeding a media apparatus that will always be biased toward him, but the stink of 2025 is when people show their colors. Mike McDaniel should preserve his honor and his dignity, and accept that this season now belongs to the QB he chose and the team he shaped. Tua’s contract? All sources said at the time that Mike broke the stalemate and said, “I need him and it’s time to pay him.” Buyer’s remorse a season and a half later is a bummer, but this is your ship and you go down with it. If Tua were Jared Goff, a schematic mismatch who had clearly peaked on a team that was otherwise efficient and Super Bowl ready, maybe you could march into the GM and owner’s offices and say it’s time to be bold. But Mike McDaniel has not been good enough, his teams have not looked like they belong with the best the league has to offer at any position at any point in time. His saving grace for me was that he is a good man who stands by his word and tries his best. To attempt and grab one more longshot chance by playing victim would be a disgrace to his otherwise excellent work. I sincerely hope he shows that dignity in his conduct moving forward in the face of a monumental failure that belongs to so many people, both past and present. It would be a shame if the musings of those reporters about how much this all isn’t his fault came from his mouth. There is a shared responsibility in failure, one that extends from a society and environment to the individuals who didn’t meet the moment. Mike McDaniel has not met the moment. And the Dolphins will not meet it on Sunday.
Anyway, aside from being sanctimonious and condescending to a head coach I desperately want to keep liking, if the Dolphins win, it’s because this happened:
- The pass rush collapsed the Chargers: Chop Robinson, Jaelan Phillips, and Bradley Chubb need a complete game like they need air. Chop, especially, has turtled immediately into a bust after playing well in most phases of the game in 2024. Chargers tackles go fully off the rails.
- The Dolphins stopped the run: Bad OL, meet bad RBs. Rico Dowdle was no scrub in the league, and handled the workload with professionalism. If the Dolphins abandon some of the scheme’s complicated two-gap expectations, the rookies might be able to stack some confidence and get a good smashing in. It’s no guarantee to beat Herbert, but it will be a start.
- The Dolphins don’t get picked to death on short passes: harder to do, but with Minkah Fitzpatrick playing more in the middle and showcasing his athleticism last week, the secondary still has a chance.
- A top red zone team meets a bottom one: Miami has turned red zone opportunities into points all year, scoring at the second highest rate (it is shocking, I know). The Chargers don’t score TDs on even half of their trips. Miami makes them suffer between the 20s on both sides of the ball.
- Tua finds rhythm again early: Tua peppered a good Panthers defense with good timing balls, and they unsurprisingly offered Tua less two-high safety looks with Tyreek gone. Tua is much better against these looks, using the eyes and footwork to move defenders.
- The offensive line doesn’t destroy Tua: This is a physical defensive line that is nowhere near the Panthers level of destructive potential, but the run game will likely struggle again with interior play. Each game without the two right side starters so far, the backups have been worse than the last time, but what if they didn’t suck? In this version of events, Jonah is able to stay with his assignments (with help from all involved, even when the Chargers intentionally get him matched up 1-on-1, which is a certainty) and the net effect of his better play allows Tua to make his feet less happy.
- The Dolphins run early and often: An understanding of the failures of the Panthers game leads the Dolphins to kill the clock and keep the Chargers from fully pinning their ears back as the Panthers did. They keep the spirit even through a couple TFLs.
- The screen game returns: The offense uses Achane and Malik in the screen game to manufacture more touches and act as extension of the run game.
If all of this happens, I’d bet Miami wins the game. Let’s see if I believe it does in the score prediction!
Score Prediction: 38-20 Chargers, Herbert goes off and Mike McDaniel relieved of duties on Monday.
Season Record (Taylor Picks): 3-2
