There are levels of incompetence in professional sports. There is simple moment-to-moment incompetence, the kind we all experience every day ourselves. A missed tackle is like a screwed-up coffee order at your local Starbucks. Annoying, but no big deal, we move. Then there's consistent, pattern incompetence that makes you go "huh, what's going on with that guy," when they mess up your coffee order the same way nine days in a row. You still like the coffee, but you start mobile ordering so that guy can't take your order anymore because he just isn't getting it. The Los Angeles Chargers aren't even that.
There's also the final level of incompetence: the dyed-in-the-wool, incomprehensible, downright unprofessional tier where your eyeballs can't even understand what you're witnessing as it's happening. The overwhelming "how did you even manage that" level, where shock and disgust mix into a cocktail of bleh before you must simply avert your eyes and remove yourself from the situation. Combine sustained and awe-striking incompetence, and we have the final form: something we call "Chargersing," named for the Chargers 2026 season, which continues to present an on-field product so unprofessional I needed almost 200 words of analogies to properly innumerate it.
The Chargers were so bad in Week 9 that I think they're going 0-17
The Chargers lost their Week 9 matchup to the until-literally-today-just-as-lame Houston Texans 44-22, offering zero resistance on either side of the ball. Fans are wearing bags on their heads; everything is broken and literally everyone on the coaching staff and in the front office should probably be replaced. Nothing about this team has worked; nothing about it looks like it will work in the future. Despite a game each left on their schedule against the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins, I'm confident in saying this team will go 0-17. No other projection respects the product they've actually put out on the field week in and week out.
The Chargers look like they do not practice. Despite minimal alterations to the actual player personnel from 2025, everything about the 2026 Chargers is shattered and broken beyond repair. In nine weeks, Justin Herbert has gone from one of the premier quarterback assets in the NFL to a dubious proposition to legitimately unplayable. His mechanics are busted, he looks like he does not understand his reads or even know where they are half the time and every time he does uncork a throw that showcases his physical skillset, the receiver is bracketed, has fallen down or was nowhere near the ball and the throw results in an interception.
It is tempting to blame Mike McDaniel, the highly regarded offensive coordinator who once produced the best offense in football on the Miami Dolphins with Tua Tagovailoa, since the installation of his offense is the inflection point of this Chargers collapse. But there is so much more to this than McDaniel. The Chargers appear completely unprepared for every game they show up to, as if they have never heard of the team they are playing, are unaware of who the opposing players are or perhaps even that they had a game that day and just learned about it a few hours before.
Every coverage looks foreign to both the offense and defense, and by the third quarter of the Texans game, the Chargers defense had quit entirely. Texans wide receiver Kayshon Boutte scored a long touchdown that made zero sense, simply scampering freely to the end zone through six people, but nobody on the Chargers made an earnest attempt to stop him.
The Chargers look completely unprepared for every game
That's because the defense is fully aware of what they have on the other side of the ball: nothing. No blocking, no run game, no downfield passing. No speed on the outside, no threatening contested catch receivers, no efficient quick game. Just a broken-down car rolling down the freeway at 18 miles per hour with the parking brake on.
The game I saw in Week 9 should not even really be possible; to get baptized so profoundly by a Texans team that has been nobody's idea of a demon this year is impossible, but to bring this kind of energy to every game is the truly special achievement. Through sheer variance, I'd expect the Chargers to have some kind of passable offensive performance one of these days. But it just never happens. It feels like it can never happen — because there is something actually wrong here. Cooked; like they left the team in the oven too long, but instead of accepting that it was a little overcooked they just left it in there. Now the house is on fire.
I don't see how that team I just watched wins a game. I don't see how it's possible. I've seen unprofessional weeks from teams before, but never have I seen a nominally talented roster look so helpless and uninterested week after week. It's appalling, and I really don't call for people's jobs lightly — I think it's one of the worst parts of sports media, when people like me go online and start demanding heads roll like this is some kind of medieval witch trial ... like, everyone calm down. But for this Chargers team? Jim Harbaugh and Mike McDaniel cannot possibly be kept on after this year, nor should GM Joe Hortiz. It would be an insult to the Chargers fans and to their players to treat this like some kind of developmental bump in the road; this is not that. This is a debacle.
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