Tom Krasovic: Winless Chargers' LA story keeps getting stranger

Tom Krasovic, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Nov 10, 2026

Published in Football

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SAN DIEGO — The Los Angeles Chargers play all of their home games on a fake-grass field.

There’s nothing fake about where they stand in their 10th L.A. season under team owner Dean Spanos.

L.A. remains the NFL’s lone winless team after taking a 44-22 shellacking from the Houston Texans on Sunday. The Texas team brought a 2-5 record into the Kroenke Dome but sacked Justin Herbert eight times and got five touchdown passes from C.J. Stroud.

The home team fans’ disapproval Sunday penetrated the CBS telecast amid L.A.’s offensive implosion in the middle quarters. The Chargers’ two touchdowns came in garbage time, after Houston had built up a 29-point lead.

For the San Diegans who delight in Los Angeles Chargers’ misadventures, Sunday brought another blissful outcome.

But midway into the season, L.A.’s sustained inability to gain traction has raised a concern for San Diego’s schadenfreude crowd:

The offense’s ineptitude could put Ohio State’s great receiver, Jeremiah Smith, on the L.A. team next year.

Smith looks capable of helping to reverse quarterback Herbert’s stunning fall. With Will Howard as his quarterback, Smith led Ohio State to a national title as a true freshman. Even the enduring “Chargering” might not break Smith, who might go first overall in the 2027 draft.

While games remain against the Miami Dolphins (1-7), the New York Jets (2-7), a Baltimore Ravens team (4-5) that recently lost Lamar Jackson to to a severe thumb injury and the overachieving Las Vegas Raiders (4-5), L.A. appears headed to a top-five draft slot.

While finishing 0-17 seems impossible, L.A. already has delivered the NFL’s most astounding flop of the season. It hasn’t come close to winning any of its eight games despite oddsmakers ranking it sixth of 32 teams to win the next Super Bowl, and third to win the AFC title.

Moving Ohio State’s Smith closer to the Kroenke Dome was a play in Sunday’s fourth quarter.

Herbert suffered an apparent fracture to the middle finger on his non-throwing hand.

“It’s broken,” he appeared to say to a colleague, as CBS showed him.

Medical personnel checked on Herbert before he went into the injury tent.

“It shouldn’t be an issue,” said Herbert, who played through a left-hand injury last year, but a compromised non-throwing hand will affect a quarterback’s ball-handling and may remove his ability to run sneaks while also reducing the appeal of running for yards.

Along with L.A. improving its odds of getting Ohio State’s Smith, Sunday’s game further illuminated a major development.

That meaty topic: Houston and L.A.’s overall aptitude at fortifying a starting QB who’s in his mid-20s.

Both Stroud and Herbert had poor playoff games in January. And Stroud had two of them.

But where Houston’s offense and Stroud, 25, have rebounded very nicely under the same head coach and coordinator, L.A.’s offense and Herbert, 28, under the same head coach and a new offensive coordinator have devolved into a bottom-5 unit

Seventh-year QB Herbert is having his worst NFL season by far. That falls on more folks than Herbert. L.A. has provided Herbert a poor offensive line and pass-catching corps low on speed and refinement. Jim Harbaugh’s hire of coordinator Mike Daniel has failed.

Stroud, meanwhile, is having a very good fourth season that recalls his rookie year.

Texans coach DeMeco Ryans apparently was right to retain his offensive coordinator.

Sunday, Stroud became the first QB to throw for 300-plus yards against since Joe Burrow did it late in the 2024 season. Stroud was without his top running back; in August, he lost his No. 2 receiver for the season.

Stroud is throwing to a much better pass-catching corps than L.A.’s, in part because Ladd McConkey again isn’t able to stay on the field.

Houston’s offensive line, although not very good, outperforms L.A.’s by a wide margin. Few, if any, other NFL teams would be giving starts to Cole Strange, L.A.’s right guard who was badly overmatched Sunday.

The contrasting results of Stroud and Herbert should make many in the L.A. franchise take a hard look at themselves.

Consider: Herbert was sixth and Stroud was 19th among QBs in last summer’s survey of NFL personnel men and coaches by The Athletic’s Mike Sando.

Take into account that Herbert never had a below-average season before this year, but entered Sunday 41st of 42 quarterbacks in expected points added, a stat that NFL teams like to use.

Chew on this one, too: Stroud’s salary cap charge this year is 19th among QBs, while Herbert’s is second. The cap charge on Herbert, at more than $46 million, more than quadruples Stroud’s.

This L.A. story just keeps getting more strange. And more bleak.

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