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It’s not you, it’s me.
That’s what Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh said during the offseason when asked why star quarterback Justin Herbert hadn’t lived up to lofty expectations. Harbaugh’s struggles to advance in the postseason in his first year as head coach of the Chargers were not without an otherworldly quarterback.
It was up to Herbert’s teammates to raise their level of play, and Harbaugh boldly stated his job was to get Herbert to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Well, after another unimpressive postseason showing in a 16-3 AFC wild-card loss on the road to the New England Patriots on Sunday, Harbaugh and Herbert fell woefully short of that goal, leaving the franchise again at a crossroads heading into the offseason.
A broken-down and bruised Herbert showed grit by playing through a string of injuries this season, including a fractured left hand against New England. The Chargers lost Pro Bowl bookend offensive tackles for the year. Rashawn Slater suffered a torn patellar tendon in his knee during training camp before the season even started. The Chargers moved right tackle Joe Alt to left tackle to replace Slater, and he suffered two high-ankle sprains, requiring season-ending surgery to fix.
The Chargers went through 20 different offensive line combinations during the season to try and patch things up. That led to Herbert being hit 74 times and pressured an NFL-high 268 times during the regular season. Predictably, the numbers were even worse against the Patriots, as Herbert was sacked six times and hit a playoff-high 11 times in the loss.
Patriots SCARY after beating Chargers 😨 Fair to blame Justin Herbert for the loss?
From a personnel standpoint, Harbaugh and general manager Joe Hortiz appeared to have done everything in their power to build the team around Herbert. They added a talented running back in Najee Harris and a bruising offensive guard in Mekhi Becton in free agency. Harris suffered an eye injury in a freak fireworks accident and once he recovered, was lost for the season after tearing his Achilles tendon in Week 3. Becton played through a knee injury most of the season, missing two games, but also had his fair share of struggles as he graded out as Pro Football Focus’ third-worst guard this season.
Five of the nine players the Chargers selected in the 2025 NFL Draft were on offense, including first-round pick Omarion Hampton. However, the rookie running back suffered an ankle injury that forced him to miss eight games and was not a significant contributor in the loss to the Patriots.
The Chargers also brought back Herbert’s security blankets in Mike Williams — who promptly retired days after his signing during training camp — and Keenan Allen, who led the Chargers in receptions during the regular season.
Defensive coordinator Jesse Minter built one of the best defenses in the league for a second straight season.
Harbaugh appeared to have done everything in his power to help Herbert and the Chargers reach their full potential, but they experienced the same predictable results. And it appears Herbert is now on the same track as another cerebral quarterback from a West Coast school in Andrew Luck.
Luck, who the Colts took with the first overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, finished 53-33 in seven seasons before a deluge of injuries forced him to end his NFL career early and start the second chapter of his life. At just 36 years old, Luck now serves as the general manager for Stanford’s football team and is seven years removed from his final NFL snap.
Andrew Luck, 36, is entering his second season as Stanford’s general manager and is seven seasons removed from when he ended his once-promising NFL career. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
Herbert, who is nearing the same number of seasons Luck played in the NFL, is six seasons into his career with a 52-43 record and is 0-3 in the postseason.
The Chargers have a history of underperforming with elite quarterbacks, including Hall of Famer Dan Fouts and Philip Rivers, who recently returned to the field as a 44-year-old grandpa for Indianapolis. Neither of those players reached a Super Bowl during their tenure with the team.
However, Herbert is more physically talented than both of those players, and his trajectory is more pointed toward Buffalo Bills star Josh Allen than Luck or any of the former elite signal callers of this franchise. And it remains up to Harbaugh — along with continued growth and development from Herbert — to get him across the finish line.
Herbert and the Chargers, though, are still searching for the answer to reach the next step.
“I don’t know, we haven’t figured it out yet,” Herbert told reporters when asked after the game about his confidence in getting over the hump in the playoffs. “It hasn’t happened, so we’ll have to re-evaluate and see what happens.”
The Chargers have over $100 million in projected cap space heading into the offseason and are expected to have the most cap space of any team, per Over The Cap. That should help. But along with new additions to the roster, Harbaugh must take a close look at offensive coordinator Greg Roman to see if the Chargers are getting the most schematically out of Herbert.
This comment from New England linebacker Robert Spillane after the game doesn’t help Roman’s cause.
“After the game, talking to a few of the guys on the other team, they had no clue what we were doing,” Spillane told reporters. “They came up and said that we had no clue what you guys were in all game.”
Bekton added fuel to the fire on Monday, seemingly throwing Roman under the bus when he was asked about his comfort level operating in Roman’s system.
“It’s a lot of different things I’m not used to,” Bekton told reporters of Roman’s offense on Monday.
Greg Roman (center) has been the offensive coordinator for Jim Harbaugh’s offenses during both of his NFL head coaching tenures. But it might time for Harbaugh to make the tough call to move on from him. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
A Super Bowl-winning head coach ripped into the Chargers’ protection scheme in a comment to The Athletic, saying, “I watch what they do, and they don’t know who to block. They set deep. That poor quarterback is getting killed. They just do not look like they know what the hell is going on.”
The Chargers also must once again take a comprehensive approach to the team’s preventative maintenance and recovery program to figure out why so many players continue to get injured.
But whatever the changes, at 27 years old, Herbert remains the closest thing the Chargers have to Allen. Like Buffalo, Harbaugh’s Bolts must be patient and continue to build around the team’s prized asset.
“Like I told the team, those that stay will be champions,” Harbaugh told reporters after the game. “I’m not looking at this as an end, but as another beginning.”
Eric D. Williams has reported on the NFL for more than a decade, covering the Los Angeles Rams for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Chargers for ESPN and the Seattle Seahawks for the Tacoma News Tribune. Follow him on X at @eric_d_williams.
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