Mike McDaniel Says Calls for His Firing Come With the Territory. The Chargers Score 16.8 Points a Game.

Mike McDaniel was asked about fans calling for his job and gave the most McDaniel answer available. The criticism, he told ESPN, is “pretty standard operating procedure.”

He is right about that. He is also running an offense that scores 16.8 points a game for an 0-4 football team, so the calls are not coming out of nowhere.

The Numbers Are the Argument

Los Angeles has not won a game. The offense is averaging fewer than 17 points. Justin Herbert’s passer rating sits just ahead of Jameis Winston’s among qualified quarterbacks, which is not a sentence anybody in that building wants to read.

Last Sunday against Seattle, Herbert threw two interceptions, the Seahawks led by as many as 21, and the Chargers punted five times in the first half. That is a complete offensive failure, not a bad break or two.

Jim Harbaugh said this week that McDaniel’s job is not in jeopardy. Head coaches say that in October. It is the correct thing to say and it means very little in December.

Give McDaniel Credit for the Answer

To his credit, he did not deflect. “I would be foolish, or I would feel entitled, if I didn’t expect there to be disappointment,” McDaniel said. Then the line that actually matters: “If our results are better, that’s the only thing that matters.”

That is an honest read on his own situation. Coordinators are not judged on process or explanation. They are judged on points, and his number is near the bottom of the league.

The context people forget is that McDaniel was a head coach ten months ago. Miami fired him in January. He took a coordinator job with a team that had just hired Harbaugh and a quarterback worth building around, which looked like a soft landing in the spring.

Herbert Is the Real Question

Here is what should worry the Chargers more than the record. Justin Herbert is the franchise, and he is playing the worst football of his career inside an offense that was supposed to be designed to let him breathe.

Either the scheme is wrong for him, or something else is going on, and neither answer is comfortable. A 0-4 start is recoverable. A quarterback who stops looking like himself is not a four-week problem.

Harbaugh built his reputation on fixing broken teams fast. He has four games of evidence that this one is not fixed, and the clock on a first-year staff runs faster when the quarterback is the one regressing.

McDaniel will get more time, because coordinators always do when the head coach publicly backs them. But his own standard is the right one. Better results or nothing else matters, and right now the results are 0-4.