The Chargers May Have More Receiver Value Than Offense

There are two ways to look at the 2025 Chargers.

They won 11 games and made the playoffs.

They also spent large portions of the season asking Justin Herbert to play quarterback inside what appeared to be a collapsing Costco tent.

Both things are true.

Los Angeles finished 11–6, but the offense never became the machine the record suggests. Herbert threw for 3,727 yards and 26 touchdowns, yet was sacked 54 times in 16 games, the third-most sacks taken by a quarterback. The season eventually ended with a 16–3 Wild Card loss in New England.

So when AutoDraftYears projects the Chargers for only 22.2 points per game in 2026, I don't find that especially pessimistic.

I find it almost beside the point.

The interesting question is:

What happens if an average Chargers offense becomes a much better place to throw the football?

Because that is exactly what the model thinks is coming.

2025: Eleven wins, approximately zero healthy offensive tackles

The Chargers' offensive line problems started before anyone had the opportunity to ruin a fantasy lineup.

Rashawn Slater tore his patellar tendon during training camp and missed the entire season. Joe Alt moved to left tackle, injured his ankle early, returned, then suffered another injury that ended his season after only six games. By late December, Los Angeles had cycled through 29 offensive-line combinations. ESPN reported the Chargers ranked last in pass-block win rate while Herbert had been pressured more than any quarterback.

Twenty-nine combinations.

At some point this stops being depth and becomes speed dating.

The injuries weren't limited to the line.

First-round rookie Omarion Hampton played only nine games. He still produced 545 rushing yards, 192 receiving yards and five touchdowns, which is a reasonably encouraging way to spend half a rookie season.

The receiving production, meanwhile, became surprisingly democratic.

McConkey failed to repeat his 1,149-yard rookie season, but Johnston took another step and Gadsden emerged immediately as a legitimate receiving tight end. Allen quietly led the team in receptions.

And Herbert somehow kept the operation functional.

That is probably the important part.

The Chargers opened 3–0 with Herbert playing at an MVP level. Even after the protection deteriorated, he remained unusually productive outside structure: Los Angeles credited him with a league-high 10 touchdown passes on the run and seven on plays lasting more than four seconds.

Those are fun statistics.

They are also not an offensive philosophy.

Eventually you would prefer your quarterback not have to reenact Mission: Impossible every third down.

The season ended accordingly. New England held Los Angeles to three points in the Wild Card round, and days later the Chargers parted ways with offensive coordinator Greg Roman.

That brings us to 2026.

The model isn't predicting greatness. It's predicting change.

AutoDraftYears' offensive scoring measure had the Chargers at 20.6 points per game in 2025.

The 2026 forecast is 22.2.

That's it.

No 31-point offensive carnival. No Herbert MVP requirement. No need to spend August explaining that Mike McDaniel has “unlocked” eleven different players.

The important numbers are underneath the scoring forecast.

Los Angeles threw on 55.1% of its snaps in 2025.

The model projects 61.1% in 2026.

Snaps rise from 60.4 to 62.7 per game. The resulting positional environments rank:

That is a remarkably specific opinion.

Average offense. Excellent passing environment. Bad running back environment.

And unlike a lot of offseason projection changes, there is an actual mechanism behind this one.

Roman is out. Mike McDaniel is in. Slater and Alt return, while the Chargers added Tyler Biadasz and Cole Strange inside. McDaniel spent the previous four seasons running Miami, whose offense ranked eighth in both total offense and passing offense across his tenure.

That doesn't guarantee a 61.1% pass rate.

It does make “the Chargers will operate differently” considerably more persuasive than the usual August offense-is-going-to-be-more-creative speech.

This is where fantasy managers should care

The mistake would be seeing 22.2 projected points and treating every Charger like a member of the same mediocre offense.

Fantasy points don't get distributed democratically.

They have favorites.

The AutoDraftYears comps make this especially weird. The 30 historical offenses most similar to the Chargers' 2026 projection — based on scoring, pass rate, volume and red-zone opportunity — averaged only 2.7 fantasy starters.

Almost exactly the 2.6 average across all 320 team-seasons in the database.

Nothing special.

Except 29 of the 30 produced at least three top-36 wide receivers.

That 97% hit rate is not a prediction that Los Angeles will suddenly support three weekly fantasy stars. The threshold is broad, the sample is 30 teams, and historical similarity is not destiny.

But it certainly tells me where I'd rather shop.

The passing game.

And the prices cooperate.

Market and Model are ranks within the position. Edge is the model's position rank against the market's, after removing the drift that affects every player at that price — so it reads as “the model likes him this many places more than it likes the typical player who costs this much.” A call needs the edge to clear the position's bar (QB 5, RB 15, WR 11, TE 5 places), set at two-thirds of that position's own spread.

Ladd McConkey: buy the rebound

McConkey's second season was disappointing mostly because his rookie year made disappointment extremely easy.

He fell from 1,149 receiving yards to 789.

Now Keenan Allen — and his 81 receptions — is headed to Indianapolis.

McConkey costs roughly pick 44 as WR20.

The model has him WR12, producing a +12 adjusted edge, just above the AutoDraftYears WR buy threshold.

This isn't sleeper territory.

Nobody is whispering Ladd McConkey's name behind a dumpster.

But expensive players can still be undervalued.

Quentin Johnston: this is the better bet

Johnston is more interesting because the price provides room to be wrong.

He caught 51 passes for 735 yards and eight touchdowns last year. Now he is being drafted as WR44 around pick 96.

AutoDraftYears has him WR25.

Adjusted edge: +20.

That is the kind of gap I want to attack.

The model doesn't need Johnston to become McConkey. It needs the Chargers' sixth-ranked receiver environment to give a player who already scored eight times enough opportunity to beat WR44 pricing.

Those are very different assignments.

Justin Herbert: good player, boring price

Herbert gets the same environmental boost.

Model: QB5.

Market: QB9.

But once normal disagreement around his price is accounted for, his adjusted edge is only +2.

The market has apparently also discovered Justin Herbert.

Rude.

He's perfectly draftable. He just isn't the reason to reach.

Omarion Hampton: don't confuse the player with the price

Hampton is harder.

His rookie season was legitimately promising despite the injuries. He produced 737 yards from scrimmage in nine games.

The model still ranks him only RB18 against an RB9 market price.

His adjusted edge of -8 does not reach the model's formal fade threshold, so I'm not declaring an emergency and alerting local authorities.

But the Chargers rank 28th in RB environment.

If Hampton is sitting beside a similarly priced back in a materially better rushing situation, this is an easy tiebreaker for me.

The number that decides whether this works

There is one obvious way for this thesis to fail.

The Chargers keep playing like the 2025 Chargers.

The model is asking pass rate to move from 55.1% to 61.1%.

That six-point jump matters enormously.

McDaniel's arrival gives me a reason to believe the offense changes. Better health up front gives Herbert a chance to actually execute it. Allen's departure opens targets, although the arrival of David Njoku means those targets will not simply be placed in a gift basket and delivered to McConkey and Johnston.

So that is what I am watching in September.

Not wins.

Not whether someone tweets that Herbert is “finally unleashed” after a 312-yard Week 1.

Pass rate.

If Los Angeles is living near 60%, I'm buying the thesis.

If they're back around 55%, the model's best Chargers bets become much less interesting.

Because I don't need this offense to be great.

I don't even need it to be particularly attractive.

I need Mike McDaniel to give Justin Herbert more opportunities, and I need enough of those opportunities to reach Ladd McConkey and Quentin Johnston.

Fantasy football has trained us to shop in nice neighborhoods.

Sometimes the money is in buying the renovated unit inside the ugly building.

Sources: Auto Draft Years FF Model workbook — Team Data By Year, Team Stat Ranking, 2026 Team Context; Auto Draft Years 2026 consensus board (16 authoritative market sources); Player outcomes 2016–2025, Pro Football Reference via the project dataset. Team environment grades, forecasts and player model ranks are proprietary. Every figure on this page is generated from the dataset at build time; none is typed in by hand.