EL SEGUNDO — Jim Harbaugh and Mike McDaniel don’t look alike, don’t dress alike, don’t accessorize alike and don’t sound alike. They are generations apart. They are two men seemingly from different worlds who just happen to cross professional paths in ways too important to ignore.
Harbaugh, 62, played quarterback for 14 seasons in the NFL, including his final two with the then-San Diego Chargers before moving into the coaching ranks at the University of San Diego, then Stanford, then with the San Francisco 49ers, then with Michigan, now with the Chargers.
Harbaugh is entering his third season as the Chargers’ head coach.
McDaniel, 43, was a wide receiver at Yale before starting his coaching career as an intern with the Denver Broncos, rising through the ranks as a highly thought-of offensive mind before landing a head coaching position with the Miami Dolphins for four seasons starting in 2022.
McDaniel is starting his first season as the Chargers’ offensive coordinator.
Harbaugh, 6-foot-3, is of hearty midwestern stock, the son and brother of football coaches. There’s nothing flashy about him. He wears conservative glasses, dresses and speaks plainly. McDaniel, 5-10, is a native son of Colorado. His glasses are expensive. So, too, is his watch.
“He does not get clothes from my closet,” McDaniel said Monday of Harbaugh.
What they do have in common is a love of the game, which is what attracted Harbaugh to McDaniel after the Chargers fired offensive coordinator Greg Roman and the Dolphins fired McDaniel in January. Most of all, they share many common beliefs in how an offensive attack should be launched.
“We knew early this was a match made in heaven,” McDaniel said. “It’s something that brings smiles and joy to our faces, the way we see football similarly and the way we want to employ it. The way we want to attack across the line of scrimmage really hit home with him.”
Chief among those beliefs is “owning the line of scrimmage,” according to McDaniel. Protecting the quarterback, in the Chargers’ case Justin Herbert, is critical to McDaniel’s offensive scheme. So, too, is winning the battles in the trenches to support a productive running game.
The Chargers haven’t had a 1,000-yard rusher since Melvin Gordon, who gained 1,105 yards during the 2017 season. Kimani Vidal rushed for a team-leading 643 yards during the 2025 season, taking over as the lead back after Omarion Hampton suffered an ankle injury that limited him to 545 yards.
Establishing a sound ground game has been a top goal for the Chargers, dating to 2017, never more so than after Harbaugh was hired to replace Brandon Stanley as coach and Joe Hortiz was hired to replace Tom Telesco as general manager. Stanley and Telesco were fired late in the 2023 season.
“I knew from a philosophical standpoint, playing against him for over a decade … just watching his teams, I knew that we had a core philosophy of owning the line of scrimmage that has proved to be exactly what I thought it would be,” McDaniel said of finding common ground with Harbaugh.
“When it comes down to it, being able to win down the stretch of the season, behind handing the ball off and behind a strong run-pass percentage, it’s something core to our beliefs in offensive football. We seem to have the same attack on each and every day. I see ourselves as cut from the same cloth.”
With one training camp practice remaining Tuesday and one preseason game left Thursday night against the Rams, and with the season-opening game Sept. 13 against the Arizona Cardinals drawing ever closer, the shared philosophies of Harbaugh and McDaniel are about to come into focus.
There remains work to be done, as evidenced by their poor showing in last Thursday’s 41-17 preseason loss to the San Francisco 49ers. The Chargers also must ease the transition to starting center for rookie Jake Slaughter after Tyler Biadasz sustained a season-ending knee injury.
Plus, it remains to be seen if left tackle Rashawn Slater is sound after sitting out eight consecutive practices earlier this month after suffering a flare-up in the left knee that forced him to sit out all of last season. The Chargers’ offensive line depth will be tested if he’s not 100% by Sept. 13.
If the play in the trenches is as important as Harbaugh and McDaniel believe it is, then it figures to be the most important area to watch in the days to come, especially with rosters trimmed to 53 by Sunday’s NFL deadline, and before the Chargers kick off the season for real against the Cardinals.