EL SEGUNDO — There are teachable moments, and then there are teachable days, weeks, months and maybe even years. At first, in the days after he was hired as the Chargers’ new offensive coordinator in January, Mike McDaniel didn’t want to drop too much knowledge on Pro Bowl quarterback Justin Herbert.
McDaniel didn’t want to overload Herbert in their first spring workouts, their first OTAs, their first minicamp and their first training camp together. He said on Monday he was “optimistic” that Herbert was intelligent enough and sufficiently skilled to handle whatever he could throw at him.
“I just heard great things about the human being and how smart he was, so you were hopeful,” said McDaniel, who joined the Chargers after spending four seasons as the Miami Dolphins’ head coach. “But you’re careful not to just assume, and I think the mindset was to get the system ready for a guy that maybe isn’t as mentally talented (as Herbert), and then we can take advantage of the system.”
The results of a slow introduction to the system McDaniel had honed over the years bore fruit in several past second seasons, rather than the first, and nowhere was that more evident than in his second year working with Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa during the 2023 season.
Tagovailoa threw for an NFL-leading 4,624 yards plus 29 touchdowns and 14 interceptions, leading Miami to an 11-6 record, a second-place finish in the AFC East and a wild-card playoff berth. The Dolphins also were the league’s second-highest scoring team and first in overall yardage.
McDaniel will get his first up-close look at Herbert in something resembling game situations since he took the Chargers job on Jan. 26, when they play host to the San Francisco 49ers in a joint practice on Tuesday. It will offer McDaniel a chance to see how far Herbert has come.
The Chargers then play the 49ers on Thursday night at SoFi Stadium, the second of their three preseason games. Herbert is expected to play at least one series against the 49ers after sitting out the Chargers’ first preseason game, a 27-7 victory over the Texans last week in Houston.
“I’m preparing myself to be a responsible coach and concede to the coach’s wishes of taking him out,” McDaniel said, referring to Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh, who will likely then turn the game over to backup quarterbacks Trey Lance and DJ Uiagalelei for the remaining snaps.
“Because, you know, the game doesn’t count.”
Although much of McDaniel’s system has been installed and picked up by Herbert and the Chargers’ offense, the teachable moments are ongoing. There’s always something new McDaniel wants to impress upon his pupils, according to Chargers fullback Alec Ingold.
“There’s always a new wrinkle,” said Ingold, who played for McDaniel for four seasons with the Dolphins. “There’s always something else coming in, so I think it’s accelerating the learning process for a lot of guys. A lot of the fundamentals are down, but I think we’re always going to find a lot of details to clean up, and I think that’s the cool part of progressing throughout a season.”
One new wrinkle has been the speed with which McDaniel has taught his system to Herbert and the offense. Maybe it was the mere presence of Herbert, the franchise-record holder with 5,014 passing yards in the 2022 season, that motivated McDaniel to teach it differently.
So far, with Tuesday’s joint practice and Thursday’s preseason game on the horizon, McDaniel said he has been pleased with the way Herbert and his teammates have met the challenge. There might be setbacks along the way, but McDaniel has accounted for them.
Some of McDaniel’s teachings have been subtle, shifting Herbert’s stance in the shotgun formation from the right foot forward to the left foot forward, for example. McDaniel also has asked Herbert to throw fewer passes in practice, simulating his throwing motion with a weighted ball instead.
“There’s probably a list of 500 things as we went through it, to the point where we felt going into this training camp that, from a teaching perspective, the most tightly-woven install, that guys could really grasp and benefit from the techniques and fundamentals that we believe in,” McDaniel said.
“That started, I guess, in April, when (the players) came in (to start spring practices). It was that time between me getting the job and us being on the field, more than 50% of my time was, like, ‘OK, what are we going to do, and how are we going to teach you?’
“You’re hopeful it’s not a waste of time spent in vain.”
No question, the results will be revealed sooner rather than later.