EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Between drives of another defeat-in-progress, Kimani Vidal noticed Los Angeles Chargers offensive line coach Butch Barry. A running back, Vidal doesn't sit with the linemen and usually can't hear what's being said. In this case, he could probably guess.
Excluding two roughing-the-passer penalties Justin Herbert was slow to get up from, the face of the franchise ate 10 hits and four sacks, adding to the worst kind of record marks. Since Herbert entered the NFL in 2020, no other quarterback has endured more hits (644), sacks (237) and pressures (1,412) than Herbert. He stands alone as the only QB to be hit more than 600 times in that span.
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (583) is a distant second.
Cramped into the visitors locker room after Sunday's loss to the Seattle Seahawks, Vidal happened to have a front-row seat to Barry's address. No words were parsed. "Coach Barry's on the O-line like crazy," Vidal said. "After the game, I definitely heard that one. He made it clear: Quarterback got hit too much."
Eight offensive linemen suited up at Lumen Field, and the Chargers were forced to use all eight. The three reserves were rookies Travis Burke, a fourth-round draft pick, Logan Taylor, a sixth-rounder, and Jacob Spomer, signed as an undrafted free agent.
These are among the no-name linemen now blocking for the least protected quarterback of the decade. When will it end?
Coach Jim Harbaugh took exception to the question. "That just sounds more like an insult than it does a question," he said. "But, I mean, that's the way you look at it." Harbaugh called Herbert a "warrior" for his toughness.
The interior offensive line was a weak point when Harbaugh and general manager Joe Hortiz took over in 2024, but their words stirred hope for change. Harbaugh called linemen "weapons" and the "tip of the spear" for an offense, and his resume concurred.
The San Francisco 49ers in the early 2010s were anchored by All-Pro offensive linemen Joe Staley (left tackle) and Mike Iupati (guard), whom Harbaugh coached to a Super Bowl appearance. Then his last Michigan team boasted one of the best offensive fronts in college football en route to winning a national championship in January 2024, before the Chargers hired him that month.
So how could a Harbaugh team, in 2026, get stuck with a left guard platoon and a budget starter at right guard? Someone handed him a dull spear.
The Chargers hit the reset button this past offseason, letting left guard Zion Johnson walk in free agency and cutting right guard Mekhi Becton after one season. Both were inconsistent at best, but perhaps more importantly, Hortiz tailored their replacements to new offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel, a significant departure from the old guard.
The idea was to drop Herbert into a system that better kept him out of harm's way, where pass protection (theoretically) would be helped by throws made in 2.4 seconds or less, plus more play-action bootlegs and misdirection. In this scenario, maybe the Chargers could get away with Kayode Awosika, a career reserve (11 starts in first five seasons), and Cole Strange, a cap-friendly signing ($6.5 million average annual value), at the guard spots with signature addition Tyler Biadasz at center and their Pro Bowl tackles Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt back healthy.
A season-ending ACL tear for Biadasz and the latest injuries to Slater (high ankle sprain) and Alt (neck) have complicated the plan. But bad injury luck would almost certainly be a cop-out.
The Chargers struggled to protect Herbert, currently tied for third-most sacks taken (12) and among the top three in pressures against (67), even with Slater and Alt healthy this season. That's the scary part, now that neither is going to be available this weekend against a Denver Broncos defense with a reputation for terrorizing quarterbacks.
"All parties involved are working to keep our best player as healthy as possible," McDaniel said. "It's something ongoing, like all things when you're 0-4."
Herbert managed to escape Seattle healthy enough to stay off a long Chargers injury report that listed 18 of his teammates this week. Those left to block for him? Strange and Jake Slaughter, accompanied by Day 3 draft picks Burke (tackle), Logan Taylor (guard or tackle) and Alex Harkey (guard or tackle), an undrafted center in Spomer, and then three practice-squad players, with Daniel Brunskill (center, guard or tackle) perhaps the most notable. Branson Taylor, a sixth-round selection last year, returned to practice from injured reserve and could also be an option at left guard.
When the dust settled on cutdown day, the Chargers kept 11 offensive linemen, an unusually high number. It seemed a reaction to the 25 offensive line combinations the team filtered through last season because of injuries. Hortiz dinked and dunked at the position in free agency, and then used half of his eight draft picks on offensive linemen, in an apparent attempt to cushion his roster from the same pinch.
Now the Chargers' starting center, both star tackles and three left guards are nursing injuries.
As the DNPs piled up in recent weeks, McDaniel began to give the rookie reserve linemen more practice reps than would be typical in the regular season. Harbaugh's orders, according to McDaniel. Barry has dedicated extra meeting time to the newbies. "We needed to make sure that they had the appropriate attention," McDaniel said.
Herbert has never been one to complain about hits. After one of the Seahawks' roughings, he gingerly stood and on the next play braced for a collision with defenders to fight for extra yardage on a scramble. Teammates feed off that. Khalil Mack called him the "most mentally tough dude of all time" after he made it through the 2025 regular season. Herbert was hit 129 times, by far the most in the NFL, on Harbaugh's watch. Nothing has changed.
Herbert in the Harbaugh era has been hit (263) and pressured (518) more than any other quarterback, and Geno Smith (117) has been the only other QB sacked 100 or more times, beating out Herbert (107) by a small margin. "Can't improve everything all at once," Harbaugh said. "But we can improve one thing at a time, all the time, and that's what this team is doing."
The Chargers have failed to keep Herbert upright -- no matter the coach, general manager, left or right guard -- since the day they drafted him. And they continue to fail.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
