Los Angeles Chargers offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel stood at a media availability Monday and said the quiet part warmly: Justin Herbert has been, in his words, "He's been everything that I'd hoped and more." That is a coordinator talking about a quarterback in the middle of August, which is roughly the least surprising sentence in sports. What makes it worth stopping on is who is saying it, and how many times Herbert has had to learn a new language to get here.
What did Mike McDaniel say about Justin Herbert?
The words themselves are simple. Everything he hoped, and more. Coaches say versions of this every summer about everyone from franchise quarterbacks to camp-body long snappers, so I try not to build a cathedral out of a compliment.
But McDaniel is not a generic voice. He came up in the Shanahan system, ran the offense in San Francisco, and then spent his head coaching years in Miami building the most speed-obsessed attack in football. He is a detail guy, a motion guy, a guy whose offense is designed to make a defender wrong before the ball is snapped. When that man says a quarterback's summer has exceeded his expectations, the expectations were probably specific.
Why the Mike McDaniel and Justin Herbert pairing actually matters
Here is the context that gives the quote weight. Since the Chargers drafted him in 2020, Herbert has worked under Shane Steichen, then Joe Lombardi, then Kellen Moore, then Greg Roman. Different vocabularies. Different footwork. Different ideas about what a first down should look like. Every one of those transitions cost him an offseason of relearning things he already knew how to do.
That is a real tax, and it rarely shows up in a stat line. It shows up in the half-beat of hesitation on a third-down progression in October.
checked the almanac: herbert threw 31 touchdown passes as a rookie in 2020, breaking baker mayfield's rookie record. that was five seasons and a lot of new binders ago.
So the interesting thing about McDaniel praising "progression" is that progression is exactly the thing a quarterback in Herbert's spot has been denied. He has been excellent while starting over, repeatedly. The upside of this pairing is not a new arm talent, because that has never been the issue. Herbert has always had the arm that makes coaches lean forward at the combine and then forget how to speak. The upside is a system built to get free access, layered concepts off the same picture, and a quarterback finally being allowed to compound knowledge instead of reset it.
What comes next for Herbert and the Chargers offense
August praise is cheap. What it buys is a hypothesis, and the hypothesis gets tested the moment a live pass rush shows up and does not care about the motion.
The things I want to see, in order: whether the Chargers use pre-snap movement at a genuinely high rate or just sprinkle it, whether Herbert is throwing on rhythm from under center rather than surviving on second-reaction plays, and whether the run game creates the play-action leverage that makes a Shanahan-tree offense hum. That last one is the tell. In this scheme, the run game is not a complement, it is the setup for everything else.
There is an honest counterpoint, and I will give it its due: coordinators love their quarterbacks in shorts. Every camp produces a highlight reel and a quote about somebody being in the best shape of his life. The real evaluation of a scheme fit happens when a defense takes away the first read and forces a quarterback to trust the answer the coach promised him would be there.
Still, I have watched enough quarterbacks get handed a new playbook every couple of years to know what it does to them. Herbert has done the hardest version of this job on hard mode. If the reward is a coordinator who has actually made ordinary personnel look dangerous, that is a story worth following well past August.
What I am watching next: how much of the offense Herbert is running without a check to the sideline once the pads and the pressure are real.