It has been a difficult start to the 2026 NFL season for hte Los Angeles Chargers.

But one bit of professional football history puts their dreadful 0-2 record in some difficult context.

The Chargers, once again media darlings of the offseason, lost in Week 1 by a final score of 26-14 to the Arizona Cardinals. Yes, a loss to the team that held the third-overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft last spring, and finished the 2025 campaign with a 3-14 record.

Then on Sunday the Chargers welcomed the Las Vegas Raiders to town for a second consecutive home game, and another game against a team that struggled in 2025 and had an early selection in the 2026 NFL Draft. The Raiders finished with a 3-14 record last season, the same as the Cardinals, and held the top pick in the 2026 NFL Draft last spring.

Final score: Las Vegas 26, Los Angeles 14.

If you wanted one play to sum up the loss, here you go:

So the Chargers have lost a pair of home games against teams that picked in the top three last year, teams that also finished with 3-14 records a year ago. And a pair of 26-14 losses to show for it.

Things get much, much tougher from here for the Chargers. They face a trip to Buffalo to take on the red-hot Josh Allen and the Bills in Week 3, and then a trip to Seattle to take on the Seahawks in Week 4. Games against the Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Rams, Houston Texans, and Baltimore Ravens follow.

Is a 0-9 start on tap?

That might feel outlandish, but consider the history the Chargers made on Sunday, alluded to above and provided by OptaStats:

I’m sorry.

The Racine Tornadoes?

This … rather amusing stat sent me down a research rabbit hole on Monday morning. The Racine Tornadoes began play as the Racine Regulars back in 1915, as Wisconsin’s first semi-professional team. The Regulars played games against teams in Illinois and Indiana, becoming known as Racine Battery C in 1916 after many players joined the First Wisconsin Reserve Artillery Battery C during the first World War.

The team took a hiatus during the war, reorganizing in 1919 with sponsorship from the local American Legion, as well as William Horlick, the president of his family’s malted milk company. Horlick was the original patent holder of malted milk, and he founded Horlick Food Company in 1873 along with his brother James. They were granted a patent in the United States for their dried milk produce, which they had been working on for years.

Their dried milk product was trademarked as “malted milk” in 1887, and I for one am glad they went with this second choice of names, as they opted to pass on their original idea for a name: Disastoid.

You read that right. Disastoid. Does not have the same ring to it as malted milk.

Anyway, back to the Racine Tornadoes. In 1922 the American Professional Football Association changed its name to the National Football League and admitted four new teams, including the Racine Legion.

One of their early stars? Quarterback Milton “Mitt” Romney, who was the captain at the University of Chicago and joined the Legion before leaving the team for the Chicago Bears. Yes, from the same Romney family as former Utah Senator Mitt Romney.

The Legion did not field a team in 1925, but returned to the league for the 1926 season, now known as the Tornadoes. They actually won their first game, but lost four straight — including the stretch noted above — and disbanded in late October due to a struggling financial picture.

In fact, this might just be the best way to sum this up, for you baseball fans out there, courtesy of our good friend Bernd Buchmasser:

And now you know much more than you ever wanted to about Disastoid, the Racine Tornadoes, and just how bad a start it has been for the 2026 Los Angeles Chargers.