Chargers met the most predictable fate in wild card loss to Patriots

The Los Angeles Chargers used an NFL-high 18 unique offensive line combinations during the regular season. All that mixing and matching, unsurprisingly, did not result in the unit being ready for the postseason. Far from it actually.

The team’s 16-3 wild card loss to the New England Patriots followed the most predictable script. Whereas the team’s defense played one of its best games of the season against a Drake Maye-led offense, giving up only one touchdown and registering two takeaways, the offense crumbled in large part because of the blocking up front.

The main victim of this was quarterback Justin Herbert, who fought tooth and nail to keep his team in the game but ultimately saw its chances succumb to a defense pressuring him at will.

According to Pro Football Focus, Herbert was pressured 30 times on Sunday, including six sacks. That number is as high as it sounds: when we combine it with his dropback count, we can see that the Pro Bowler was under duress on 68.2% of designed passing plays.

Not all of them resulted in negative plays for the offense — Herbert is a very good player despite what some narratives might end up suggesting — but the Patriots simply kept coming after him again and again and again. At one point, the dam had to burst, and it did in the fourth quarter when a whole regiment of defenders worked its way through an outmatched O-line for a strip-sack that pretty much put an end to Los Angeles’ hopes at a comeback.

The Chargers’ offensive line issues did not just cause their passing game to falter, it also virtually erased their run game from existence. Kimani Vidal and Omarion Hampton combined to carry the ball 12 times for a grand total of 30 yards; a scrambling Justin Herbert was actually the team’s biggest threat on the ground and finished with 57 yards.

The longest run of the day was exemplary for the team’s issues. Herbert was strip-sacked on a corner blitz by Patriots defender Marcus Jones, with Vidal recovering the loose football for his team and taking off for 17 yards. That it needed that for a positive run to happen says it all: L.A. was outmatched throughout the day and neither physically nor mentally able to compete with the AFC East champions.

“At the end of the day, we didn’t execute enough, and it starts with us up front,” said guard Zion Johnson after the game. “We got to be better. We only scored three points in the game. You got to do more, you got to execute at a higher clip, and we didn’t do that today.”

Of course, if you watched any Chargers football during the regular season, you could have seen that coming from a mile away. Ravaged by injuries and underperformance, the team’s offensive line simply was not ready for playoff football.

Luckily for the Chargers, though, they will have the resources in 2026 for a fresh start up front. They need it.