The Chargers are 0-6 with Herbert at eight interceptions, and our model has Los Angeles at three wins with the season already over
Updated
The Chargers lost 23-17 at home to Denver and 6-22 in Kansas City, are 0-6, and have not scored more than 23 points in a game all season. When we ran the rest of the season Los Angeles came out at 3-14 with no playoff chance, down from 6-11 and four and a half percent two weeks ago and six full wins below the nine the summer sim projected. No team has fallen further since July, and the latest step down came from a model that now leans harder on this season's snaps looking at six weeks of a quarterback throwing more interceptions than touchdowns.
Justin Herbert is 107 of 180 for 1,141 yards with five touchdowns and eight interceptions, a 69 rating, and has been sacked 21 times, second-most in the league. Our model projects him for 3,436 yards, 14 touchdowns and 20 interceptions behind a 74 rating, down from 19 touchdowns and 82 two weeks ago, and that would be the worst full season of his career by every measure. Ladd McConkey had a concussion on top of the foot injury and is expected back after the Week 7 bye; his projection has dropped to 62 catches. Tre Harris projects for 59 catches. Quentin Johnston for 40. Oronde Gadsden II has dropped from 50 catches to 37. Omarion Hampton projects for 675 rushing yards, down from 872, and Keaton Mitchell has climbed from 124 to 322 as the carries have spread. The unit projects for 241 points, 31st in the league, and only Tennessee is lower.
The defense has been competitive and it is the reason the Chargers have lost by twelve, twelve, eight, seven, six and 16 rather than by more. Los Angeles projects to allow 377 points, 21st in the league, and has given up 151 in six games. Tuli Tuipulotu projects for nearly eleven sacks and over a pick. Khalil Mack has slipped from 11.5 projected sacks to seven, the biggest downward move on the roster. Akheem Mesidor projects for four. The team projects for 40 sacks, 18th, and nearly twelve interceptions, eleventh. Tony Jefferson projects for over three picks and 107 tackles. Derwin James Jr.'s interception projection has dropped from one and a half to under one.
The division is gone and the Chargers are last by five and a half games. Kansas City is 5-0 and projects for 13 wins. Denver is 4-2 and projects for nine with the head-to-head over Los Angeles banked. Las Vegas is 3-3 and projects for eight with the head-to-head banked too. When we ran the rest of the season the Chargers finished last in the AFC West in every simulated year.
The next month is a bye and three games, and the model has Los Angeles as an underdog in all three. Week 7 off, a trip to the Rams at twelve percent, Houston at home at 26, and a trip to Baltimore at 18. When we ran that stretch the Chargers went 0-3 more often than 1-2, and the Houston game is the closest to winnable. An 0-9 record entering the second week of November is the most likely path.
The fortnight in detail: a 23-17 home loss to Denver, and a 22-6 loss in Kansas City in which the offense managed two field goals. Twenty-one sacks and eight interceptions in six games is the line, and the model's 20-interception projection is what six weeks of that produces when a model leans on this season rather than last. The offense's points projection dropped 59 in two weeks, from 300 to 241, which is the second-largest offensive downgrade of any team in this run behind the Rams, and the Chargers now project as the second-lowest-scoring team in football behind only Tennessee. McConkey's concussion on top of the foot and Gadsden's projection dropping 13 catches are the receiver room shrinking around a quarterback who has stopped trusting it. The defense held its grade; it is still 21st, and it has kept five of six games within two scores. What moves the number from here is nothing in the next month. The model has the Chargers as an underdog in all three remaining October and November games by wide margins, and the bye this week is the first weekend since September in which Los Angeles will not lose. Three wins is the number, and the model expects them to come in December.
The matchup record is the largest underperformance in the league, a fraction ahead of the Rams, and the only one involving a team the model had as a heavy favorite in two of its first two games. We gave the Chargers 80 percent against Arizona, 80 against Las Vegas, 46 in Buffalo, 40 in Seattle, 50 against Denver and 38 in Kansas City. Zero wins from a third over three expected is the gap. The market opened Los Angeles at nine and a half wins. Our model sat a half-win under it in July and sits six and a half under it now. The lean is about a quarterback with 20 projected interceptions behind a line that has given up 21 sacks, and a model that has watched six weeks of it.
