EL SEGUNDO — Greg Roman made his intentions clear almost from the moment he was hired as the Chargers’ offensive coordinator. He asked reporters if they could imagine quarterback Justin Herbert’s standout passing accompanied by a complementary running game in the 2024 season and beyond?
No, the reporters joked among themselves later.
They couldn’t imagine it because they had never seen it during the current pass-heavy era.
The Chargers’ determination to deploy a sound ground game for this season was admirable, and it has had its moments of success, as when running back J.K. Dobbins began the season with consecutive games of 100 yards rushing or more. But there have been an almost equal number of misses, too.
Herbert said Wednesday the Chargers are still in search of their offensive identity. Roman agreed wholeheartedly Thursday.
“Oh yeah, it’s a complete evolutionary process,” Roman said. “I said it Week 1, Week 2, probably, we’re going to evolve as the season goes on, as guys are in and out of the lineup, as guys get healthy who weren’t healthy, it’s going to change. The profile is going to change. What we do is going to change.”
“I don’t think we’ve nailed down that identity yet. In order to do that, it takes real consistency week in and week out. That’s what we’re building toward. I don’t think when you start a new program, it just jumps out. I can remember when we started in San Francisco, five weeks in, there was some rough-looking stuff.
“It takes a while, the chemistry, the offensive line playing together, quarterbacks and receivers playing together, practicing — all that stuff adds up. You’re trying to get better every day, every week. We just have to clean up some things from the other night. One more play and the questions are different.”
In fact, as it stands now, the Chargers’ identity could change from possession to possession depending on the circumstances. That much was evident during their 17-15 loss Monday night to the Arizona Cardinals when it was apparent the passing game was hot and the ground game was not.
Herbert ended up throwing for a season-high 349 yards, completing 27 of 39 passes.
The Chargers combined to rush for only 59 yards on 22 carries.
Neither the passing nor the ground games produced a touchdown, however.
The Chargers’ points came via five field goals from Cameron Dicker.
“We didn’t run the ball as well as we would have liked,” Herbert said. “Everyone is still getting settled in. We’re still finding our identity on offense, so as long as we’re able to do that and put everything together, whether it’s the run game and pass game married together, I still think we’re finding our way.”
LESSON LEARNED?
No question, rookie cornerback Cam Hart’s unnecessary roughing penalty that prolonged what turned out to be the Cardinals’ winning drive Monday night was “devastating,” as safety Derwin James Jr. put it after the game. It gave the Cardinals a free first down and 15 additional yards after an incomplete pass.
Defensive coordinator Jesse Minter said he had a simple message for Hart.
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“We believe in you,” Minter said. “Let’s move on, and we’ve got a lot of faith in Cam Hart. You have to be very cognizant of the angle you go in (to tackle) with your head. That’s at all levels of football now, so it’s not new to the NFL, it’s not new to those types of plays. Guys have been getting ejected from games in college for that play for a while now. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I can’t believe they called this (penalty).’
“That’s going to be called. There’s a lot of different angles you can look at it from (on replays of Hart’s helmet-to-helmet hit on Arizona wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr.). Some look better than others. Some look worse than others. There’s so many different ways to look at it. It’s one of those things that happens. You can’t change it right at the moment. You can only control how you respond to things like that.”