The Los Angeles Chargers should very obviously be sellers at the NFL trade deadline.
The Chargers might fire Mike McDaniel while attempting to turn things around, it seems. But Khalil Mack and other trade candidates make sense as names to consider moving with the season at 0-5.
It only looks like it will get worse from here. The only thing standing between the Chargers and 0-6 is a date with the Kansas City Chiefs in Arrowhead Stadium. Exiting the bye, games against the Los Angeles Rams, Houston Texans and Baltimore Ravens give them a serious shot at 0-9 before they play the 2-3 New York Jets in Week 11. By then, anything is possible.
But new NFL trade rumors? They paint the Chargers as straight-up delusional about their situation.
NFL Trade Rumors Update on Chargers as Sellers
The only reports that should be breaking about the Chargers anytime soon are just which players they might shop before a rebuild.
Alas, Tom Pelissero wrote on his Substack that Chargers general manager Joe Hortiz is shooting down teams that call him.
Pelissero went as far as writing that “the Chargers are holding out hope that they’re close to turning things around” and that they aren’t ready “to give up and go into fire sale mode.”
Delusional.
Maybe this is the Chargers just saying and doing the right things in October to keep things from erupting in the building. But there’s no turning around an 0-5 start. It’s not even a down year for the AFC West, with every non-Chargers team sporting at worst a 3-2 mark, which belongs to the usually-lowly Las Vegas Raiders.
If the hope is that this stuff leaking publicly helps the Chargers get some leverage in trade calls over the next few weeks, that’s delusional too. It’s very obvious what’s happening in Los Angeles, and teams aren’t going to pay lucrative prices for any of the Chargers’ trade pieces.
There’s a small outside chance the Chargers feel this way because they’re thinking beyond this year. Maybe there’s hope inside the building that Mike McDaniel just needs another year to really get things going and that Jim Harbaugh isn’t going anywhere. But looking this bad out of the gates and more unacceptable injury waves across the roster point to big institutional changes, even if nobody in the national scene wants to point it out right now.
This stance will undoubtedly change as losses keep happening, but for now, the Chargers get to enjoy weird coverage like this that paints them as lost off the field as they are on it.
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