# Los Angeles Chargers 2026: The Coverage Report — 232 Graded Takes, and a Skill Score of Almost Exactly Zero

*Published 2026-09-11 — MissedTakes*

The Los Angeles Chargers are the most ordinary team in our database, at least by volume. Across every kind of claim we grade, tracked pundits have filed **684 takes** about them — the league mean is 681.7 and the median is 689.5. Seventeenth of 32 in raw take count. Fourteenth in graded takes, at 232 against a league mean of 248.1.

One caveat that applies to every post in this series: this measures the outlets and pundits **we** track, not all of football media. A local beat corps we don't ingest doesn't show up here.

So coverage volume isn't the story. The story is what all that coverage was worth. The Chargers' average skill delta — how much better than a naive baseline the field did, where 0 means no better at all — is **−0.12** across 232 graded takes. That is the fifth-lowest figure in the league, behind only Atlanta (−18.16), the Jets (−2.08), Baltimore (−1.27) and the Giants (−0.39). Average accuracy on the Chargers is 51.6, which sits below the Seahawks (74.9), the Panthers (73.6) and the Dolphins (72.0), and above the Ravens (30.4) and the Lions (36.2).

For a club that went 11-6 and made the playoffs in both 2024 and 2025 under Jim Harbaugh, the field talked about them a normal amount and, in aggregate, learned nothing a coin-flip-plus-last-year's-results wouldn't have told you.

![Chargers coverage, in four numbers](/posts/visuals/51cdb4cf-85d0-4a37-ab3a-0c8387c13357.png)

## The cutdown: 17 graded roster calls, one miss

This is a thin file and we'll say so up front. We have **26 roster-spot calls** on the Chargers in total; **17 are graded** and nine are still pending. That's a small enough sample that nothing below should be read as a ranking.

Of the 17, sixteen scored 100 for accuracy and one scored 0. The one miss is the interesting one.

[Carter Bahns](/pundits/carter-bahns), in an unsigned CBS Sports list of 20 veterans at risk before the deadline, wrote of **Trevor Penning**: ["Considering all it cost to get him was a sixth-round pick, the Chargers can easily cut bait."](/opinions/94f49c83-2307-4f25-b10c-b1cba9df5dbc) Penning made the 53. The call graded 0 accuracy and −200 skill — the maximum penalty, because the naive baseline (he was on somebody's 53 last season, so he makes one again) already had it right.

The reverse direction — players the baseline said would not make a roster, who did — is where the four genuinely valuable calls live. All four involve 2026 draftees, whose naive baseline is 0 because they had no prior 53-man season:

- [Daniel Wade](/pundits/daniel-wade), handing out draft grades on April 28, named seven offensive linemen he considered locks. Two were rookies: second-rounder **Jake Slaughter** (["You have Cole Slaughter, obviously"](/opinions/6158344c-7002-4233-a790-f2213967d395)) and fourth-rounder **Travis Burke** ("You have Travis Burke who's going to make it now as being a fourth round pick"). Both made it. Both graded +200 skill. His **Rashawn Slater** call in the same segment also carried a 0 baseline and scored +200.
- [Chris Roling](/pundits/chris-roling), after the preseason opener, on fourth-round receiver **Brenen Thompson**: ["Thompson is a rookie hand-picked by Mike McDaniel, so he's not going anywhere."](/opinions/e9fc2064-a215-4e72-ae36-801974a34baa) Correct, +200.

The other twelve graded calls scored 100 accuracy and **zero skill** — right, but no better than assuming last year's roster repeats. The clearest example is Trey Pipkins, the subject of three separate graded takes (two from Wade, one from [David Droegemeier](/pundits/david-droegemeier)), each recorded as a claim that he makes the 53, each correct, each worth nothing against baseline. Same for the four Chargers cornerbacks — Cam Hart, Tarheeb Still, Donte Jackson, Deane Leonard — that [Shanna McCarriston](/pundits/shanna-mccarriston) reported were [expected to make the roster](/opinions/b2cfe46c-5e75-40f6-a5fa-8de2f8fcd750). All four did. All four scored 0 skill.

That gap is the whole point of the type: the roster-spot file on this team averages 94.1 accuracy and only +35.29 skill, and every point of that skill comes from four rookie calls and one blown veteran cut.

Nine calls are still ungraded, including [Nate Gosney](/pundits/nate-gosney) on undrafted safety Noah Avinger and Wade on receiver J.J. Koski (["how do you not keep him around"](/opinions/0f071c85-2927-421b-a072-2bbc110a57c4)). We'll update when they land.

## The rest of the record

Nineteen prediction types carry at least one graded Chargers take. Six carry ten or more.

| Type | Graded | Accuracy | Skill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mock Draft Picks | 58 | 50.6 | +34.09 |
| Game Outcome Picks | 38 | 39.5 | −31.50 |
| Playoff Picks | 26 | 96.2 | +27.96 |
| Depth Chart Calls | 18 | 94.0 | −1.85 |
| Roster Spot Calls | 17 | 94.1 | +35.29 |
| Division Winners | 16 | 0.0 | 0.00 |
| Positional Finishes | 11 | 28.0 | −16.33 |
| Trade and Signing Calls | 10 | 30.0 | −55.60 |

Two rows carry the negative half of that −0.12 team average. **Game outcome picks**: 38 graded at 39.5 accuracy and −31.50 skill — picking individual Chargers games actively cost pundits ground against the naive model. **Trade and signing calls**: 10 graded at 30.0 accuracy and −55.60 skill.

The 16 graded division-title claims tied to the Chargers average 0.0 accuracy, as do the nine graded award picks. Playoff picks, by contrast, are the cleanest file on the team: 96.2 accuracy over 26 graded calls, which is what happens when a club makes the postseason two years running and the field says so.

On win totals, the Chargers were one of the field's quieter successes. Seven pundits put a number on the 2025 team; the calls were 11, 11, 12, 10, 10, 9 and 8, an average of about 10.1 against an actual 11 wins. The Chargers do not appear among the league's biggest collective win-total misses — that list is led by Kansas City, where the field was 6.3 wins high.

![Chargers takes by type: accuracy is not skill](/posts/visuals/726b23d2-bad0-4581-91ba-c6892f9b3f8f.png)

## Who has a record here

Seventeen pundits have five or more graded Chargers takes. That is a floor for having a record at all, not a basis for ranking anyone — five to twenty graded calls is a small sample and we will not pretend otherwise.

By volume, [Daniel Wade](/pundits/daniel-wade) leads with 19 graded (71.6 accuracy, +59.81 skill), followed by Colin Cowherd at 17 (45.7, +8.71) and [Gregg Rosenthal](/pundits/gregg-rosenthal) at 15 (63.2, +6.75). [Rich Eisen](/pundits/rich-eisen) has the highest accuracy of the group at 87.2 over 11 graded. Wade's site-wide record is still flagged **provisional** — 22 graded takes overall — so his Chargers file is most of what we know about him.

The outlet split is sharper than the pundit split. The single largest source of Chargers takes we track is The Herd with Colin Cowherd: 131 takes, 59 graded, 44.6 accuracy, **−18.10 skill**. The best is the team-specific one — Locked On Chargers, 85 takes, 28 graded, 73.0 accuracy, **+55.86 skill**. More volume from the national show, more value from the club podcast.

![Outlets on the Chargers](/posts/visuals/4b802c05-37dd-4fb8-8e24-71c16af7c671.png)

One last note from the week's grading wave: 1,154 roster-spot calls were graded league-wide in the past seven days, and one multi-claim PFF preseason recap credited to [Nathan Jahnke](/pundits/nathan-jahnke) — which included a Chargers item, Charlie Kolar as the team's top tight end, among many others — landed component grades at both 100 and 0. That is what a grab-bag take looks like when it's scored piece by piece.

Method notes are on the [scoring methodology](/methodology) page; the full team file lives on the [NFL hub](/nfl).