NFL Network’s Kurt Warner’s Advice on How to Fix the Chargers’ Offense

Kurt Warner rejoined The Rich Eisen Show after an internet hiccup and immediately got handed a caller. Mitchell in Pensacola wanted to know if his Jaguars are Super Bowl contenders.

"I think they're in the mix," Warner said. Jacksonville's defense does a lot of things really well and the offense has explosiveness, but he wants more consistency, especially on offense. "The consistency is always key, especially when you get to playoff time."

Mitchell had a parting note of his own: Liam Coen needs to start taking the points more.

From there, Warner went quarterback by quarterback through Week 5, from a promising Drake Maye to a puzzling Bo Nix, then delivered a deep diagnosis of what is wrong with the 0-5 Chargers and an unflinching look at the Commanders' overtime meltdown.

**Drake Maye looks like Drake Maye again**

Rich asked whether Maye is back to the quarterback from last year. Warner liked what he saw, with a caveat.

"To me, this was the closest he looked to last year all season long," Warner said. "Throwing the ball down the field, attacking down the field, not hesitating." The athleticism has come back too, with Maye taking off and using his legs when nothing is there.

But one good game doesn't erase four that didn't look like last year. "I'm not ready to say, okay, let's throw all the issues out the window. He's back," Warner said. "But I love the way that he played this weekend. And that to me is how he's got to play."

**Bo Nix's clock problem**

In Denver, the conversation is about Nix playing on instinct, "see it, rip it," as Nix put it in his Tuesday media availability ahead of Thursday night against Seattle. Rich asked whether anything looked different with Sean Payton calling plays.

"No, not really," Warner said. The offense struggled again, and he puts much of it on Nix's patience in the pocket. Time after time, Nix hits the top of his drop and is already moving, before the play concept has a chance to develop.

Warner said he asked Payton about it in a production meeting last year, and Payton's answer was essentially that this is who Nix is: he feels more comfortable with his feet moving. "Okay, that's great," Warner said. "But if you continue to miss opportunity after opportunity because that's happening, something has to change."

What baffles Warner is that Nix proves he can do it. "When we get into late game situations and he's got to make plays, he's shown that he can do it," he said. "Why is there more of a panic early in games?" He called it "kind of dumbfounding" that it remains the issue.

**How Warner would fix the Chargers**

At 0-5, Rich asked what Warner would counsel Jim Harbaugh and the Chargers to do. His answer: get back to the base.

Mike McDaniel has been innovative with motions and shifts, Warner said, but on film he is often "scratching my head going, what are we trying to do here?" It can feel like the Chargers are trying something off-the-wall because they have Justin Herbert, or because doing something different looks clever, and it isn't playing out.

"Let's just play some more smash mouth, you know, real football and say, hey, we're going to beat you whether you know what we're doing or not," Warner said. In the passing game, go back to staple concepts Herbert has done well. The goal is to stop the chaos and the negative plays. "Let's figure out what our identity is and what our base is, what we can live off of, and then we can start stacking things."

Rich acknowledged the Chargers are without Rashawn Slater, Joe Alt, Ladd McConkey and Quentin Johnston. But he asked the harder question: is what McDaniel was brought in to do something Herbert is uncomfortable with or simply can't do?

"I think it's fair to ask and I think it could be true," Warner said. But he refused to put it all on Herbert. He has long said McDaniel's offense, at least as it ran in Miami, takes a unique quarterback. Tua was a really good fit when he was playing well, which is why he led the league in passing one year. The anticipation, touch and quick read of spacing it demands is rare. "I think there's a lot of quarterbacks that would struggle in that system," Warner said.

Right now, he said, the Chargers have neither: McDaniel isn't creating the easy "layups" for his quarterback, and Herbert doesn't look comfortable within what they are asking.

Then Warner offered a theory he stressed is speculation. Herbert, he believes, has lived in coverage-based, full-field reads, where a quarterback looks at defenders to tell him who is open. McDaniel's system leans pure progression, where a quarterback checks whether his own receiver is open. Warner has watched Herbert throw "right to a defender, like numerous times," and wonders whether that is a quarterback locked onto his receiver and blind to the defender sitting in the throwing lane. "I've seen it a lot in pure progression offenses where guys are looking at their guys as opposed to the opposing team's guys," he said.

**The Commanders' overtime snafu**

Rich pivoted to Washington, which briefly took the mantle for obliviousness and "blew a win with it" at the end of the Giants game.

Warner's best guess was that Jayden Daniels didn't have all the information in that moment: no timeouts, a pass play, throw to the sideline, and if it's not there, throw it away. He walked through how two-minute calls usually work. "If we get an easy one to get us 5 yards and get closer for the field goal, take it. If not, launch it into the stands and we live for another day."

Rich pointed out that Commanders guard Chris Paul said the no-timeouts situation "was talked about in the huddle." Warner hadn't heard that.

Rich, who compared watching the replay to a horror movie, said it looks like Daniels gets stepped on by one of his linemen coming out. Warner said that could easily be it. He had noticed something funky too, like Daniels fumbling with the ball coming from under center. "We've all been there where something happens, and it throws our whole entire thought process off," he said. In two or three seconds, a quarterback in the pocket might even worry about intentional grounding. Maybe Daniels thought he was going to stumble and take a sack, Warner said, "and now all of a sudden he just loses his wits and makes a play that he's going to regret."

Rich's summary: "He sacks himself."

**Best on tape: Jordan Love**

With 60 seconds left, Rich asked who looked best on tape in Week 5. Warner picked Jordan Love against the Bears. "It's just bombs away," he said. "I thought he was the best quarterback that was out there."

But Warner was careful. A lot of the plays weren't perfectly designed; Love simply threw it up against coverage and dared Chicago to cover it, and on one go route a squatting safety let the receiver run right by him. "Everything went wrong for Chicago. Everything went right for Green Bay," Warner said. He is not ready to say Chicago should panic or that Green Bay has solved its issues off one game.

After an early internet issue, the connection held up the rest of the way, which Rich noted on the way out. "We connected just like Jordan Love with all of his receivers."