Let's stop piling on Justin Herbert and look at Chargers' collective bad luck and failures

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Another year, another playoff disappointment for a franchise that seems to have an abundance of them. The Los Angeles Chargers’ season came to an ugly end in the wild-card round, losing 16-3 in a meager performance against a New England Patriots team that wasn’t playing their best football either.

Every problem that hampered the Chargers this season came to full display alongside a mediocre performance from star quarterback Justin Herbert as they limped their way to another dispiriting end in the playoffs. As the quarterback and face of the team, Herbert will draw the ire of many talking heads who pin everything on him. The truth is this is a failing that encompasses just about everyone involved and will require a real look in the mirror this offseason.

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One area the Chargers have been consistently plagued by are injuries. For the second straight season, their offensive line was crushed by injuries. All-Pro talent Rashawn Slater was lost for the season in early August, Joe Alt battled through injuries before having season-ending ankle surgery in early November and backup Trey Pipkins III missed a couple games while playing injured in several others. That’s not a survivable situation in the modern NFL with how talented and athletic the front seven players can be, but it’s a disappointing end to the season nonetheless. First-round running back Omarion Hampton also missed games throughout the season and never quite recovered when he came back and free-agent Najee Harris was put on season-ending injury reserve early in the season.

It seems to happen to this team as much or more than any other, but the unpredictable swings of health really put a ceiling on what the Chargers could accomplish. That doesn’t absolve the play of Herbert or any of the skill players, but they were playing with guys out of position and pulling so deep on the depth chart that it was preseason-quality offensive line play from time to time.

L.A. entered the playoffs playing on a razor thin edge of margins that isn’t feasible to convert into wins at this point. The Chargers also didn’t get any offensive answers from Jim Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Greg Roman to alleviate some of these issues. There’s only so much window dressing that can be done during late-game comeback scenarios, but Roman once again has struggled to put together a cohesive passing game and even rookie sensation Ladd McConkey had a serious dip in production in Year 2 with the Chargers.

Beyond getting their players healthy and adding talent via the draft and free agency, the Chargers have to tinker with their plan of what this offense is going to look like if they want to have any sustained postseason success. Right now, they could use an overhaul of the passing game while they continue to develop their collection of young receivers. Even though Herbert hasn’t played his best games in the playoffs, he still has the talent to go on a deep run and three playoff games is just three games. The entire sample size of his career says this is still one of the best quarterbacks in the league and there’s no reason to worry that he can’t do this. There’s still a long way to go on the 27-year-old’s career and given the Chargers’ overall competency they’ll be competing for the playoffs for years to come.

The good thing is they absolutely have a great thing going on defense, granted coordinator Jesse Minter doesn’t take a head coaching job this offseason. Minter’s defense held up its end of the bargain and the Chargers have done a great job developing some of the young talent on that side over the past two seasons. It’s on the offense and its über-talented quarterback and historically successful head coach to right the ship so they can maximize this current window.

Games like Sunday make it seem like they’re further away than they really are, but they still need a few uncertain and unknown pieces to come to fruition in a big way before they’ll be ready to make that run people have been waiting for.

Sometimes it ain’t your year. Sometimes it ain’t anybody’s year. That’s how last night felt for the Chargers and now they’re off to what should be a busy offseason with their league-leading projected $109 million in salary-cap space.

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