NFL 2026 Preview
Today, the Los Angeles Chargers & the Baltimore Ravens
There is a specific, existential weirdness to professional football in Los Angeles, a city where sports teams are often treated like trendy pop-up restaurants or premiering television dramas. If you stand outside SoFi Stadium on a blazing September afternoon, amidst the gleaming chrome and the superficial gloss of Hollywood, you can almost forget the decades of nomadic heartbreak that define the Los Angeles Chargers. This is a franchise whose modern history reads like an avant-garde textbook on how to snatch defeat from the jaws of absolute certainty. They have specialized in the tragicomedy of the late-game collapse, a multi-generational curse that followed them up the Interstate 5 from San Diego. But entering the 2026 NFL Season, the Chargers find themselves at a bizarre, thrilling crossroads, projected to finally shatter their cycle of postseason misery and finish the year with an elite 12-5 record.
The catalyst for this shift is Jim Harbaugh, a man who walks through the world with the intensity of a mid-century steelworker and the unwavering belief that football is won by moving heavy objects from point A to point B against a human being's will. In his two years in Los Angeles, Harbaugh has done something remarkable: he has made the Chargers un-Chargers-like. He has stripped away the soft, country-club aesthetic that plagued the previous regimes and replaced it with a culture of cracked glass and bloody knuckles. Following back-to-back 11-6 campaigns that both dissolved into unsatisfying, stomach-churning postseason exits—most recently a staggering wild-card defeat against the New England Patriots that left fans staring blankly at their screens—Harbaugh decided that stability wasn't enough. He needed an edge.
That edge arrived in the form of a coaching marriage so wildly asymmetric it feels like a fever dream. This winter, Harbaugh hired former Dolphins mastermind Mike McDaniel as his offensive coordinator. It is a pairing of absolute opposites. On one side you have Harbaugh, a traditionalist who probably thinks a well-executed full-back dive is a work of high art. On the other side you have McDaniel, a quirky, vape-toting schematic savant who views the football field as a canvas for high-speed, horizontal track meets and pre-snap optical illusions. This is a vegan mixologist taking over the kitchen of a legendary Midwestern steakhouse. Yet, the early returns from training camp suggest that this ideological collision is producing something terrifyingly effective.
The man caught in the middle of this mad-scientist experiment is quarterback Justin Herbert, an elite physical specimen who has occasionally spent his career looking like a Ferrari being driven exclusively in a school zone. Herbert possesses a generational arm and a quiet, stoic demeanor that coaches revere, but he has too often been asked to carry flawed rosters on his broad shoulders. Under McDaniels' new architecture, Herbert is finally being liberated. The offense will still feature the bruising, downhill running game that Harbaugh demands to break an opponent's spirit, but it will now be paired with McDaniel's trademark West Coast wrinkles, using terrifying speed to stress defenses to their breaking points. With a rebuilt, nasty offensive line anchored by young tackle Joe Alt and a receiving corps led by the rapidly ascending Ladd McConkey, Herbert finally has the structural and intellectual support to match his immense talent.
Defensively, the Chargers are undergoing an equally drastic philosophical makeover under new defensive coordinator Chris O'Leary. For years, the Chargers' defense was a unit that looked magnificent on paper but routinely crumbled when the lights were brightest. O'Leary’s task is to instill a level of down-to-down discipline that can withstand the inevitable track meets thrown at them by Patrick Mahomes and the division-rival Kansas City Chiefs. He still has the luxury of deploying Derwin James Jr., a safety whose violent thumping power and competitive fire make him the emotional heartbeat of the entire organization. O'Leary is moving away from the predictable coverage shells of the past, installing a fluid, adaptive system designed to disguise pressures and force opposing quarterbacks into split-second mistakes. If this defense can simply transition from a historical liability into a respectable, top-twelve unit, the offense has more than enough firepower to drag this franchise into the elite tier of the AFC.
The schedule is an absolute gauntlet, and adjusting to the complex, rapid-fire pre-snap motion of McDaniel's playbook will undoubtedly cause some clunky, frustrating moments in September. There will be afternoons where the gears grind and the national media questions whether the Harbaugh-McDaniel marriage can actually work. But the sheer, unadulterated competitive force of Jim Harbaugh, combined with a healthier, vastly more dynamic offensive approach, will ultimately elevate this team above its own historical demons. The Chargers will push the Chiefs to the absolute brink in a brutal AFC West dogfight, proving that they are no longer the league's favorite punchline, but rather a legitimate, battle-tested heavyweight.
If you stand outside M&T Bank Stadium as the November wind whips off the Patapsco River, you understand that the Baltimore Ravens are built on a foundational theology of purple-bruised shoulders, muddy jerseys, and defensive violence. But entering the 2026 NFL season, the atmosphere around Owings Mills is thick with a different kind of tension, an uncomfortable mixture of urgency and lingering frustration after a bizarre, logic-defying 8-9 campaign in 2025 left them on the outside of the playoff bracket looking in. For a franchise led by the relentlessly steady John Harbaugh, mediocrity is an unpardonable sin, and this autumn represents a high-stakes referendum on the current era of Ravens football. Yet, the sheer muscle memory of this organization, paired with an roster bursting with generational talent, suggests a massive bounce-back is imminent, with Baltimore primed to navigate a brutal AFC North gauntlet and finish the regular season with a stellar 12-5 record.
The undisputed sun around which this entire universe orbits remains Lamar Jackson, a basketball player in cleats who continues to break the brains of defensive coordinators across the continent. Jackson spent the offseason hearing the inevitable, lazy talk shows questioning his long-term durability and postseason legacy, but anyone who actually watches the tape understands he remains the most terrifying dual-threat weapon on earth. Under the offensive architecture of Todd Monken, Jackson is no longer just improvising out of chaos; he is operating a sophisticated, rapid-fire passing attack that stretches opponents to their absolute breaking points. He is flanked in the backfield by the ageless, bruising titan Derrick Henry, who despite creeping closer to the dreaded running back age cliff, still runs with the velocity of an unbraked freight train. When you factor in the electric, open-field wizardry of wideout Zay Flowers, and a healthy Mark Andrews dominating the seam, the Ravens possess an offensive engine that doesn’t just score points—it demoralizes human beings.
Defensively, the task of restoring the historic Baltimore standard falls onto the shoulders of defensive coordinator Zach Orr, who faced plenty of trial-by-fire scrutiny during last year's defensive lapses. The heart and soul of this unit remains linebacker Roquan Smith, a throwback defender who plays the position with a ferocious, sideline-to-sideline intensity that feels like a direct spiritual continuation of Ray Lewis. Orr’s unit received a massive, headline-grabbing boost in free agency with the signing of edge-rushing menace Trey Hendrickson, a relentless sack artist whose arrival completely changes the math for opposing offensive lines. Combined with the elite, Swiss-Army-knife instincts of safety Kyle Hamilton in the secondary, the Ravens finally have the personnel to transition away from the passive coverage shells that burned them last winter and return to the suffocating, press-heavy carnage that defines the franchise’s DNA.
The primary obstacle between Baltimore and another deep January run isn't their own depth chart, but rather the unforgiving neighborhood they reside in. The AFC North is less of a football division and more of an extended, multi-month demolition derby, with Joe Burrow’s Bengals and a perpetually physical Steelers team waiting to exploit the slightest hint of weakness. There will inevitably be an afternoon in October where the offensive line struggles with pre-snap communication, or a heartbreaking, late-game defensive lapse that drives the local talk-radio circuits into a collective panic. But Harbaugh has spent nearly two decades proving that his teams are at their most dangerous when their backs are pressed firmly against the wall. Expect a hyper-focused, physically punishing Ravens squad to bully their way back into the elite tier of the conference, turning M&T Bank Stadium back into a house of horrors for visiting teams and entering the postseason tournament as a legitimate, battle-tested Super Bowl heavyweight.
Tomorrow, the Kansas City Chiefs & the Indianapolis Colts