Justin Herbert has changed the way he sets up in the shotgun, shifting so his left foot is forward instead of his right as the Chargers try to shave time off his throws. It is a small adjustment, but it fits the kind of offense Mike McDaniel wants to build: quick, simple and efficient.
The timing matters because Herbert is coming off a season that left little room for comfort. He was sacked 54 times, absorbed a league-high 263 pressures and finished the year playing through a fractured left hand, then started a scaled-back throwing program this offseason. Any change that helps him take the snap and get the ball out faster has immediate appeal for a team looking for small gains that add up.
McDaniel has been tinkering with Herbert’s shotgun footwork in recent months, and a few weeks ago he put the point in plain language when he said he was trying to find the margins. For a right-handed quarterback, the new setup is designed to get him to the snap and into a quick throw instead of letting him sit back in the pocket and wait for the play to develop. The idea is not to remake Herbert. It is to make the easiest part of the throw even easier.
That is also why the Chargers keep circling back to the line in front of him. They expect Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt back to help protect Herbert, and Slater has been one of the league’s best at his position when healthy, even if injuries have bitten him at times in his career. But the optimism comes with a catch. Herbert’s 2025 workload was punishing, and a footwork tweak can only do so much if the protection breaks down again.
The broader picture is why this offseason chatter has landed. The Bolts want an attack built on efficiency and simplicity under McDaniel, and Herbert, McDaniel and Jim Harbaugh give them an elite trio at key spots. That is why the team appears primed to be one of the league’s top offenses in 2026. The unanswered part is how much this new shotgun look changes on Sundays, where the difference between a quick first down and another hit can still come down to one step.
The same attention to detail is showing up across the league, where even a name like Matt Ryan keeps surfacing in the larger quarterback conversation as teams sort through what comes next. For Herbert, though, the next test is simpler: whether one altered step can help keep him upright long enough for the rest of the plan to matter.
