We’ve just released Episode 151 of the Thunder Down Under Chargers Podcast.
Our synopsis is below:
#BoltUp! Join us today as we break down the Chargers’ dominant Week 1 Preseason win over the Houston Texans!
What we cover today:
⚡ Preseason Wk 1 Recap: Standouts & takeaways from the Chargers’ win vs. Texans.
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Alister (@TDU_Alister)
Long time team fan, podcaster (with Thunder Down Under Chargers Podcast), husband to a beautiful wife, friend to all fellow Chargers fanatics, and father-to-be!
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Listened to both this and the last podcase during a hot AF sweaty round of Sunday afternoon golf. 97 & humid… I walk the course – drank close to 4 ltr of water and peed once….
Two points to add to the discussion below.
On the WR discussion, Alister said he doesn’t want 6 targets, 2 catches from the 4th WR. I’m curious as to what he meant by that. Outside of injuries, I would think it would be rare for WR4 to get 6 targets for a couple reasons:
1. So far under Harbaugh, Herbert has averaged 29.8 (2024) and 31.9 (2025) passing attempts per game. Under McDaniel, Miami averaged 28.2 passing attempts per game in 2025, but 34.8 in 2024. It seems reasonable to expect a strong running game and a lot of rushing attempts. Considering all of these data points, it seems reasonable to project Herbert for 32 attempts per game. So a max of 32 total targets per game.
2. If healthy, I think WR4 will naturally get fewer targets than McConkey, Johnston, Harris, the RBs collectively, and the TEs collectively. I don’t think that leaves much room for 6 target games.
As for the larger question about Davis, you know how I feel about it. He is a good punt returner if healthy. That’s essentially all he brings to the roster. He is a below average kick returner and has been a very limited impact player on offense, and that would stand to be further reduced going forward by the additions of Mitchell and Thompson.
If KLS can be a successful special teams player, I would keep him as WR5 over Davis.
Thanks for addressing my question. I agree the jury’s still out given Hortiz is only halfway through year 3. It just struck me that his track record with drafting doesn’t look as good today as it did towards the end of last season, having seen the 2024 rookies (mostly) play their second seasons and having seen the 2025 rookies play their first season.
In January, I thought:
– The Chargers 2026 2nd round pick would be a lock starter. Clearly, Slaughter is not a lock, and it has seemed recently like Awosika has the lead to start at LG.
– The Chargers would not pick up Johnston’s 5th year option, opening the door for Harris to claim the WR2 spot at some point this season. They picked it up, and Johnston looks like the clear WR2 for the entirety of 2026 barring injury or unexpected poor performance.
– Gadsden would have a clear passing game role in a TE 1a/1b kind of scenario. It appears now that the team views his blocking as enough of a problem to limit his role.
– Kennard would likely be edge 4. He may be beaten out by UDFA Tucker. I have heard no camp buzz on Kennard. Note they could still keep 5 edge players, in which case they could keep both Kennard and Tucker, if they (finally) let go of Dupree, despite foolishly giving him a guaranteed roster bonus.
– Colson would have to battle for a roster spot, but had a solid chance to make it thanks to his history with Harbaugh. With the understanding that Henley, Dye, Phillips, and Wax were all roster locks barring injury, I would not have re-signed Perryman in order to allow a real battle for the LB5 spot, enabling Colson to earn it if he could. I now think there are 5 roster locks at LB, the 4 I mentioned plus Perryman. So I don’t think Colson has much of a shot, since I think it would be tough for the Chargers to keep 6 LBs.
– I knew the Chargers had to address OL. I would not have expected them to follow drafting Branson Taylor in the 6th round in 2025 with a 4th round OT and 2 6th round OGs in 2026, when combined with signing Strange, Awosika, Penning, and Pipkins. It created a roster crunch that guarantees 2-3 of these players won’t make the final roster. It is good that they went all in on solving OL, but odd to me that they guaranteed that they spent draft picks on 2-3 practice squad players.
That is what I was thinking about when I wrote my question. It isn’t necessarily my opinion, I just thought it was an interesting question to ponder. I think it is perfectly reasonable to wait until after the 2026 season to render an informed opinion on Hortiz after he has 3 full years in the job.
I agree with you about WR4 and targets but I think over the course of the season that we may see a few games where WR4 looks like WR2 in the box score and we put up stupid numbers.
On the Hortiz Draft grade, we’re now going into Year 3 of his first draft class:
1st – Alt – RT1 future max
2nd – McConkey WR1/2 future max
3rd – Colson – likely cut/practice squad (in reviewing the 3rd round production vs 4th every team seemingly got the 3rd round wrong in this draft relative to the 4th rounders)
4th – Eboigbe – 1st Backup DE – possible extention/comp
5th – Still – starting CB – possible extension/comp
5th – Hart – starting CB – possible extension/comp
6th – Vidal – RB3 – possible extension
7th – Rice – gone
7th – Johnson – gone
Year 2 of his second draft class:
1st – Hampton – RB1
2nd – Harris – WR3
3rd – Caldwell – DT1
4th – Kennard – likely cut/practice squad
5th – KLS – WR5/6 – Fringe Active/Inactive
5th – Gadsden – TE1
6th – B. Taylor – Lock for Active
6th – Mickens – Likely lock for Active
7th – Bridges – gone
I’ll refrain from the rookies until we see the regular season but the first 6 picks all seem like locks for the 53 with Genesis Smith and Nick Barret as the fringe active/inactive designations for a Draft that all the “experts” said was not as top heavy or deep relative to other Draft classes.
So right now Hortiz has seemed to hit on the 1st and 2nd rounds at 100% with a 50% rate on the 3rd and 4th rounders; 100% on 5th and 6th and 0% on 7th rounders based on where everything seems to be headed going into Week 1.
If the misses are simply Colson and Kennard in each class I think that’s more than buoyed by what he’s been able to do in the 5th round in getting 3 legitimate starters at CB, CB and TE and now the possible emergence of Branson Taylor kicking out Pipkins and Penning from the OL order. So for Joe and his draft grade, I’m using that idiom of don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
I view Tart as DT1 and Kolar as TE1. But I agree Caldwell and Gadsden were good picks.
IMO it is premature to say Branson Taylor is a lock to make the final roster. He is having a great camp and preseason, but the competition is not over.
I think Hortiz has certainly been above average in the draft. I’m hoping this season is where his philosophy comes together to support a deep playoff run to validate his approach.
Thanks Tau!
I think all I was getting at with the WR4 commentary was to say, Chargers fans are all hopeful that they’ll have four quality WRs this year because Brenen Thompson could be a stud pushing for more and more targets during the season; however, he will need to perform better than he did against the Texans for fan excitement to be justified.
His route running was a little unfoccused and may explain the poor completion percertange when targeted. (The other perhaps more likely explanation is the lower standard of QB play with Lance out there!)
Take the observation for what it’s worth: Brenen didn’t standout in a good way in this game which is disappointing given all the training camp hype. But it’s only one game.
On the Hortiz commentary, I don’t have much more to add. I understand where you’re coming from on all of the comments above, and we’ll have more data to analyse by the end of this year.
Repeating what I said on the show: If your GM’s job is to build the best roster he possibly can – while acknowledging multiple missed chances to improve via FA or different use of draft picks – the roster today looks pretty deep albeit perhaps lacking some star talent at certain positions. I think, conservatively, the Chargers’ roster is a Top 15 NFL roster right now, and Hortiz deserves significant credit given where things were at when Telesco departed.
So for consideration. I agree the GM’s job is to build the best roster possible. But there is a spectrum of how to do that. One end is a top heavy roster, with great starters and weak depth. The other end is to have lesser but solid starters plus solid depth. It feels like the Chargers have a roster closer to the latter end of the spectrum.
The question here is, has Hortiz built a roster that is deep, but consists mostly of B/C players and not A players? I think that is probably the case. That might be okay… it could be purposeful, and it is obviously better than building a roster of C/D/F players. But is that a winning formula? This is my concern. We will see.
I share the exact same concern, and I agree that is how I would frame anypotential criticism of Hortiz (if I had one). Problem is, I’m not sure yet that the mostly B/C player approach won’t work!
I think of Seattle’s roster from last season and I don’t think they had an obviously better list of A grade players than we do, plus we have Herbert; and McDaniel hails from the same system as Kubiak.
Our Defense has a lot prove under a new coordinator before we compare them to that Seattle team, but I’m cautiously optimistic that we have enough good players and depth across our roster to be serious contenders this year.
Good discussion. There are going to be some very difficult roster decisions this year, which is a testament to the depth the front office has assembled. A few guiding principles I hope the team follows when making decisions:
Shorter show this week, Stormcloud.
We were supposed to have a guest on which fell through at the last minute.
Hopefully we can get them back on in the coming weeks!