Kickoff: Sunday, 10:00 a.m. PT, Highmark Stadium, Orchard Park

The Chargers are 0-2, road underdogs for the first time this season, and traveling to a $2.2B stadium that has hosted exactly one regular season game. Buffalo scored 41 in it. The Chargers have scored 28 total in two. That is the game in one sentence. The rest of this is about who is actually available to change it.

Injury Report

Chargers

• IRTE David Njoku (fibula). Minimum four games. Eight catches for 67 yards through two weeks.
• OUTTE Charlie Kolar (forearm). Had surgery Monday. Avoided IR on the strength of the prognosis, which means the team expects him back inside four weeks. Not this week.
• IROL Trey Pipkins III (knee). Placed on IR Saturday. Minimum four games.
• OUTOL Kayode Awosika (fibula). Injured against Las Vegas. Harbaugh said he will “miss some time.”
• OUTDT Dalvin Tomlinson (hamstring).
• OUTS Elijah Molden (hamstring). Second straight game.
• OUTWR Brenen Thompson (quad).
• QuestionableQB Trey Lance (groin). Appeared on the report Friday. DJ Uiagalelei was signed to the 53 Saturday as insurance.
• QuestionableCB Rodney Shelley (hamstring).
• ClearedOLB Tuli Tuipulotu (hamstring), S Derwin James (finger), OLB Khalil Mack, WR Ladd McConkey (rib), OT Rashawn Slater (groin), G Cole Strange (pectoral), CB Deane Leonard (abdomen).

Saturday moves: Patrick Herbert (TE) and Caleb Murphy (LB) elevated from the practice squad. Hayden Rucci (TE) and Marquez Valdes-Scantling (WR) were signed to the active roster earlier in the week.

Bills

• OUTDB Jordan Hancock (hamstring). First game missed after appearing on every report this season.
• OUTDL T.J. Sanders. Appendectomy.
• QuestionableWR DJ Moore (shoulder). AC joint sprain against Detroit. Limited Wednesday and Friday. Joe Brady called him a game-time decision. Moore has not missed a start since December 2020.
• QuestionableWR Keon Coleman (ankle). Missed two practices, limited Friday. Game-time decision.
• QuestionableDT Ed Oliver (hip). Scratched from Week 2 in pregame warmups. Full practice Friday. Expect him to play.
• ClearedRB Ty Johnson (first action since Week 18 last year), OLB Bradley Chubb, LB Terrel Bernard, LB Joe Andreessen.

Net effect: Buffalo may be down two starting receivers, which is the only reason this injury report is not a rout. The Chargers are missing their top two tight ends, their top two left guards, a starting safety, a starting defensive tackle, and their rookie deep threat. Buffalo also played Thursday and has had 10 days. The Chargers have had 7.

Tight End: Gadsden Is TE1, and the Room Behind Him Is New

Monday, after the Raiders game, the Chargers had one healthy tight end on the 53-man roster. Oronde Gadsden was it. By Saturday the room was Gadsden, Hayden Rucci, and Patrick Herbert, elevated from the practice squad for his first game action alongside his older brother.

This matters more for this offense than it would for most. The Chargers run 22 personnel at one of the highest rates in the league, and McDaniel’s scheme leans on tight ends as both receivers and lead blockers. Njoku and Kolar were signed for exactly that. Kolar’s three-year, $24.3M deal in March and Njoku’s one-year contract in May were the two largest additions to the position group, and both are gone for at least a month.

Gadsden has been here before. He was inactive to start his rookie year, got the bump to a bigger role in Week 3, and finished with 664 yards and three touchdowns. He caught the 10-yard touchdown against the Raiders. Harbaugh said Monday he has “a lot of confidence” in him, and Gadsden’s own read this week was that this is the same situation that got him on the field last September. The question is not whether he can be a primary receiving tight end. It is whether Rucci and Herbert can hold up in the blocking assignments that Njoku and Kolar were paid to handle, against a Buffalo front that gets Ed Oliver back.

Left Guard: Trevor Penning Gets the Start

Awosika opened the season at left guard. He fractured his fibula in Week 2. Pipkins was the swing option. He missed Week 2 with a knee injury and went on IR Saturday. Trevor Penning, the former Saints first-round tackle who moved inside last year, starts at left guard against Buffalo.

His only Chargers snaps this season came on one drive at right guard against the Raiders while Cole Strange was being evaluated for the pectoral issue he has since been cleared from. Harbaugh’s review was that Penning had “efficient blocks, efficient plays.” That is a one-drive sample.

LT Slater  ·  LG Penning  ·  C Slaughter  ·  RG Strange  ·  RT Alt

Two tackles who have never played a regular season snap next to the guard beside them, a rookie center in his third start, and a right guard coming off a pectoral evaluation. Slaughter’s snap hit Tre’ Harris in motion on third-and-1 last week and killed a drive. That was with Awosika next to him. The interior has not been settled for a single week of this season.

What 0-2 Actually Looks Like

Two losses by the same score, 26-14. Against Las Vegas the Chargers were outgained 307 to 273, threw two interceptions (both to rookie corner Hezekiah Masses), and lost a fumble when Nakobe Dean stripped Omarion Hampton late in the fourth quarter. Add Week 1 and the turnover margin is minus-4 through two games. Khalil Mack’s word for it was “beating ourselves.” Harbaugh’s was “not deterred.”

PFF has the offense 25th in success rate at 44.3%. The number McDaniel was asked about this week was motion: the Chargers have put a player in motion on 91 of 113 snaps, a 74.6% rate that leads the league. Asked whether the offense should be simplified, he said he considers it, and he considers everything. That is not a no.

The bright spots were real but isolated. Harris’s 53-yard catch was the longest of his career. Hampton scored again. Cam Hart intercepted Cousins. Mack got a sack. None of it produced points in the fourth quarter, when the Raiders scored 9 and the Chargers scored 0.

The Bills: What Joe Brady Has Built in Two Weeks

Sean McDermott was fired January 19. Joe Brady, the offensive coordinator for the previous two seasons, was promoted. Pete Carmichael runs the offense as coordinator; Jim Leonhard came in as defensive coordinator after Bobby Babich left for Green Bay. Brady is a first-year head coach who inherited a Josh Allen offense he already ran.

The results so far: 36-31 at Houston, against a defense that held the Bills under 20 in five straight visits, and 41-31 over Detroit in the first regular season game at the new stadium. Seventy-seven points is the fourth-most by a head coach in his first two games in the Super Bowl era. The Houston game ended with Greg Rousseau forcing his second fumble of the day and Terrel Bernard recovering it with nine seconds left. Dalton Kincaid had 130 receiving yards, the most by a Bills tight end since 1967.

Against Detroit, Allen went 20 of 31 for 248 yards and three touchdowns with no interceptions and ran 14 times for 69 yards and two more scores. James Cook ran for 135 and a touchdown. Allen’s description of the offense after Houston was chunk plays, four or five snaps to a score rather than 14. That is the opposite of what the Chargers defense wants to face. O’Leary’s unit gave up 393 yards to Arizona and 307 to Las Vegas, and Molden and Tomlinson are out.

If Moore and Coleman both sit, the Bills’ outside receiving corps is Kincaid, Cook, and whoever is next on the depth chart. That would be the first real test of Buffalo’s depth this season. It would also be the best-case scenario for a Chargers secondary that has not had one.

The Stadium

New Highmark Stadium opened September 17 for the Lions game. $2.2B, Orchard Park, open-air. Buffalo is 1-0 in the building. The Chargers are the second visiting team through the doors. The rivalry framing gets pulled out every time these teams play, and it is legitimate: both are AFL charter franchises, and the Bills’ first-ever game in 1960 was against the Chargers. None of that helps at 10 a.m. Pacific in Western New York.

What to Watch, in Order

1. Gadsden’s target share. If he is at 6 or more, McDaniel is treating him as a real TE1, not a placeholder.
2. Penning at left guard against Oliver and the Bills’ interior. Pressure up the middle has been the story of both losses.
3. Turnovers. Minus-4 through two games. Zero giveaways is the only way this stays close.
4. Inactives for Moore and Coleman. The Buffalo receiver situation is the swing variable on the other side.
5. Allen on the ground. Fourteen carries against Detroit. The Chargers have not tackled well in space through two weeks.
6. Third quarter. The Chargers have been outscored 10-7 in third quarters and 19-0 in fourth quarters. Buffalo has been aggressive on first down under Brady.