Introduction
In Part 1 of my analysis into what has caused Ladd McConkey’s regression this season, I dug into the advanced analytics to illustrate that there were two main contributing factors that were causing him to regress to the mean:
- Defenses are attributing more resources to stopping him crossing the hash marks.
- Ladd is suffering a sophomore slump in terms of his route running especially against man coverage.
The analytics pointed us in the right direction, now it’s time to get into the film to help bridge the gap between the data and the truth. Now to review every route Ladd has run this season would be insane even for me, so I used the best tape I had to hand for examining the two key reasons behind his decline. To understand schematic reasons I broke down every route from both games against the Houston Texans from the last calendar year. We’ll dive into that first to see how the Texans made adjustments between the 2024 Wildcard Round and Week 17 of the 2025 season.
Take it as a compliment Ladd
In the playoffs this time last year, Ladd McConkey took Demeco Ryans’ vaunted defense for 9 catches on 14 targets for 197 yards and a touchdown including a monstrous 86 yard score in the fourth quarter. He absolutely torched whoever was lined up against him, the Texans’ simply couldn’t cover him using a single man and, if their offense hadn’t eventually found success in the second half, it could have cost them the game.
So as soon as this penultimate gameweek of 2025 came into focus for the playoff bound Texans, Ryans knew where his defensive game planning should begin; stopping Ladd McConkey. The Texans strength this season has been in their arrogance; they run the same looks over and over again without blinking.
Being straightforward on defense is not as simple as going man-on-man like it was in the 2000s; Modern offenses are too complex for that strategy. Instead their aggressive version of Quarters looks to take away the biggest threats between the numbers and then let their elite outside corners smother boundary threats.
Unfortunately for the Chargers that brand of defense made it easier for the Texans to make their decision to focus resources on slowing down the Herbert to Ladd connection. The Texans therefore made it their absolute priority to neutralize the threat that Ladd presents when he has a two way go in the middle of the field.
Ladd should of course take it as a compliment that teams have made it a hierarchical priority to assign their best assets to defending the apexes but I don’t think he’ll feel as good for it given the standards he sets for himself.
The blueprint for slowing Ladd down
The crystal clear schematic choices that the Texans made ultimately came to one point: do not allow Ladd to cross the hash marks. Now before we go into scheme decisions there’s one thing I want to make sure I don’t gloss over; Jalen Pitre is an elite defender and no matter how good you think he is, he’s probably better.
Texans had Jalen Pitre follow Ladd whenever it was possible to do so. The former Baylor Bear was missing in 2024 and it made a huge difference to have him back patrolling the apex spaces. This was the first move that Ryans made but he didn’t just tell Pitre to go toe-to-toe with Ladd. In fact they bracketed him consistently with safeties, linebackers and anyone else they could reduce the opportunities for passing windows. The film analysis video below shows how they did this and how it ended up opening up the Chargers’ offense as a whole.
You shall not pass
On the tape comparison below you can see how stark the contrast is between the strategies. Without Pitre or a true fear of Ladd’s talents, the Texans played two-high shells and a lot of Ladd’s success came either side of the hashes as he wreaked havoc in the apex zones. The compilation below shows all the times Ladd was targeted across the middle of the field in the Wildcard game. As you can see it was a potent threat with consistent results.
What’s clear from the opening drive of the Week 17 game is that the Texans had their linebackers keyed in on denying Ladd easy access to cross their faces. They found multiple ways to seal off any second or third throwing windows they could to negate the threat Ladd poses between the hashes.
Now let’s compare that to how the Texans played the Chargers this season. In the clip below, taken from the Chargers’ opening drive, the Texans made sure the Mike backer climbed with his eyes snapping immediately to find Ladd as the Bolts looked to get McConkey breaking across the middle of the field. This kind of wall that the linebacker sets acting like a bracket in tandem with the trailing slot defender.
On the second drive the Texans use their physical brand of coverage to cut off the inside path through aggressive leverage control. Both Pitre and Henry To’oTo’o try to steer Ladd away from getting an easy path across their faces. McConkey does a brilliant job at using his speed and sharp cuts to fight through but by the time he gets to sit down, Herbert has had to move on to other options.
Daring you to run deep
In the wildcard game the Texans played Ladd true because they didn’t know what was coming from either the scheme or the player. However in Week 17 one thing that became apparent from the tape is that this time Demeco Ryans understood how the Chargers’ route concepts would work against their base coverages. He knew that each route having options built into them based on the coverage types they’re faced with, means that they could manipulate certain receivers to do what they wanted. If Ladd has options in the slot and he’s faced with 2-high shells, the playbook often tells him to find space and sit down.
However the Texans did not care for Ladd’s vertical fakes at all, with no consideration for where he lined up as you can see on this play. The corner played such a hard trail technique essentially daring Ladd to adjust the route to a deep one. Now this could be due to the fact that Herbert throws flatter deep balls which are harder to work with as a smaller receiver as you have less opportunity to time your catch.
The data seems to back this up as well. Last season Ladd was in the upper tier for most areas of the field but his deep ball connections were found lacking with a 22nd percentile yards per target index. Watch how Pitre slides inside before the snap which meant that he knew for sure that this route was going inside. He was certainly right and if meant that the conflict the route combination was meant to thrive off of was eliminated within a second.
Houston are not the first team to figure this out though. As you can see from the figures above, the Chargers faced the 2nd highest rate of Man coverage across the league this season and the 7th most Middle of the field Closed (MOFC) looks to get an extra body into the box to ensure Ladd couldn’t get free access to a linebacker on any inside stems.
Things that are within his control
However Ladd certainly owns a share of the blame but he has not been anywhere close to as bad as he’s been made out to be by the numbers. When I look at Ladd’s film I still see a high level receiver who can read coverages, attack leverages and, get in and out of his breaks at an elite level.
That said there are some areas of his game that I’d like to see him take to the next level in order to be a true WR1 type. To get to that elite receiver status he will need to be more creative in multiple phases of his route running; the physical tools are all present so it’s just a matter of getting the details right to elevate his game. I used film from the Week 15 win over the Philadelphia Eagles game to highlight each area of his game I think he needs to improve.
At the line
McConkey is lined up in the slot of the strong-side of the 3×1 formation here and he is tasked with running a slant as part of this Champ concept. Cooper DeJean is an elite nickel corner so you don’t need to make his job easier by using a release and stem that’s easy to read. For a shifty receiver his release game is substandard; he is one paced and fairly easy to read. I can’t think of many times this season where he has beaten press off the line for a clean catch in clear space. This would go some of the way to explaining his lack of success against man coverage too.
Ladd has to start finding new ways to expand his release package. By now he should have the confidence to know that if he adjusts the timing of his release then he can make up the gap in the second phase especially as he’s quick.
Mid-stem details
As well as I think Quinyon Mitchell played this Stucco (Stutter-Go) route at the bottom of the screen, I think Ladd made it more simple for him to do so due to a missed opportunity. Mitchell has his eyes inside right up until he speed turns into his transition, this is where Ladd needs to take notes from the best route runners in the league as he needs to attack the blind-spot that Quinyon’s Press Bail technique naturally creates. If Ladd used an inside fake as Mitchell takes his eyes off of him, this would have thrown him off balance enough to open up the isolated coverage.
This is one area of his game that has regressed since his rookie campaign. Too often he rounds off his lateral cuts like this example play. Now I’m sure it was drawn up as more of a Spray route than a Sail but that doesn’t mean you can’t speed through your hips on it. With Herbert as his quarterback he has to run every route like he knows he’s in the progression. Herbert had the stack between QJ and Keenan to read first but I am sure he wanted Ladd to break this off more cleanly to give a solid second option.
Deep route running
Ladd (bottom of screen) doesn’t run the route properly due to the defensive offside penalty which is a faux pas in itself. However the more concerning part is that if he adjusts his route into the deep third after he crosses midfield then this could have been a huge gain but he just runs into coverage instead. Herbert was forced to throw into a closing window as he was locked into his favorite target which makes this missed opportunity even more frustrating.
This is unfortunately another example of Ladd’s deep route running not being accomplished enough for teams to respect it as a threat. As soon as the free safety opens his hips up to the sideline Ladd should have been bending this route back upfield to the space in front of him. Mechanically, the easiest throw a quarterback can make is at max capacity down the middle of the field and, as we have seen before, Herbert can absolutely launch these kinds of passes. Therefore if Ladd made the adjustment to stack vertically, it could have been a huge gain.
How the team can do better to get him
There are marginal areas where I think Herbert can be more patient on routes developing but I understand why he feels the need to speed everything up due to the horrific state of the pass protection in front of him. Unfortunately that impatience means plays like the below can happen at the detriment to Ladd. The throw to Ladd wouldn’t have taken anymore time than dropping his eyes and finding another outlet. So in a perfect world Herbert would have seen the two defenders in the same area of the field and he would have thrown with anticipation around them to where Ladd was breaking into.
Now the biggest contributing coaching factor was that it was fairly obvious from the first drive that the Texans were not going to allow Ladd to break inside, yet there were no adjustments until the fourth quarter. Sanjay Lal should have been pressing Greg Roman to run some tendency breakers earlier in the game to make the most of the uber-aggressive way in which the Texans were guarding his best receiver.
The adjustments in these two videos led to the two biggest direct contributions that McConkey made all game. The Chair route that earned him his biggest catch of the day should have come on the second drive if the Chargers’ gameday analysts were on point and the route exchange that drew the Illegal Contact flag is another they should have been on the docket by half time at the latest.
That said, I put some of that blame on Ladd’s shoulders too. Firstly you are a second year player now, you should be bold enough to be creative on your routes to make adjustments to how the context of the coverage is unfolding. If the nickel is walling off your inside immediately, extend your stem to get the defender’s hips to flip. Widen your release to get them to cross their feet. Vary your stem mechanics to force them into places where they aren’t confident enough to give you a free path to the second level.
Keenan Allen is one of the best receivers you could possibly have in the room to learn route details from, that’s on you to be proactive enough to seek out his advice. Secondly; even if you don’t think you have the capacity to be creative within Roman’s system, you can absolutely be asking your coaches to give you the adjustments you need during the game. He could have been doing this for all we know and they were too stubborn to make the changes but I’m going off the evidence I see on tape so I can’t speak to that.
Conclusion
The reality that Ladd faced against the Texans was one that he will have to get used to if he wants to be an elite slot receiver in the NFL. Scheme is obviously the major contributing factor as it has been all season. However in this instance I can understand why the Chargers didn’t change up their entire gameplan to get the ball to Ladd as that hyper focus from the Texans was opening up other areas of the field to sustain drives. The merit of this strategy which requires longer pass protection is a question I will leave for another day.
However I still think Ladd needs to step up his route running in order to resurge back to the heights of his rookie season production. The elite level of coaching in the league makes it virtually impossible to do the same thing twice and as a player, it’s up to you to develop your game to be able to adapt and give yourself options to adjust to how teams are playing you.
Here’s hoping that both McConkey and the offensive coaching staff learn from this game and use it to anticipate how the league’s best defenses will play him in the playoffs. That starts with the Patriots on Sunday night.
Mighty fine work, Ryan.
Not a lot I can add really but just wanted to comment that I enjoyed reading this.