Evaluating Joe Hortiz’s Second Offseason: What Should We Grade?
When Joe Hortiz took over as Chargers general manager in 2024, he inherited a roster weighed down by dead cap, underperformance, and a fragile offensive line that endangered Justin Herbert’s career. Hortiz responded by engineering massive salary and roster cuts, absorbing over $50 million in dead money, and prioritizing an offensive line rebuild—moves that set the tone for an aggressive turnaround. He renegotiated contracts, traded a fan‑favorite receiver, signed cast‑off veterans suited to the new system, and delivered a draft haul that revitalized key positions. The result? A playoff berth and newfound optimism around SoFi Stadium.
But now, in Year 2 with roughly $90 million in cap space, the expectations shifted. Rather than doubling down on blockbuster signings, Hortiz quietly lost productive players like Poona Ford, refrained from high‑profile splashes, and—apart from signing Mekhi Becton—stuck with journeyman free agents. That thriftiness may have disappointed fans, but the real litmus test lies elsewhere: compensatory picks, or the current lack thereof.
Compensatory Picks: Hortiz’s Anchor Metric
Hortiz has repeatedly stated his belief in creating a virtuous cycle of comp‑picks—drafting, developing, re‑signing core players, and reinvesting in future picks. In 2024, that strategy paid off with three compensatory selections (two sixths and one seventh).
But in 2025, Hortiz’s approach seems more scattershot: instead of targeting lower‑cost cast‑offs under CFA thresholds, the Chargers inked four moderate deals ($3M–$6.5M APY)—Najee Harris, Donte Jackson, Tyler Conklin, and Mike Williams—that risk nullifying those potential compensatory picks. Meanwhile, the departures of Poona Ford and Josh Palmer could have netted a 2026 fifth‑round and sixth‑round pick each. Those gains now appear likely canceled out.
How Should We Grade?
To fairly assess Hortiz’s second offseason, we need to look at at least four key metrics:
| Metric | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Compensatory pick outcomes | Hortiz’s philosophy centers on building surplus draft capital. Were there substantial gains from deviating from this strategy? |
| Cap efficiency & spending structure | Was the spending layered responsibly into multi‑year deals? Will the future upsides of Conklin, Jackson, and Harris create greater potential for future compensatory gains? |
| Positional upgrades vs. roster loss | Was letting go of players like Ford and Palmer offset by meaningful upgrades—or just middling depth? |
| Splash Signing | Will Mekhi Becton live up to the billing as the one splash-signing of the offseason, and the only surefire offensive line upgrade… or will fans look back on the 2025 offseason as a cautionary tale in frugality? |
Early Verdict?
Letting an impact player like Ford walk for a reasonably affordable contract—after a career‑year in Minter’s defense—while signing four players whose salaries jeopardize comp‑picks may represent a procedural failure. Unless Niemann, Fox or Dobbins hit escalators to offset cancellations, this could be the most significant misstep in Hortiz’s tenure.
In short: Hortiz’s cap discipline and risk‑management shone in 2024, but 2025 may suggest he was a little unprepared to work with such a substantial budget, and does his best work under tighter constraints.
Let’s hear from you, StormCloud:
Are we being too hard on Hortiz by emphasizing comp‑pick outcomes? Would you have preferred the positional upgrades that would have been more expensive – such as a Davante Adams, Cooper Kupp, Evan Engram, or Darius Slay- but would have preserved our compensatory picks? Or do you like Hortiz rolling the dice on larger volume of signings and players that will hit free agency again still within their prime? Drop your viewpoint below.
Tau and I have had this off season roster building discussion many times the last few months. Before FA started he laid out a fairly aggressive plan to attack the roster holes with some of the bigger names in FA and also have enough $ to add some secondary market depth pieces. I countered that I thought Hortiz would take a more measured approach and spread the $ around to more mid level players and not the bigger splashes, but even I was annoyed at the frugality of the off season, especially losing Ford to a reasonable deal.
He acted like a poor kid that won the lottery but was to afraid to spend for the fear of being poor again. The roster building this off season does not match the philosophy of Harbaugh to be dominating in the trenches on both sides of the ball. Becton was an improvement over the Pipkins experiment, but he has had a significant injury history and has only played OG one season and it was on arguably the best OL in the league with Pro Bowlers and future HOF players. We are a Becton injury away from fielding the same OL we saw in Houston.
I think this off season got away from Hortiz a little bit. It is a different level of pressure when you have success, expectations and $. Last year in a way was easier because the team was so poor roster wise and he was so strapped, the process was just to get the team sound from a cap perspective and try to fill holes with some cheap one year deals. Even with the easy schedule there was no pressure if they only won 7,8 or 9 games. Anything was an improvement. The success of last season only ramped up the expectation for 2025, so every decision was way more amplified.
As much as the sticker shock in FA scared him, I think the draft got away from him as well. Hampton was default pick to the board after Harmon got picked because why else would you be on the phones looking to get a deal done until the last second if he was the target all along? This roster was not a RB away, and the next few rounds were a scramble to get back on track. There’s no way you can’t say a Harmon, Harris, Milum haul is better than ours since it solved our three biggest holes. Using your most premium pick on a RB was not the wisest move IMO.
I always believed this roster was 3 drafts away from being complete enough to be a legit contender so I still have one more offseason to see if that is correct. I do have more faith in Hortiz after 2 seasons than I ever di under Telesco.
Thank you guys for this interesting article and comments! I really feel like I’m getting smarter about the Chargers and football in general when reading stuff like this.
My 2 cents on this off-season is that I can totally live with a down year on the comp pick front. However even though most of the moves feel like okay moves it just all feels sort of disjointed. In the end this makes me feel pretty “meh" about the off-season as a whole. Obviously I am not all that well versed in roster building or what specifically makes a good football team but I just can’t shake the feeling that the Chargers really didn’t get all that better this off season. That couples with the cap space they had makes it fairly disappointing.
Given that the (in my opinion) biggest flaw in the chargers roster last year was the IOL and very few steps were taken to take care of it it’s pretty hard to feel all that positive about the upcoming season. We saw the ceiling last year and I am not all that confident the Chargers did enough to raise that ceiling significantly.
Yeah, most of you (especially Kyle) know my feelings about the lack of attention paid to the center position. I think trying Johnson there is a last-ditch move. I seriously doubt we see him in a Chargers’ uni next year barring extraordinary improvement at LG. Roman has, however, lately been talking about James getting into the mix. Guess we’ll know soon.
As for Harris and the eye situation…..I’d be extremely tempted to cut him for being a dumbass. Having lost a dog because she ran away due to the noise of neighbor’s fireworks, I have little patience for the scene and especially unsafe practices.
I know my above comments have nothing to do with the comp pick issue. Just chiming in to keep my seat here warm. 🙂 I’m much less impressed with Hortiz overall this year than last. I don’t endorse frivolous spending just because there’s cap room but, as others have already identified, there were some headscratching moves and NON-moves this off-season. Hopefully it’s growing pains of now being THE guy vs in a supporting role.
Gratuitous trip pic below.
Good discussion.
In the Telesco era, we all witnessed frequent, un-forced, “I’m smarter than you" stupid moves. With Hortiz, I am usually impressed with his ability to play multi-dimensional chess with the limited resources he inherited.
Not fixing the center position is, by far, the most head-scratching issue this staff has failed to address. Bozeman is not a good center. For a team that wants to use the OL as a weapon, why are they choosing to roll back the same LG and C that held the team back last year?
Sticking with the same numbers:
1. I think most all of us who post in this forum agree on this point. I wonder how long it will take for the Chargers to solve this problem.
2. Interesting that you didn’t even mention Hines. If Hines is healthy enough to be back to his pre-injury form, he is a definite contender to make the final roster. He could do that by pushing another RB off the roster or by pushing WR Davis off the roster and taking the KR/PR role. That latter point is probably unlikely, but he could easily beat out Sanders and/or Vidal, again if back to pre-injury form.
Note, I’m not suggesting it is a good idea to keep Hines over Harris. He isn’t going to take that kind of workload. Just saying, he is a much more accomplished offensive and special teams player than Vidal or, obviously, Sanders.
3. I seriously don’t think Gadsden will be ready for a big role on offense this season. IMO they are much better off with Conklin than without.
4. What I mean to convey is that IMO prioritizing impactful contributors on the 2025 roster is more important than prioritizing late round 2026 comp picks.
5. I agree it was an error. I hope it was procedural and not philosophical, since that might be harder for him to shake going forward.
Great discussion!
Good topic. My reactions:
1. Since Hortiz failure was mentioned, Hortiz’s biggest failure so far remains failing to draft a center in two drafts, especially in the 2024 draft, which may have been the deepest center draft in history.
2. Should the Chargers release Harris in order to generate a comp pick? If his injury is serious enough that he will not be able to be healthy enought to make a strong contribution until deep into the season, I would say yes. Otherwise, no.
We’re trying to win games in 2025, and if he can contribute to that, that is better than generating a 5th/6th round pick in the 2026 draft. If they release him, the Chargers enter the season again with serious risk in the RB room, just like last season, and it hurt the team last season. I like Hampton, but he has never played a snap in the NFL, and, even if he is great, he could get hurt.
3. Should the Chargers release Conklin to gain a pick? I’m not sure what we’re talking about here. They signed Conklin to be the 1b to Dissly’s 1a at TE. And Conklin is really 1a in the passing game. There is no way they know enough about Gadsden at this point to believe they can release Conklin and have Gadsden step into a signficant role. Releasing Conklin would much more likely just create a hole like the Chargers had last year when Hurst produced nothing.
4. The entire premise of some of the questions seems to indicate that late round comp picks in 2026 are worth more than being more competitive in 2025. I don’t follow that thinking at all for a team that won 11 games. Granted, that was with an easy schedule, and the schedule is much harder this year, but this team should be expecting to make the playoffs. So I don’t get the idea of punting quality depth.
5. The approach Hortiz is taking with bargain hunting and so many 1 year contracts is going to mean the Chargers are going to have a lot of cap space to spend every offseason. At some point, he needs to actually spend it.
@tau837
1) You know how much I agree with this one. It wasn’t included in this quick peice because it’s meant to be a specific look at Hortiz’s procedure and not his roster building decisions, but I couldn’t agree more that the failure to improve the IOL – superficially through the C position, is his biggest flaw with our personnel at this point.
More broadly, to only add one new starter to the IOL each season when we needed a C, G, and completion at LG when Hortiz was hired is pretty disappointing.
I hope James is given a chance – because I do think he could be an improvement.
2 and 3) These both come down to training camp, IMO. I personally dont think its likely either happens- I think it’s more likely Hortiz and Harbaugh want to stand by Harris and give him every opportunity to make his way back.
But – if Sanders flashes, and Vidal improves his pass blocking a bit – that’s an interesting room. Many thought he should have been drafted and is a likely UDFA to pop off… if he does, the Hampton/Sanders/Vidal/Haskins actually seems realistic – and vet RBs are often available post-cuts.
Letting Conklin go would only make sense if the OG2 hype carries through the offseason.
While it doesnt seem likely, I think securing that 5th round comp pick frees up Hortiz to make a late trade or two like he did with Molden/Heinicke last year. It’s not like we’re selling the year if we let Conklin go – and if he doesnt get signed by another team in Week 1, they can grab him in Week 2 and he still wouldn’t affect the formula.
This will just be a fun thing to track while we get closer to cuts. I dont actually expect anything to come of it, but if they have to PUP Harris anyway, it may sway them into cutting him, and hoping they can bring him back after Week 2.
4) Are you commenting on the questions regarding Conklin and Harris, or the article as a whole? Either way, I think you can use the expectation of future picks to free you up to trade assets for players this year (again, like Molden).
5) I agree with this fully. Which is just what made this offseason so strange, and feels like a procedural error on his part – misreading the market or something of the sort (since we know there were a number of higher-profile guys that we offered on but chose elsewhere).
It adds to the curiosity a little bit about the Harris/Conklin discussion above. If he feels there is a strong chance he get 2-3 picks in rounds 5-6-7 (Dobbins can earn as much as a 6th, Neimann and Fox have realistic paths to a 7th through their escalators), could he reverse course in training camp to collect picks and trade from his projected surplus, and spend big next season with no comp pick expectation? Basically repeat last year’s formula?
In his shared years with Telesco, he never had back to back seasons of no compensatory picks, and I dont think he did before the Tom years but haven’t verified. Just an interesting thought.
Kyle, I’ve heard rumors about voiding Najee’s contract for injuring himself in a wholly unnecessary manner. What would that do to the comp pick formula? I don’t think it’s the wisest move but I am interested in the outcome if it happened.
That’s an excellent question Ryan. Here’s what the CBA says:
Even if a player initially qualifies, the formula is adjusted after the season:
👀
Appreciate you answering that so quickly my man! I guess it gets very interesting then, he’d have to be seriously damaged for them to do that especially with Rocket Sanders not even practicing.
Get this dude – if they do that… suddenly releasing Conklin would get them that 5th rounder from Josh Palmer back, and they’d likely get any pick Neimann, Foxx, or Dobbins escalators bring in.
Unless St Juste or Hand ball out.
Also – not that it doesn’t matter if they successfully void him or not. They can choose to eat the dead cap if they so choose – or even cut him and bring him back in Week 2, and apparently it would still not count towards the formula
Any word on why that is? Is Sanders hurt?
Another random wrinkle I found Ryan – they also do not count on our formula if we trade them before Week 1 (it actually says during the league year, so I need to see how that works… maybe it could even be after Week 1).
So, hypothetically, they could trade him to a team like the Giants for a 7th, and then effectively gain two picks in doing so (the 7th, and the un-cancelled comp pick)