While the Kansas City Chiefs are trying to rebound after a miserable 2025 campaign, the Los Angeles Chargers are experiencing their own nightmare season. Entering Week 9, the Chargers had failed to win a single game, sitting at 0-7 on the year and looking like a shell of the team that Jim Harbaugh had inherited and turned around in 2024.
After back-to-back playoff appearances under Harbaugh, the Chargers are stuck in neutral. They tried handing the keys to the offense to Mike McDaniel, but that has been a huge bust so far. Nothing is working for the Chargers, and that would make one think that it's time for them to accept the failure of a season and become sellers before Tuesday's deadline.
Well, according to Dan Graziano of ESPN, the Chargers are not planning on selling off their players. That's right—a team that is winless entering the halfway point of the season is planning on standing pat and not trying to sell off players who could net them draft picks to help them improve for next year and beyond.
"I've been asking teams if they have a sense of what the Chargers are going to do ahead of the trade deadline, and a couple told me over the weekend that they don't get the sense that Los Angeles is eager to enter teardown mode. At least entering Sunday, I wasn't getting the impression that the Chargers were open to trading players to inquiring teams. We'll see what this week brings regarding players such as edge rusher Khalil Mack, wide receiver Quentin Johnston, etc."
Chargers aren't expected to be sellers ahead of deadline
Sure, it makes sense that the Chargers wouldn't want to trade players under contract past this year but what about the key names that aren't? Khalil Mack, Dalvin Tomlinson, Donte Jackson, Bud Dupree, David Njoku, Denzel Perryman, and Tuli Tuipulotu are all names that could interest teams ahead of the deadline but apparently the Chargers aren't interested in selling.
GM Joe Horitz has even said that it feels like it'd be "giving up" on the season. Well, yeah. The Chargers did give up on the season when they went winless in their first seven games. Making the playoffs is nearly impossible for them at this point, so why not try to get something out of this miserable season they've been experiencing?
G.C. Bellchamber of Bolt Beat, FanSided's Chargers site, agreed with my sentiments, noting that the Chargers' season is over. "This season is already over. Unless Jackson and other expiring pieces are returning this offseason, this is the most frustrating way Los Angeles could cap off a campaign that's already been disastrous from wire to wire," Bellchamber wrote.
Chargers are playing scared ahead of the trade deadline
The argument for the Chargers not to trade away players for assets is that Day 3 picks wouldn't be able to provide Justin Herbert with the help he needs moving forward. Bellchamber had a good counterargument for that as well.
"Trading pieces like Jackson, Tomlinson, and Perryman, for example, wouldn't represent an immediate fix for this roster. What it would represent, though, is an acknowledgement that something needs to change—a recognition that the front office has a plan to move beyond this disastrous season and reconstruct the roster around its strengths through use of its cap space and its draft capital.
"Holding onto those players, especially just to let them walk this offseason for a potential leg up in the compensatory pick formula, would leave the Chargers at an immediate disadvantage in attempting to reconstruct this roster for next season. At this point, it's not a surprising outcome given Hortiz and the front office's consistent public stance."
Chiefs fans have enjoyed watching the Chargers flounder on the field, and now the possibility that they could fumble the trade deadline and mortgage their future is even more entertaining. Chargers keep on Chargering.
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