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2026 Fantasy Outlook

Justin Herbert

QB · Chargers

Chargers

QB8 ADP

QB8

ADP (87 ovr)

303.3

Proj Half-PPR

3,920 / 27 TD

Proj Pass

345 / 3 TD

Proj Rush

The league grades Herbert's arm at the top, and in 2025 that arm spent the year behind a line that finished last in both run and pass blocking. He took 54 sacks, the most in football, and once you set the scrambling aside his passing landed 22nd among qualified starters. The slowest pace in the league dropped him to 29.6 attempts a game, down from the 39-plus he threw his first three seasons, and that volume cut was the main fantasy drag. His legs covered a lot of it: 498 rush yards at 6.0 a carry, most of it improvised, with a league-best 11.9 yards per scramble that showed up most on third down.

The Chargers fired Greg Roman and handed the offense to Mike McDaniel, who spent the spring rebuilding Herbert's footwork toward a 2.4-second release and bringing in the crossing and play-action tree that suits his best throws. The line should be healthier, with Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt both ahead of schedule after season-enders and the interior rebuilt in free agency. The catch is the rushing. About 88% of those rush yards came off pressure and broken plays, and McDaniel's quick game is designed to remove exactly that, so whether designed runs and RPOs replace the volume is the open question. The market has him at QB8, betting the arm and the scheme arrive together.

Weapons

Ladd McConkey

Slot WR1 off a 66/789/6 sophomore year and first in line for the crosser role.

ALPHA
On a 4yr/$9.99M rookie deal after an 82/1,149/7 rookie season. His 6-0/186, 4.39 profile and YAC game mirror Jaylen Waddle, the archetype McDaniel builds around. He caught all nine of his crosser targets in 2024 under Roman, then saw that route starved to 25 reps in 2025; with Keenan Allen's roughly 122 targets in play, he is the most direct beneficiary of the scheme change.

Quentin Johnston

Bigger-bodied vertical Z off a 51/735/8 season with the team's best TD rate.

DEEP-Z
The Chargers exercised his $18M 2027 option. His go routes graded in the 89th percentile by EPA, but a boom-bust deep diet sits awkwardly against McDaniel's underneath emphasis, so his target share is one of the shakier reads in the room.

Keenan Allen

Slot and third-down technician back on a 1yr/$8.5M deal at 34.

SLOT-VET
His in and dig work still grades in the 98th percentile, but he went 0-for-7 on go routes in 2025; the deep ball is gone. The front office has been signaling life without him even with him back, which caps how much of the vacated volume returns to his line.

Oronde Gadsden II

Move TE off a 49/664/3 rookie year that finished top-20 among receiving tight ends.

MOVE-TE
The explicit Jonnu Smith comp for this system. McDaniel signed blocker Charlie Kolar to absorb in-line snaps and free Gadsden as the detached F, the role that produced Smith's 88/884/8 in 2024.

Omarion Hampton

Bellcow back who caught 32 passes as a rookie.

RECEIVING-RB
The pass-catching back this scheme feeds is already on the roster. Speed back Keaton Mitchell (4.37, top explosive-run rate among 87 backs in 2025) is the change-of-pace piece McDaniel's space game tends to reward.

Protection

This is the load on Herbert's value and the main reason 2025 went sideways. The line ranked 32nd in PFF run blocking and 31st in pass blocking, allowed the most pressures in the NFL, and gave up a 43.9% pressure rate, second-highest among 450-plus-attempt QBs in the tracking era. It was a triage year: Slater ruptured a patellar tendon in August and missed the season, Alt fractured an ankle and played six games, and the Chargers at points started Austin Deculus and Bobby Hart. The clean-versus-pressure split is the whole story, a 91.3 PFF grade clean against 60.4 under pressure, a 0.85 EPA gap. GM Joe Hortiz has Slater and Alt both ahead of schedule, and the front office rebuilt the interior with Biadasz and Strange along with re-signed Pipkins and Penning, then drafted four more linemen. The caveat is zone readiness at guard, where Penning has no zone experience and Alt ran mostly gap concepts at Notre Dame.

Playcall

Mike McDaniel took over the offense in January, hired as OC under Jim Harbaugh after the Chargers fired Greg Roman, and brought four of his Miami deputies for continuity. The mandate is to get the ball out in 2.4 seconds or less to beat the rush and manufacture YAC while keeping Herbert's off-script gear on extended plays. The signatures travel with him: pre-snap motion that ran 74-86% in Miami against the Chargers' 52% in 2025, a crossing and speed-dig passing tree, an outside-zone run game, and a personnel shift from Roman's 67% three-receiver looks toward heavier 21 personnel. The new wrinkle he never had in Miami is designed QB runs and an expanded RPO package; Tua Tagovailoa could not run them, and Herbert's mobility should open that up. Two risks come attached: a third-quarter execution problem that buried Miami in 2025 and a short-yardage weakness that failed on 31 of 55 third- and fourth-and-1 tries.

Scheme Fit

Off-platform passing 80th pctileOut of pocket in 2025 he went 31-of-50 for 516 yards, 10 TD, 0 INT and a 136.3 rating, with a league-leading 10 out-of-pocket touchdowns. His EPA peaks on 4-second-plus throws (0.20, 80th).
Crossing accuracy 2nd of 34 QBs17% over expected and 10.7 adjusted YPA on crossers and posts. McDaniel's 2023 Dolphins ranked 1st in crossing targets, receptions, and yards, a direct route-tree match.
Play-action grade 1st in NFL96.0 PFF play-action grade in 2024, the highest in the league. It plugs into the Shanahan-tree zone-run fakes, and his 4.68 speed lets him run the naked boots Tua never could.
Time to throw 2.93s (29th)His EPA rises the longer he holds it, the inverse of McDaniel's 2.4-second target. Tua operated at 2.35-2.43s in this system; the mechanical overhaul is the whole bridge.
3rd-down passing worst split-0.178 EPA on 168 third-down attempts, his weakest down, tied to the pressure that arrives on obvious passing downs. Red-zone passing was -0.091 and goal-line -0.333.
Under-pressure collapse -0.55 EPAHe graded 60.4 PFF and -0.55 EPA under pressure. The rebuilt line helps, but the guard spots are the zone-readiness weak link if it relapses.

Key Variables

  • Do Slater and Alt stay healthy enough to hold the clean pocket, given the 0.85 EPA gap between clean and pressured dropbacks?
  • Does the rushing floor survive the scheme change when 88% of his rush yards came off scrambles the quick game is built to suppress?
  • Can he cut his release toward 2.4 seconds without losing the extended-play gear where his EPA actually peaks?
  • Does pace and attempt volume recover from 29.6 a game toward the 65-plus plays McDaniel's Dolphins ran?

Fantasy Range

Bull

QB1

The line holds, the crossing and play-action tree lands, and the pace bump sticks; his last three games of 2025 ran 29.6 FPPG.

Base

QB8

Consensus ECR, with the scheme bump roughly offsetting the rushing regression for a low-end QB1.

Bear

QB13

The line relapses and the scramble volume evaporates at the same time, exposing below-average passing efficiency without the rushing crutch.

Health

Herbert has missed one game in six seasons, and that iron-man record hides a specific pattern. He has played through a stacking list of hand and finger problems: a 2021 hand injury, 2022 rib-cartilage fractures plus January 2023 labrum surgery, two 2023 finger fractures (the second his only IR stint), 2024 plantar fasciitis, and a Week 13 2025 left-hand fracture that needed a plate and screws yet still let him start Week 14. The recurring theme is throwing-hand finger trauma plus accumulating damage to the other hand, and the QB room has no real insurance behind Trey Lance. His availability is also tied to the line: the Chargers scored 23.9 PPG with Alt protecting him and 16.2 without over 12 games.

Watch the August tackle reports; if Slater and Alt are both cleared for camp, pay up at QB8, and if either lingers, let him slide toward QB12 where the pressure risk is priced in.

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