Tom Krasovic: Chargers are playing in coach Jim Harbaugh's capable image

Tom Krasovic, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Dec 16, 2025

Published in Football

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SAN DIEGO — Jim Harbaugh has done it again.

With the 16-13 road victory Sunday over the Kansas City Chiefs, it’s all but certain Harbaugh’s second Chargers club will reach the playoffs.

In other words, L.A. has overcome the loss of two superb offensive tackles to season-ending injuries.

Harbaugh’s club (10-4) still has a puncher’s shot at the AFC West title, plus the first-round bye that comes with the AFC’s top seed.

Let’s revisit my bratty claim two winters ago that Harbaugh’s hire transformed Team Spanos from a pretend franchise into a serious NFL outfit.

Harbaugh’s first Chargers team improved the franchise from 5-12 to 11-6.

Now the club has posted consecutive seasons of at least 10 wins for the first time since Marty Schottenheimer’s final San Diego club went 14-2 and Norv Turner’s first squad went 11-5 in 2007.

Did I go too far in labeling Harbaugh the most capable head coach the Chargers have employed? Check back in a few years.

But it seems having Harbaugh means the Chargers are no longer disadvantaged when they face the best coach in Chiefs history. L.A.’s victories in Week 1 and Sunday over Andy Reid’s Chiefs made for the franchise’s first season sweep of Kansas City or Reid since 2013, under first-year coach Mike McCoy.

A large asterisk must be attached to the "13 Bolts" second win over Kansas City.

In that season finale, Reid sat starting quarterback Alex Smith and several other starters in Mission Valley because the game’s outcome had no bearing on his team’s playoff seeding. Also: when refs failed to flag a flagrant Chargers misalignment on Ryan Succop’s errant kick at game’s end, Kansas City was denied a second try — this one, from 36 yards — at the potential game-winner.

Harbaugh is a true head coach and a former longtime NFL quarterback.

From Spanos family ownership, he commanded more say on player personnel and infrastructure spending than most or all of his predecessors did.

In ensuring Reid’s Chiefs (6-8) would miss the playoffs for the first time since 2014, the Chargers drew strength again from Harbaugh’s hire of general manager Joe Hortiz and defensive coordinator Jesse Minter.

Hortiz’s in-season trades — not a specialty of many Team Spanos talent men — have bolstered this team’s Super Bowl bid.

Edge rusher Odafe Oweh’s two sacks Sunday gave him seven sacks in just nine games since Hortiz got him and a seventh-round pick from the Baltimore Ravens for a fifth-round pick and useful safety Alohi Gillman.

Oweh, 26, had zero sacks in four games with the Ravens.

Tackle Trevor Penning, lining up often as a sixth lineman, boosted the Chargers’ ball-control dominance against the less-physical Chiefs.

Hortiz got Penning in November, sending a sixth-round pick to New Orleans.

Penning isn’t a full-time starter, but he has helped L.A. pound away at defenses. On the margins, he’s taken some pressure off the line’s tackles.

Minter has another top-10 unit in points, a year after his first group led the NFL. Reflecting well on Minter’s bye-week problem-solving, the defense has since held all three opponents under 20 points.

Harbaugh’s Chargers tenure isn’t without blemishes.

In January, DeMeco Ryans’ Texans defense punished errors by Justin Herbert and overwhelmed Chargers blockers, winning a wild-card playoff game as a three-point underdog.

In both seasons, the offense’s interior blocking struggled often.

On balance, though, the Harbaugh Era has produced a more physical brand of football. And a whole lot less Chargering.

San Diego duo sinks Rivers

Philip Rivers made the right decision.

Appearing in his first NFL game in almost five years, Rivers played a smart game and led the Colts to a go-ahead field goal with 47 seconds left.

Unfortunately for Rivers, 44, a pair of San Diegans responded.

Rashid Shaheed struck first. The graduate of Mt. Carmel High School in Rancho Penasquitos, Calif., obtained last month in a trade, returned the kickoff 28 yards to the 37 and as a receiver accounted for all 25 yards on the Seahawks’ ensuing five-play drive.

Jason Myers’ kick from 56 yards — the sixth field goal in six tries on the day by the alum of Chula Vista’s Mater Dei Catholic High School — put Seattle ahead. An interception of Rivers’ desperate reply clinched Seattle’s 18-16 win.

Rivers threw for 120 yards and a TD. He made adjustments at the line, completed short passes and had no turnovers before the last play.

Notable

The Chargers benefited greatly from two first-half no-calls on what likely should’ve been coverage penalties on defensive backs.

L.A. won the health game in a big way.

Patrick Mahomes exited with a leg injury on the potential game-winning drive. Chiefs All-Pro defensive tackle Chris Jones left with a mid-game injury. At offensive tackle, Kansas City went with an undrafted rookie and a 2023 import from Uganda who’d not played American football before ’23 and was in his NFL debut.

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