NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah Talks Chargers, Rams, Eagles & Bengals w/ Rich

Daniel Jeremiah is not particularly worried about the Chargers offensive line. He is worried that everyone is about to spend a season talking about the wrong thing.

Los Angeles lost its starting center for what looks like a long stretch, possibly the year. The veteran had just signed a three-year deal and fit cleanly into Mike McDaniel's scheme, filling a hole Jeremiah considers the team's worst spot up front a year ago. "Even with the tackles going down with Slater and Alt, the center position was even more of an issue for this team last year," he told Rich. "They just did not have good play there."

The insurance was already in the building. General manager Joe Hortiz doubled down in the draft, taking Jake Slaughter in the second round, a college center the team planned to play at guard before eventually sliding him over. "Now, obviously, this is accelerated," Jeremiah said. There is also an undrafted free agent out of Fresno State who was never even recommended to him and has fit the scheme anyway.

Does any of it change what McDaniel is building? "I don't think it will," Jeremiah said. The zone run game is built on lateral athleticism and perimeter runs rather than power, so linemen who would have struggled in a downhill gap system are usable here. Keep Slater and Alt upright and that is what protects Justin Herbert.

Which brings him to the player nobody is discussing. "At the end of the year we might be sitting here going, why weren't we talking about Omarion Hampton this whole time," Jeremiah said. "Like he just led the league in rushing. That is within its grasp." He pointed to the clip against the 49ers: "It was like a windshield and a bug when they tried to fit him up in the hole. That did not go well."

Rich called it a take, and an informed one. The case is structural: the most creative run game designer in McDaniel, arguably the best tackle duo in the NFL, and Herbert keeping boxes light, all in front of a back at 225 to 230 pounds who runs in the low 4.4s and hates being tackled. "I was around a shorter version of Omarion Hampton when I was with the Baltimore Ravens, and his name was Jamal Lewis, and I was there when he ran for 2,000 yards."

Asked which team is being ignored, Jeremiah went to Philadelphia, another former employer. Between the Seahawks on Hard Knocks, the Rams stacking moves and the Cowboys upgrading their defense, the Eagles have gone quiet despite a loaded roster, Jalen Hurts and Saquon Barkley. His AFC answer was the Bengals, on Joe Burrow's health and the trade for Dexter Lawrence.

Then the sports radio question. Between Carson Beck and Fernando Mendoza, who starts first? "I'll say Beck," Jeremiah said, twice, even though Mendoza has been getting first team reps. Beck simply looked the part in the Hall of Fame game. "He looked very quarterbackish," Jeremiah said. "Looked like he's played a lot of football."

Holding the Raiders to their stated plan is the rest of it. Jeremiah wants Mendoza to know the offense and opposing defenses well enough to slide protections and identify pressure before he takes live snaps behind a line that still has holes. "I don't really view this as a playoff caliber team this year," he said. "The most important thing for the Raiders this year is that the Fernando Mendoza train is on the tracks and headed in the right direction once we finish the year."

The last quarterback in that draft conversation landed somewhere considerably softer. Ty Simpson went 21 of 25 in Kansas City in his first preseason action, and Jeremiah credited the performance and the staging in equal measure.

"He was good, man," Jeremiah said. The Rams eased him in deliberately, which he appreciates on principle. "I'm always a fan of offensive coordinators that let you see the ball go through the hoop a few times to get yourself into a rhythm." That meant boots and flat routes early, then progressively harder assignments as the night went on, until Simpson was fitting a ball on the seam and surveying the field rather than working off his first read.

"It was impressive how he played. It was very solid, it was very consistent," Jeremiah said. "But I also think they did a wonderful job of setting him up for success."

Which is the actual lesson he wanted to draw, and it is not about arm talent.

"The skill set is important, but man, the fit is everything," Jeremiah said. "If you're Ty Simpson and you could pick a place and a person to play for, to call plays and to sit behind Matthew Stafford for what we assume is going to be a couple years, that's Christmas. He couldn't have found himself in a better spot."

Whether that makes him the top backup on a Super Bowl favorite is a separate question, and Jeremiah did not hand it to him. Asked whether the Rams would be comfortable with Simpson in that role, he went to Stetson Bennett instead, a quarterback he has watched do this in person several times and who he believes could carry a stretch of games if it came to that.

His preference is to avoid choosing. Jeremiah would keep three, partly on merit and partly on math, since he doubts Bennett would reach the practice squad without somebody claiming him first.