Herbert Has No Tight Ends. That's Not a Metaphor Anymore.

The depth chart at tight end now reads Oronde Gadsden, Evan Svoboda, and Patrick Herbert — the quarterback's brother, who signed as a feel-good story in the offseason. That is the position group Justin Herbert will work from in Week 3. Not a preseason projection. Not a worst-case scenario. The actual current state of the Chargers' offense, after David Njoku and Charlie Kolar both landed on injured reserve.

I wrote last week that the depth chart had no more give. The tight end room is what happens when you test that theory. The Chargers built their offseason TE plan around Njoku — a one-year deal that was supposed to add a legitimate receiving threat — and Kolar as the complementary piece. Both are gone before the season has found its rhythm. What remains is a group with no meaningful production on record this year, anchored by a player who is in the building partly because of his last name. That is not a criticism of Patrick Herbert; it is a description of how thin this has gotten.

The number that keeps nagging at me is the one from last season: Herbert threw for 3,886 yards and 26 touchdowns across 17 games in 2025, and the tight end position contributed almost nothing to that volume. Tyler Conklin and Will Dissly combined for fewer than 200 receiving yards all year. The offense survived that drought because McConkey was healthy for nearly the entire season, Quentin Johnston posted 755 yards and eight touchdowns, and Keenan Allen provided a reliable third option. Now McConkey is nursing ribs, the tight end room has been gutted, and the question of whether Herbert can sustain production without a functional seam-stretcher has moved from theoretical to urgent.

What makes this particularly dangerous is where the stress concentrates. Johnston and Tre' Harris are the only receivers with meaningful production history on this roster right now, and the Chargers' offense has never been constructed to run through two wideouts with a non-factor at tight end. In modern NFL offenses, the tight end is the stress relief valve — the checkdown with upside, the seam route that holds a safety, the extra blocker that keeps a defense from loading the box against Hampton. Without that lever, defenses get simpler and Herbert's job gets harder, especially in close games. The Chargers went 6–2 in one-score games last season. That edge was always fragile. It gets more fragile when the offense loses a dimension entirely.

My read is that the Chargers need to be aggressive about adding a veteran tight end from outside the building, not just promoting from the practice squad. Gadsden may develop into something, but Week 3 is not the moment to find out. The injury cascade that started with Tyler Biadasz's ACL in August has now consumed the center position, a linebacker, a receiver, and both tight ends. At some point the pattern stops being bad luck and starts being a structural question about how this roster was built to absorb attrition. The Chargers are at that point. The tight end room just made it undeniable.