Patrick Herbert Is on the Practice Squad. That's Where the Chargers Are Right Now.

The Chargers signed Justin Herbert's brother, tight end Patrick Herbert, to the practice squad on Tuesday. It is a practice squad move. It is not a solution to anything. But it lands at a particular moment — after Biadasz goes on IR, after Slater spends another week listed as questionable, after two undrafted free agents make the 53-man roster — and it reads, fairly or not, like a team filling roster spots with whatever is available.

Patrick Herbert is a tight end, so this has nothing to do with the offensive line directly. The position isn't the point. The point is that the Chargers have now cycled through a starting center lost for the year, a left tackle whose Week 1 status remains unresolved, a rookie cornerback traded to Seattle for a late-round pick, and a pair of UDFAs earning spots on the active roster. The practice squad is the last layer of organizational depth, and what's going into it is a quarterback's brother. That's not an indictment — practice squads are full of long shots and family names — but it does complete a picture.

The offensive line situation hasn't changed since Sunday. Spomer is still the starting center. Slater is still questionable. The roster the Chargers submitted is the one they're going to play with, at least to start. Adding a tight end to the practice squad doesn't move any of those pieces. It just adds one more name to a depth chart that has been built, over the last two weeks, almost entirely out of contingency.