Chargers thrashed by Jaguars in worst loss of the Jim Harbaugh era

Numbers don’t lie. But sometimes NFL teams do.

That’s why All-Pro safety Derwin James Jr. believes the Chargers need to be unmercifully honest in sorting through Sunday’s 35-6 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, the most lopsided defeat of the Jim Harbaugh era.

The Jaguars collected 30 first downs, held the ball for nearly 16 minutes longer, and limited Justin Herbert to a career-low 81 yards passing.

Candor incoming.

“Sometimes you can lie when you want to protect the other side or protect the player,” said James, standing in a cramped and somber visitors’ locker room. “But I feel like this team is very honest, very transparent and everybody don’t got no soft skin. So I feel like everybody can look in the mirror and we’ll be straight.”

The Chargers came to Jacksonville having won four of five, and the Jaguars had lost three in a row. That wasn’t indicative of what was to come, however, as Jacksonville dominated the line of scrimmage and the Chargers were as mild as the balmy day.

A Jaguars defense that entered the game with an NFL-low 12 sacks was transformed into a pass-rushing tsunami, one that sacked Herbert two times and pressured him on nearly every drop-back, sending him to the blue medical tent — albeit on a roughing-the-passer body slam — before the end of the first half.

“We just never really got set up,” Herbert said. “Never got in a rhythm or comfortable. It starts with the run game, and we weren’t able to do that today. That’s on me to do a better job getting those completions, finding easy routes to extend plays and convert on third down, which we did a poor job of today too. But yeah, we just weren’t good today.”

Herbert was checked for a concussion in the second quarter and cleared to return. With 11 minutes left and the Jaguars up by 29, he and several other starters were pulled from the game.

“We got beat every which way we could possibly be,” Harbaugh said.

The loss tied the worst of his NFL career, a 29-point loss to Seattle in 2012, when Harbaugh was coaching the San Francisco 49ers.

Some of that was all the offensive line woes coming home to roost. In past weeks, the Chargers were able to mask that by establishing a ground attack, and with Herbert getting the ball out of his hands quickly. The Chargers have had more than a dozen different line configurations this season.

There was a flicker of hope for them when, just before the trade deadline, they acquired lineman Trevor Penning from the New Orleans Saints. But Penning made his debut at left tackle Sunday and won’t be putting this game on his resume. Nor will any of his new linemates.

“It’s not the easiest thing,” Chargers guard Zion Johnson said of the weekly — and sometimes quarterly — reconfigurations. “But I think we have guys in this room who are up for the challenge. We’ve got to take a hard look at the tape, see where we can improve technique-wise and where we can raise the level of execution.”

Jacksonville was the scene of the crime where three years ago the Chargers blew a 27-point lead in a first-round playoff loss to the Jaguars.

James, who was a member of that team, said that might have been a little extra salt in Sunday’s wound but, “I hate losing, period.”

There’s some time to do that now as the Chargers have a week off before resuming with a Nov. 30 home game against the Raiders.

From the players’ perspective, the week off is both a benefit and a burden.

“It’s never easy to go into a bye week off a loss,” Johnson said. “You don’t have the opportunity to get that sour taste out of your mouth. But it at least gives us the chance to look at the tape, look at the past few weeks and the season as a whole, and see where we stand and where we can improve as an offense and as a football team.”

The 29-point loss was the worst for the Chargers since a 63-21 thrashing by the Raiders on Dec. 14, 2023.

Sunday, the Jaguars ran for 192 yards — the Chargers had 42 — and won the total-yardage tally, 345-135.

And that was a week after the Chargers’ defense throttled Pittsburgh, with the Steelers going 0 for 9 on third down until garbage time.

That defense was nowhere to be seen at EverBank Stadium.

“You want to get off the field because they’re in their four-minute offense,” James said. “Once they get to a three-possession lead, you know they’re trying to just keep the clock running. We can’t allow people to play like that.”

Chargers running back Kimani Vidal, promoted from the practice squad earlier this season after the team’s top two backs were injured, spent much of the first half on the sideline with a leg injury. The Chargers had promoted two more practice-squad running backs to play behind him.

“We just weren’t doing anything well offensively,” Harbaugh said. “We weren’t running the ball well. We weren’t protecting. Weren’t getting open. And defensively, same — we weren’t stopping the run, we were losing coverage. Go through every phase — we got beat every which way you can get beat.

“We weren’t as physical as we should’ve been. We’ll go through it now and figure out what we’re gonna do about it.”

Now, it’s time to look in the mirror.

The truth hurts. For the Chargers, this hurts more.

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