NFL Insider Jason La Canfora’s Week 6 Notebook: Justin Herbert Trade Talk, Colts Reset, Sam Darnold Concerns

The Los Angeles Chargers are the epicenter of the NFL trade deadline right now. Will Chargers QB Herbert still be with the franchise in 2027? (Image: Getty) They are the chum in the water that contending teams are eager to bite into, and once the team, 0-6 and the biggest disappointment in the NFL by quite some margin, begins to peddle salary, the expectation is that a significant sell-off will follow. The decision to gut a lot of the offensive coaching staff and bring in former Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel to call plays and transform the passing game has been a flop on a scale no one could have fathomed. The fact they failed to score a touchdown against the rival Chiefs was a nice touch Sunday (October 18th) – and it put the team in an existential crisis. Justin Herbert Trade Talk Grows It’s reached the point where some around the league are wondering if quarterback Justin Herbert will be there in 2027. Perhaps someone might be able to pry him away even sooner, possibly by the trade deadline. It would be a total franchise-changer, but a 0-6 start when you had Super Bowl aspirations, and Herbert was supposed to finally fulfill his MVP promise, will get owners to contort themselves and consider things that otherwise wouldn’t be on the table. Make no mistake, a decision like this would be ownership-driven and this ownership group is notoriously fragile. A Herbert trade would still constitute a major surprise – but not a total shock – at this point. He is not completing even 60% of his passes. He is 31st in the NFL in passer rating (68.8, unthinkable) and has five touchdown passes to eight interceptions. This season is lost. “I don’t think he’s getting traded now, maybe more of a discussion in the offseason,” said one longtime NFL executive whose team expects to be active at the deadline. “But that’s a contract that you could move, the contract makes him more attractive.” Herbert looks lost in this offense. He may never fulfill his promise, and his record in playoff games and other big games is sketchy (“I’m not sure he’s a natural leader,” one GM posited to me). His base salaries are $24 million this season, $36 million next season and $47 million in 2028, when he is also due a $5 million roster bonus. That is QB chump change and will look even cheaper once Lamar Jackson and C.J. Stroud get their next deals (and maybe Jayden Daniels too). Herbert also has a no-trade clause, so any deal would require his approval. There is going to be a lot of chatter about hybrid safety Derwin James ahead of this deadline, too, and people I talk to believe the demand for a positionless defender with that unique skill set will be high enough that he could get moved. Edge rusher Khalil Mack seems as good as gone (though the team gave him so much money up front as a signing bonus that it’s a bitter pill to swallow) and at least one receiver is likely out of there, too. Whether McDaniel gets fired outright or not, someone else is going to be calling plays there, and perhaps head coach Jim Harbaugh will take over himself. With the McDaniel move such a failure, that is a typical response. Regardless, the repositioning for 2027 begins now. Colts Look to Reset After Chris Ballard Exit We told you early in the season that Colts GM Chris Ballard was likely on borrowed time and while in-season GM firings are rare in this league, especially before Christmas, he could be on that rare list. So now that he has been let go, where do the Colts go from here? As we hear it, almost everything is on the table, and owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon is going to be driven to put her stamp on the organization across the board in football operations, including the roster. A coaching change is inevitable; it’s just a matter of when. After an awful loss to the previously winless Titans that dropped the Colts to 2-4, our contacts around the league believe Irsay-Gordon will be trying to clear out some of the mess Ballard made at quarterback and cornerback. The contract they gave quarterback Daniel Jones was ridiculous in real time and led directly to Ballard being let go at such an awkward time; they might be stuck with Jones given how poorly he has played and the fact he is still clearly not right after tearing his Achilles late last season. It’s hard to imagine they are not drafting a QB for 2027 or trading for one. “The first order of business for the new GM is to find the next quarterback,” one longtime NFL exec who knows Ballard well told me. “That’s where she’s starting.” Can they move cornerback Sauce Gardner? We suspect defensive tackle DeForest Buckner still carries significant value, having shown no lingering effects from his neck surgery. It seems to be all about the future right now, and trying to rid the franchise of recent mistakes won’t be easy. Concerns Grow Over Sam Darnold in Seattle A lot of questions are being asked about the Seahawks’ Super Bowl-winning quarterback Sam Darnold, who is regressing to his form of three or four years ago. He is seeing ghosts again, his fundamentals are suffering, and some execs I know who have been with him in the past – early in his career when he looked like a first-round bust – see too much of that in him now. This is a system QB who needs to feel a certain level of genius in his playcaller. He needs a QB sensei as his guru, and he is working with a questionable-at-best offensive coordinator this year. It’s not a coincidence that Darnold reversed the course of his career by working in low-pressure situations with elite offensive minds like Kyle Shanahan and Kevin O’Connell. He then had his big break in Seattle last season, receiving the same kind of care from Klint Kubiak, from that same coaching family tree and someone who is truly elite at marrying scheme to his QB’s wheelhouse. “I’m not going to say that he was fragile, but it takes a certain kind of OC to bring out the best in him,” one high-ranking NFL official who was with Darnold early in his career told me when Darnold was taking off with the Vikings. “I’m not taking away from what Sam’s accomplished in any way, but do you think this is happening if he’s not with guys like Kyle, Kevin and Klint?” Kubiak left to become Raiders head coach. The decision not to re-sign free agent running back Kenneth Walker, who is leading the NFL in rushing with the Chiefs, looks shortsighted now and the scope of the offense beyond receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba is scant. Fixing the run game and getting healthier there would help, but scouts I know believe this offense will not come close to resembling last season’s model. “That still might be the best defense in the league by the time December comes around,” one advance scout told me. “They are going to have to win games 17-14, 20-17. And they can.” Around the League The Saints are a team that could still end up in the 2027 QB market. Tyler Shough was 8-for-19 for 58 yards at halftime Sunday. He has a knack for staging wild comebacks, but the slow starts are a big problem, and this roster isn’t good enough to overcome that with any regularity. He rallied against the Giants, but Shough is 27, and they’ve put off investing real draft capital in a QB for longer than most thought they would. Coaching the Ravens’ secondary is supposed to be head coach Jesse Minter’s superpower, but his safeties and corners have been thrown on a ton. It’s a bottom-three fourth-quarter defense. They have blown three double-digit leads already this season, and Minter’s corners and safeties have combined for just one interception. His defense ranked in the top three in interception rate with the Chargers last season, and Baltimore’s defensive roster might be highly overvalued. There is a kicker crisis going on in the NFL right now. Not enough attention is paid to special teams, but many contending teams have serious issues. “I bet you see a kicker or two traded,” one personnel exec suggested to me. The Chargers have a really good one! The post NFL Insider Jason La Canfora’s Week 6 Notebook: Justin Herbert Trade Talk, Colts Reset, Sam Darnold Concerns appeared first on Casino.org.