Chargers TE Charlie Kolar Nearly Fainted When He Learned His Team Went 37-Straight Drives Without Scoring a Touchdown
Poor Charlie Kolar. I bet he was so optimistic when he signed with the Chargers this offseason. Until this year, he'd played his entire NFL career with the Ravens. I'm sure the Ravens were a great team to play for. You can do a lot worse than having Lamar Jackson as your quarterback. But Lamar is getting older. He's constantly dealing with injuries. Whereas the Chargers were up-and-comers. They play their home games at a state-of-the-art stadium in sunny California. Jim Harbaugh is a respected coach. Justin Herbert was supposed to be putting it all together and blossoming into a bona fide top-5 QB with a decade of football left to play.
Just look how much hope Charlie Kolar had this offseason. Look how much this guy loves football.
There was so much optimism in that press conference. But fast forward 6 months later, and the 2026 Los Angeles Chargers are the worst team in football.
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They're the underachieving laughing stock of the sport. The Chargers aren't just bad, they're comically bad. The level of bad they are is hard to wrap your mind around. It doesn't even make sense. You can see it on Charlie Kolar's face. He's a part of the offense, and even he was stunned to learn just how dreadful they've truly been.
Sometimes I think the life of a good player on a bad team is perfect. Think of "professional athlete" as if it were a regular old 9-5 job. They never have to work late into the season (because they never make the playoffs). They're never put in a position where they're criticized by the media (because the losing isn't their fault). They're certainly never worried about losing their job. They just show up to work, lose, then go home and enjoy their millions and millions of dollars. Sometimes I look at guys like Joe Thomas, who played his entire career for the Browns, or Mike Trout with the Angels, and wonder if they low-key have it better than a guy like Josh Allen, who's constantly getting so close, but can never quite win the big one.
But then you see the way losing affects a guy like Charlie Kolar. Not that he's on the level of Joe Thomas or Mike Trout, but in that interview, Charlie Kolar could not possibly have looked more stressed. All because the Chargers aren't winning football games. In some ways, it's actually kind of refreshing to see how much losing crushes him. Sometimes I'm cynical when thinking about how much players actually care about winning. I often think fans take losing 10x harder than players do. Which might be the case for some players, but at least we still have guys like Charlie Kolar, who despite signing a $24.3M contract this offseason, still takes losing this hard.
At least the Chargers found a way to end their touchdownless streak yesterday. Even if it was in the 4th quarter, long after the game had been decided.
Keep your head up, Charlie. Things can only get better from here… probably.