MIKE MCDANIEL RAN toward�Jim Harbaugh, yelling, "You feel the juice, coach?"

It was the first day of the�Los Angeles Chargers' 2026 training camp. The beginning of a new partnership for these coaches. And Harbaugh was, in fact, feeling the juice.

"I'm trying to curb my enthusiasm," Harbaugh said.

"Good luck ... People can't even help themselves," replied McDaniel.

"I think of it like all of the investment that's been made. I had a coach who used to say, 'It's like putting money in the bank, now it's time to start withdrawing, taking some dividends, right?'" Harbaugh said.

"I've never wanted training camp to start more," McDaniel said as the two locked eyes, him wearing gray jogger capris that stopped just below his knees and bright blue designer Air Forces; Harbaugh wearing his team-issued Chargers polo, trousers, sneakers and hat.

A match made in football heaven -- or something like that.

McDaniel, the Chargers' new offensive coordinator, and Harbaugh, the team's coach of three seasons, arrived at this partnership from vastly different circumstances. Once one of the league's most promising head coaches, known for his offensive prowess, McDaniel was fired after four seasons with the Miami Dolphins and criticized for lacking the authority to be a coach.

Harbaugh is a commanding veteran leader known for quickly turning middling teams into winners, but in two seasons in L.A., mediocre offenses have kept this team from advancing in the playoffs.

That dichotomy brought Harbaugh, 62, and McDaniel, 43, together this offseason. "He reminds me of a young Jimmy Harbaugh ... sometimes it's like looking in the mirror," Harbaugh said, before clarifying that he never dressed like McDaniel.

Despite their fashion differences, they share a football philosophy centered on winning at the line of scrimmage and running the football. More importantly, each offers what the other needs at this stage in their careers.

Harbaugh needs McDaniel to jump-start an offense that has kept his teams from contending, while McDaniel needs to absorb elements of Harbaugh's leadership style if he hopes to become an improved head coach again. Their football marriage is central to the Chargers' title hopes, a quest that begins in earnest Week 1 when the Bolts host the Arizona Cardinals at SoFi Stadium (4:25 p.m. ET, CBS).

"We need each other," McDaniel told ESPN of his partnership with Harbaugh. "But that's kind of the beauty of the National Football League ... you learn quickly that every year you are putting your career in the hands of all of your teammates."

	Mike McDaniel is getting another shot in the NFL, this time as the Chargers' offensive coordinator.

MCDANIEL YELLS A LOT. Despite often being one of the smallest people at Chargers practice at 5-foot-9, he's one of the loudest -- frequently reminding the defense that they can't stop his plays or pumping up a player.

One day, weeks into training camp, he was running around the practice field yelling, "F--- yeah, 10." Moments before, quarterback Justin Herbert threw a pass up and over the arms of safety�RJ Mickens�and into the hands of tight end David Njoku for a roughly 40-yard completion. It was an impressive completion, but on the surface, it was the kind of throw to be expected of Herbert.

For McDaniel, it represented more. It was the latest example of his star quarterback executing a challenge in an offseason that has been about relearning how Herbert plays the position. On this play, McDaniel asked Herbert to read the post safety, Mickens, early in his drop and throw the ball with anticipation. Herbert had previously been waiting too long for McDaniel's liking or throwing with a slight hitch.

"It was the first time that he had kind of recognized and been able to do the read super fast like we've been talking about," McDaniel said. "Those types of things [are] becoming a regular occurrence. Every practice, there's something new that we're working on that he's trying to get done."

For the past two seasons, the formula for the back-to-back 11-win Chargers has been straightforward: Rely on an elite, Jesse Minter-led defense that holds opponents to below 20 points per game, then hope Herbert makes a few hero plays per game to keep the offense afloat.

Each season, that recipe fell apart in the playoffs. Over two playoff games under former offensive coordinator Greg Roman, the Chargers scored just one touchdown, featuring two of the worst performances that Herbert had as a pro.

After the Chargers' 16-3 wild-card loss to the New England Patriots in January, Harbaugh fired Roman, the only offensive coordinator he had in the NFL. Together, they had reached three conference championship games and a Super Bowl when he and Harbaugh held the same roles with the San Francisco 49ers from 2011 to 2014.

Poor injury luck contributed to Roman's offensive struggles. But beyond that, he struggled to consistently scheme receivers open and ran an offense that lacked innovation as defenses evolved.

In many ways, McDaniel is the antithesis of Roman. Known for his innovative motions and condensed formations that put opposing defenses in a bind, McDaniel's offensive approach has changed offenses across the league. Former Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott called McDaniel's offense in Miami "revolutionary." San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan admitted he stole some of McDaniel's pre-snap motions in 2023.

"Really been doing a lot of listening, a lot of learning, a lot of leaning into how he sees football because it's really brilliant," Harbaugh said of his new OC.

Since he took the job in January, McDaniel has been focused on helping Herbert "own" the position. He has changed Herbert's shotgun stance, moved his nonthrowing side foot forward (in other words, his left foot in front of his right) and has emphasized anticipatory throwing.

Shortly after he got the job, McDaniel watched every snap Herbert has taken in the NFL. McDaniel then put together a video featuring hundreds of plays from Herbert's career and juxtaposed them with similar plays from McDaniel's previous offenses to prove that if Herbert made the adjustments McDaniel was coaching him to make, he could be more successful.

"It was a well-put-together presentation, and I really saw the vision," Herbert said. "It meant a lot to me."

The detailed coaching goes beyond Herbert. McDaniel's wide zone rushing scheme has the offensive line running more than it ever has in practice. Offensive line coach Butch Barry's screams are among the few to rival McDaniel's yells at practice.

Barry's commands are so loud they can likely be heard throughout L.A., as he yells at Chargers linemen to run faster. It's been an adjustment for the pass catchers, too. "That ball's coming out fast," tight end Scott Matlock said during one minicamp practice. The emphasis on anticipatory throwing has altered how receivers are coached to run their routes, with McDaniel imploring them to look back for the ball earlier than they've been asked to before.

In doing so, they'll get the ball earlier in their break with more opportunity for yards after the catch.

"You think that the ball's quick and then you get Mike's offense and there's a whole different element," wide receiver Ladd McConkey said.

McDaniel's offensive plan is all about making life easy for Herbert, the opposite of what it's been in the Harbaugh era so far.

But McDaniel's style comes with its flaws, too, all of which led him to Harbaugh and L.A.

	Coach Jim Harbaugh has had a history of transforming football teams since his days at San Diego.

TWO DECADES AGO, McDaniel was first introduced to who Harbaugh is.

McDaniel played wide receiver at Yale University from 2001 to 2004. During his sophomore year, Yale blew out the University of San Diego 49-14, a team that, to McDaniel, seemed far away from being of the same caliber.

But just two years after McDaniel graduated, the paradigm had shifted. San Diego had a new coach -- Jim Harbaugh -- and they dominated his alma mater Yale, beating them 43-14 in 2006, in their second straight win against the Ivy.

Harbaugh never coached against McDaniel while he was a player, but McDaniel continued to watch Yale as he began his coaching career. The turnaround left him so stunned that he even remembers reaching out to Chandler Henley, now the Chargers' tight ends coach, who played with McDaniel at Yale.

"How do you flip a program in college football that's not all of a sudden just getting pumped with top recruits?" McDaniel said. "I get that in the SEC, but you're talking about a private school. So from afar it was like, 'What? How do you just flip that?' It's unique."

Then McDaniel watched Harbaugh do the same thing elsewhere.

Harbaugh went 29-6 over three seasons at the University of San Diego, winning the first two PFL championships in school history. He left USD after 2006 for Stanford, where he spent four seasons and led the Cardinal to a 12-1 record and an Orange Bowl win in his final season.

He moved to the NFL in 2011, leading the 49ers to three straight NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl appearance over four seasons before returning to college. Harbaugh returned to his alma mater, the University of Michigan, in 2015, coaching the Wolverines for nine years, culminating in an undefeated national championship season in 2023.

Harbaugh's skill at turnarounds is one of the elements McDaniel hopes to learn.

"I can learn a ton," McDaniel said. "I think one of the great things he does is when he observes people and groups and listens, he really hears and has his eyes open to everything. As a result, he has a lot of leadership skills that he can do in the spoken and unspoken."

Harbaugh is a CEO-style head coach. In many ways, his coaching superpower is his humility.

Harbaugh lets others handle the playcalling and hands-on coaching, willing to take a back seat to people like McDaniel. Harbaugh's other skill, which is perhaps the one that most fascinates McDaniel, is the way he can garner respect from his players who buy into his clich�s and catchphrases on the way to winning seasons.

In Miami, McDaniel was criticized for failing at the latter.

"I kinda feel bad for the players," said former Dolphins running back Raheem Mostert on "The Herd with Colin Cowherd." "Just because when you have a coach that is so player-friendly, it doesn't really mix all that well.

"Look at the coaching history, not just in the NFL but MLB, NBA, all these different sports franchises -- they have coaches that implement toughness, resilience, and that's something that he kind of missed the mark on in being a head coach."

McDaniel will never be Harbaugh -- a non-playcalling coach who wears only team-issued gear and participates in workouts with his players -- and he isn't trying to be either. But at this point in his career, what he can learn from Harbaugh about leading a team could propel him to be much more successful if he gets another head coaching opportunity.

It's why, as much as Herbert and the Chargers' offense played a role in McDaniel's decision to come to Los Angeles, so did Harbaugh.

"He is elite at collecting the right human beings to work together and, from the top down, be a very good football team in all things," McDaniel said. "And I think that's one of the reasons I'm so fortunate and pinching myself on the daily."

	"We need each other," Mike McDaniel told ESPN of his partnership with Jim Harbaugh.

ON ONE OF the first days of Chargers minicamp, Harbaugh and McDaniel were disagreeing.

The two were debating a quarterback handoff. McDaniel's style was sort of a baton-style handoff that showed the ball more, while Harbaugh's was more discreet. The two went back and forth with Harbaugh doing each motion over and over before they moved on.

Harbaugh apparently won this battle. "Mike contributed about a hundred things and that was one good thing I was able to contribute," Harbaugh said while laughing. "I got on the scoreboard there."

It wasn't the last time McDaniel and Harbaugh met at the quarterback handoff drill this offseason, often discussing different techniques.

Harbaugh naturally gravitates toward the quarterbacks at practice, since that was a position he played in the NFL for 14 seasons. But the rushing offense has been a staple of his success as a coach. At each stop, he used dominant rushing offenses to propel his teams to success.

It hasn't been all that different for McDaniel either, who got his first position-coach job in football during his two-season stint in the United Football League (2009-10), where he served as the running backs coach for the Sacramento Mountain Lions. McDaniel later was the run game specialist in San Francisco, then the team's run game coordinator before becoming San Francisco's offensive coordinator.

"I've been an admirer, a fan of Mike McDaniel for quite a few years, but it was always looking through the keyhole," Harbaugh said. "So I'd say we're a lot alike and we both love football and style of play, very much alike."

McDaniel needs this opportunity to prove to the NFL that defenses haven't figured him out, and a season with one of the most respected coaches of this era could turn him into a better leader.

For Harbaugh, it's a chance to make good on the championship promise he made when he came to L.A. in 2024. Now paired with perhaps the league's most innovative offensive mind who is 20 years his junior and whose fashion choices run closer to something Harbaugh's children might wear.

"He does not get clothes from my closet. He has his own closet for sure," McDaniel said. "But it just goes to show that one of the beautiful things about this game is that it brings people from different walks of life together. And I certainly think that's the case with us."