COSTA MESA, Calif.—Scenes from the summer, as Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert adjusts to his third coordinator, Kellen Moore, in his fourth NFL season:

One. Offensive coordinator Kellen Moore and coach Brandon Staley cue up a training-camp practice play from Aug. 8 on the screen in Staley’s office. First-team offense versus first-team defense. Herbert in shotgun. He has four plays in “his toolbox,” as Moore calls his options here. Three pass plays, one run play, in a “check with me” call—the 10 guys on offense won’t know the play till they hear Herbert’s coded cadence. He sees the defense playing man. Herbert moves Austin Ekeler from sidecar right to left, and calls for one of the three passes he knows will work best against man coverage —a 15-yard incut, right to left, to Keenan Allen, in single coverage. Works perfectly.

Two. Same series, a couple of snaps later. Playing fast now. Mike Williams on a deep post, and Herbert flicks the ball 43 yards in the air—so easy—and Williams catches it in stride. Touchdown.

Three. Rewind to June, to the first OTA practice with ones against ones. Moore’s calls are new, the verbiage is mostly new. The specific call isn’t important here—let’s just say it was Gun roy left, paint right, Boise H-angle, which is a real play-call—but Moore says the call into Herbert’s helmet. He starts to repeat it. There’s so much new here, and he wants to be sure Herbert’s got it. And Herbert waves him off, like, Got it, coach. He runs the play. Herbert never needs the call repeated.

Four. One day, Herbert looks at the script for practice. He notices something that seems off. “Did you mean ‘Y’ or ‘F’ on this play?” he asks Moore. F denotes the slot receiver (who could be a tight end or wide receiver), Y the tight end. Chagrined, Moore admits his mistake. “‘F.’ That was a typo. You got me on that one,” Moore says.

The coordinator’s a football nerd. The quarterback’s a football nerd.

The quarterback has one of the best arms in football. But he has one of the best brains too. He has to, to understand the “Pace and Space” concept Staley and Moore have set up for an offense that underachieved last year (13^th in scoring) and must be more explosive for the Chargers to have a chance to catch Kansas City in the AFC West.

Everybody’s optimistic in August. But you look at the Chargers, and you watch this quarterback, and you think there’s reason for optimism here. A lot of it.

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Brandon Staley has spent time with Golden State basketball coach Steve Kerr. He admires Kerr a lot. And Staley thinks there’s one significant commonality between a basketball star like Steph Curry and a quarterback. They’ve got a big edge when putting pressure on the defense. Kerr explained to Staley: When a defense can get set for Curry, there’s a lot of different ways the defense can take him out of the game. Then we’re grinding every possession, and it’s an 83-79 game. When we don’t let a defense get set, we can be in a free-flowing state. We can pressure the defense. We can dictate.

When Staley and Moore started talking about this job—the Chargers dismissed offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi after last season, figuring he hadn’t maximized their weaponry—they agreed on lots of things, including the pressure-the-defense-through-tempo stuff. But that isn’t to say the Chargers will be all speed, all the time. They just want to have the ability to run the offense at tempo when they want, when they think it fits either in the gameplan or to tire out a defense.

Pace and Space. Playing fast, finding holes in the defense on every play—by giving Herbert the toolbox with multiple plays in it and allowing him to make the decisions in seconds while the defense, the Chargers hope, will be on its heels a bit.

“When we talked,” Staley said, “we were like, ‘How can we take this concept of pace and space and like be able to run our entire offense that way?’ Like, no matter what time of the game. First quarter. Second quarter. Two-minute. Whenever. Challenge the defense’s ability to communicate, to substitute.”

Staley never doubted Herbert’s ability to process quickly, even with the newness of Moore’s imported schemes. Moore had to see it, though.

“You see all the physical tools that Justin has from afar,” Moore said. “Then there’s the element of once you start teaming up from a football intelligence standpoint, from a big-picture standpoint, how much can he handle? That’s the stuff that’s blowing me away—how much volume he can handle, and how fast he masters it.”

In practice, what I noticed about Herbert—the Chargers were going against the Saints on this day—is how comfortable he was, and how the entire offense looked like this was their third year under Moore, not the first summer. “Very comfortable,” Herbert said post-practice when I asked about meshing with Moore. You saw it in the huddle, at the line, and in quick confabs with Moore. Now, Herbert’s the kind of coachable guy who’d make it work if the custodian were his coach. But with Moore and position coach Doug Nussmeier, Herbert looks and sounds like he’s in the best place he’s been in during his young pro career.

I found it interesting that when Staley went looking for a coordinator after the season, he didn’t want a hired gun who’d come in with his own system and scheme and with the attitude, It’s my offense, coach. Out of the way. I’ll take it from here. Staley has always admired Moore. First as an undersized and very smart player, with a 50-3 record as Boise State’s quarterback. Second, as the son of a high school coach, Moore would likely be a good teacher. Moore’s dad recalls Kellen, in middle school, coming to the high school football practice and drawing plays in a notebook.

Plus, Staley loved Moore’s rep as a low-ego team guy—because that’s exactly what the quarterback is. When I told Herbert that the precedent-setting $262 million contract he just signed doesn’t seem to have changed him, he brightened and said, “My father will be very happy to hear that.”

So now the Chargers just have to cut into that scoring gap with Super Bowl champion Kansas City atop the AFC West. 2023 points scored: KC 496, LA 391. That’s a touchdown a game the Chargers have to make up. They drafted TCU wideout Quentin Johnston in the first round to help, but Herbert will wear out Keenan Allen and Mike Williams as long as they can stay healthy. No team in the stacked AFC West has the star-receiver depth of Allen, Williams and Johnson, with a top all-around back like Austin Ekeler. It’ll be surprising if the Chargers are anywhere near 13^th in scoring this year.

Two final points. Those examples I gave you up top? They say to me that Herbert’s gotten better at one of the most important, and underrated, parts of playing the position. That’s manipulating the defense. He knows how to use the freedom of the toolbox Moore and Staley have handed him.

But the biggest issue the Chargers may face is their conference. Look at the teams with top-flight quarterbacks in the AFC, and you understand that when the musical chairs stop, two to four strong teams will be home for the playoffs. It’s asking a lot of Herbert to make the Chargers 100 points better, but that could be what he’ll have to do to get this franchise to important January football again.

Read more in Peter King’s full Football Morning in America column.