Coming out of the bye, the Los Angeles Chargers had two weeks to fix an offense that had sputtered through the first six games of the season, and for roughly 30 minutes on Sunday at SoFi Stadium, it looked like some of that extra preparation might finally pay off.

Los Angeles took a 9-3 lead into the final minutes of the first half on three Cameron Dicker field goals, controlled the clock, and moved the ball well enough between the 20s to keep the Rams’ offense on the sideline.

The problem, as it has been all season, is that moving the ball and scoring touchdowns are two very different things, and the Chargers never managed to cross the goal line.

They went scoreless over the final two quarters while the Rams scored 21 unanswered points, dropping the Bolts to 0-7 for the first time since Jim Harbaugh was the one taking snaps for the franchise.

To be fair to Mike McDaniel, there were flashes of the imaginative play-caller who once turned the Miami offense into a weekly highlight reel.

An early second-quarter flea-flicker built off a fake end-around sprang Charlie Kolar for 20 yards, and the Chargers finished with 295 total yards while holding the ball for more than 32 minutes.

Justin Herbert completed 24 of his 32 passes for 257 yards, numbers that look perfectly respectable until you get to the touchdowns-and-interceptions column, which read zero and two.

The troubling part is how many of those drives seemed doomed by the call sheet as much as by execution.

After Tarheeb Still gave the offense a short field with an interception on the Rams’ third play of the game, McDaniel answered with three consecutive screen passes that combined to lose yardage, wasting a golden opportunity before the game had really started.

The running game was nonexistent, managing just 64 yards on 25 carries, which left Herbert throwing into a defense that knew what was coming.

His second interception, a throw meant for Kolar that went straight to Trent McDuffie, set up a short Rams touchdown drive that effectively ended the afternoon.

The short answer is no, and it is hard to build a convincing case otherwise, seven games into a winless season.

McDaniel was brought to Los Angeles specifically to unlock a quarterback with one of the league's most talented arms.

Yet, Herbert now leads the NFL with 10 interceptions, and the offense keeps settling for field goals or less.

Inventive gadget plays are nice, but they don’t make up for predictable sequencing in key moments, a run game that can’t keep the defense honest, and a red zone offense that disappears when points matter most.

Jim Harbaugh has publicly stood behind both his quarterback and his coordinator, calling the struggles a team-wide problem, and there is some truth to that given the issues up front.

Still, patience has limits, and with Houston and Baltimore up next, McDaniel is running short on time to prove that his system can work in Los Angeles.