I have been fascinated with Mike McDaniel's career for a whole bunch of reasons even before he was named the offensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Chargers. One of those reasons is because he is one of the better outside-the-box thinkers in the NFL right now, which led to an actual change in the NFL's rule book last year.

Let's talk about what has become known as "cheat motion", where it came from, how the NFL is trying to curb it, and why it will still likely be a part of McDaniel's offense going forward.

In it's most simplistic form, "cheat motion" is sending a player in pre-snap motion (sideways) so that they can get up to top speed by time the ball is snapped.

I'm going to embed two videos here. The first one is McDaniel himself explaining what "cheat motion" is to Dan Patrick:

Two things to note in this video:

First, it's worth pointing out that former Miami Dolphins FB, and now current Los Angeles Chargers FB, Alec Ingold was the first player that McDaniel tried this motion with. Ingold gets indirectly praised by McDaniel at the end of this clip as a player who is willing to try different things that have never been done on a football field before.

Secondly, I love the simplicity of McDaniel's offensive brain. It reminds me of Chip Kelly, in a way. He's not a scientist in a lab dreaming up complicated schemes, he's a high school algebra teacher realizing that his players will go faster if they get a running head start.

Speaking of, here's a breakdown of "cheat motion" or "SHART", from film room guru Ted Nguyen:

I do love the idea that McDaniel was watching his old team, after leaving the 49ers to become the Dolphins head coach, and saw this accidental advantage that San Francisco created and copied it. We'll never know if that's how it happened, but it's fun to imagine it.

Despite maybe being involved in the accidentally creation of this motion, 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan coined the team "cheat motion" because....in his words...."It's cheating."

He wasn't the only NFL coach publicly complaining about this, which means there were even more of them complaining about it privately, which led to the NFL adding this line to their official rule book before the 2025 season:

“Any eligible backfield player who changes his stance does not have to come to a complete stop prior to the snap, as long as his actions are not abrupt (false start) or forward (illegal motion).”

You can look back at what McDaniel was doing with Tyreek Hill and say that was cheating according to today's rules, because he was often moving ever-so-slightly forward while turning the corner as the ball was being snapped.

Did his forward motion come just before, or after, the ball was snapped? That's the difficult part that the referees have to deal with. It's also why Mike McDaniel continued to use this high speed pre-snap motion with the Dolphins offense in 2025, and why he'll likely continue using it in 2026 with the Chargers offense.

If you're looking for ways for the Ladd McConkey to be utilized by McDaniel, in ways that he wasn't by Greg Roman, this would be a good place to start.