A few more reasons why someone might be having a bad game:
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Ping problems. Whether they're used to it or not, some players have ping problems. This can probably be counted under computer problems, but technically ping is different.
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They're just simply not doing well. Even challenger players on their mains will make mistakes and get punished for them, and sometimes someone will make more/worse mistakes than usual with no real reason behind it.
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They're still learning the game. Make a new account, grind up to where you can play PvP, and play some pre-30 PvP games. They're full of high-tier smurfs always yelling at new players for mistakes that really are just noob mistakes, but these high-tier players really bag on them. Pre-30 games are often decided by how highly ranked your smurfs are and how many smurfs you have.
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They're tilting. Could be under a bad day, but it could just take a single bad decision in a single game to tilt someone to the point where they play awful for the rest of the game. Especially for this case, being toxic to them is just going to make them play worse.
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Learning a new role. You mentioned learning a new champion, and this could count under that as well, but because it's a new role, it's something different. For example, I would recommend for learning any role playing difficult, highly mechanical champions for that role. You'll do bad on them, you'll make mistakes, but you'll notice an improvement as you play them, and you can typically transfer those mechanics that you learn on that champion to other champions in the same role. Only do this in PvPs if you mentally bar yourself from tilt and are very liberal with a mute button.
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They're trying a different build that plays differently to how they're used to the champion/maybe off-meta. For example, a while ago, I played several games testing out a build I had just thought of: duelist Fiora. Trinity Force + Phantom Dancer. I played like 3-4 games on this and I fed and legitimately lost the game for us solo, but then I learned that that build didn't work, or at least that I wasn't making it work right.
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Someone was already toxic to them/something bad already happened to them. This ties in to the tilt point, and being toxic really just makes them play a lot worse than usual.
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Physical issues. Anything from playing with what seems like a minor injury to even your hands simply being cold can affect your performance negatively. Playing later at night has benefits, people aren't as toxic because they just don't have the energy, but it also has negatives: players being more tired means they'll play worse. Weaker muscle memory, weaker shotcalling, worse reaction time, or any number of other negative play patters could come from cold hands, minor injuries, or other seemingly minor physical impairments.
However, in none of these cases is being toxic to them justified. For trying new things, there's typically a lot to work out before you finally figure it out. If you haven't watched any videos or looked up any guides on it, you're probably going to do extremely badly the first few games. And that's alright, it's part of the learning process. They're going to make mistakes, and they might learn from them. Their willingness to learn and acceptance that they're going to make mistakes can help them improve or bar them from ever improving at all. It's all in the mentality, and being toxic to someone typically worsens their mentality, which makes them play even worse. Being toxic to someone literally just digs yourself into a hole that you won't get out of. Instead, encourage them. "Are you new to that champion/role? I've been playing for a while, and I can give you some tips if you ask." "It's alright, we'll outscale them. Just try not to make the same mistake again."
Sometimes, encouragement comes off as passive-aggressive toxicity, so you need to learn how to talk to people without making it seem like that. When you call someone out on the mistake they make specifically, this is typically when constructive criticism can be misconstrued as toxicity. "Evelynn, you need to group up." "Viktor, don't try to 1v1 the Taliyah, she'll just outburst you." While these are constructive criticisms, they're easily misconstrued as passive-aggressive toxicity because you're using their names. Saying "We need to group up," or "We shouldn't fight them solo," can get your point across, "you messed up, don't do that again," while not coming off as toxic because you're not calling them out specifically.
On the other hand (warning: incoming devil's advocate), players have reasons for being toxic as well. It could be anything from a simple hating people and wanting to watch the world burn/not caring at all to having a bad day/game themselves. Almost any of the points for why someone is playing poorly can also be applied to why someone is being toxic. Tilting is the most common, however, it results from a bad mentality + one of the reasons mentioned. I used to be the typical spam at the jungler when I lose my lane, I didn't make mistakes, they're just OP, bronze trash a while ago. I was like that when I went for my first placements in season 5. I was scared to play ranked for fear of toxic players for so long, and then I was the player I feared getting on my team when I started playing Ranked. And because of this, while I've played since season 1, I never really played for the purpose of improving until this year. I played like garbage in my first placements, ending 3/7, and somehow ended up in silver 5.
However, I played much better this year because midway through last year, I realized that the mentality I was having going into this was awful. League of Legends is a mental game just as much as it is a physical game. Emotions, intelligence, and skill are all equally important to playing a lot of games well. Is toxicity justified? No, but if players weren't emotional or weren't jokesters, we probably would have a lot less toxicity. However, it's not possible to cut out emotions entirely. Toxicity and poor play both can often be linked back to tilt. If you understand that, you can learn to control it. I'll be the first to admit that I tilt, everyone does from time to time, but I just refuse to bring the tilt into my chat at least in the game. It often will affect how I play, but I refuse to put my tilt in the chat and be toxic to people because I know that that won't help anything.
