Football is one of the greatest showcases for the heights of human athleticism and talent that there is. It’s likely why we’re so drawn to it-- despite the NFL only being in operation for around 5 months of the year, despite the gruesome and inevitable violence it brings (regardless of any of the league’s highly-touted “player safety advancements”), and despite the very unsavory individuals in charge of running the show and the behavior that is permitted as a result.
Time and time again, we come back to the sport, despite our misgivings with it and with the NFL as a whole. I would assume it is to bear witness to things like this:
The NFL is at its best when its best athletes are put in position to make spectacular plays involving superhuman athletic ability and razor-sharp technique. Unfortunately, lots of such athletes are often let down by either the supporting cast of players around them, lackluster coaching and play-calling, or a mix of both. Justin Herbert, after his team’s loss this past week dropped them out of the AFC playoff picture, is one of those athletes right now.
Justin Herbert has endured a tumultuous 2022 season so far. Image from: David Becker/Associated Press.
The Los Angeles Chargers, quarterbacked by Herbert, were a trendy preseason pick to win a highly-competitive AFC West and even to make a deep playoff run after bringing in a great deal of talent over the offseason (whoops). Instead the Chargers sit at just 5-4, currently on the outside looking in at the playoff race, after a disappointing Sunday Night Football loss to San Francisco which saw the Bolts muster just 16 points-- including being completely shut out in the second half.
Herbert, after bursting onto the scene with historic production -- his 69 touchdown passes are an NFL record through a player’s first two seasons -- has not put up the game-breaking numbers we’ve come to expect from him so far in 2022. While he ranks sixth in total passing yards, he sports a good-not-great 14:6 TD:INT ratio, ranks 18th in quarterback ranking (just behind Andy Dalton), and 14th in total QBR, a statistic he was third-best in last year behind only Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady.
Sunday Night felt like a low point for this offense, and for the team as a whole. It was a microcosm of their whole season in a way; glaring weaknesses due to injuries at key positions cropped up, bizarre coaching decisions hamstrung the team on numerous occasions, and above it all, the glare of the nationwide spotlight was unkind, unfairly, to Herbert. He finished 21-35 for just 196 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT. The performance set season lows for Herbert in pass completions, yardage, and passer rating, and his completion percentage and yards per attempt in this game were his second-worst marks of the year.
Then again, in that very same game Herbert also did this:
It’s hard to put into words just how ridiculous that throw is, for so many reasons. Just the pocket presence and mobility alone to get that pass off was impressive enough, but the throw itself was positively absurd-- as a quarterback, moving laterally to your right and throwing to your left side is really hard. Herbert not only had to do that, but also had to adjust his arm angle to fit the throw in an impossibly tight window due to the interior pressure in his face and with the safety closing the gap on the receiver. Despite all that, the pass was money, a missile with just enough zip on it to beat the defensive backs, and with pinpoint accuracy right into the receiver’s hands (an aside-- that is what it means to have elite arm strength in the NFL, not the pretty moonballs that every starting-caliber QB is capable of, although they are fun to watch).
I speak no exaggerations when I say it-- that throw is something that very few quarterbacks in the history of the league are physically capable of. You could probably count the names on one hand, honestly. And it may not even be Herbert’s best throw of this season! Just look at this lunacy from the Chargers’ Week 2 game against the Chiefs:
Especially considering the context of that play -- a 4th down, gotta-have-it play in a crucial matchup after Herbert had just suffered a fractured rib cartilage injury -- this is one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen in a football game. Just laughing or coughing with a serious rib injury is painful enough; I can’t imagine how hard whipping a football 35 yards down the field is with such an ailment.
This is what a fully-unleashed Justin Herbert is capable of, and it’s downright scary. And yet, the Chargers continue to be a frankly underwhelming offense.
The Chargers are just the 20th-ranked scoring offense in the NFL this season, and the 21st-ranked team in offensive yardage. They’re 22nd in yards per play and in first downs gained on the season. In every single one of those metrics, Jacoby Brissett’s Cleveland Browns rank higher, for instance.
In terms of more advanced analytics, Los Angeles ranks 24th in Football Outsiders’ Offensive DVOA behind teams such as New Orleans and Pittsburgh, 20th in RBSDM’s Offensive EPA/play, 26th in Success Rate, and even 17th in just Dropback EPA/play. Again, they are helmed by a quarterback who can do things like this. So why in the hell is this happening?
Wide receivers Keenan Allen (#13) and Mike Williams (#81) have both missed time this season. Image from: Kyusung Gong/AP.
Part of the Chargers’ disappointment on offense (and as a whole team) can in no significant part be chalked up to injuries. This, again, starts with Herbert; the aforementioned injury he suffered in the loss to Kansas City didn’t keep him out of their following game, but had a pronounced effect on him in their 38-10 drubbing at the hands of Jacksonville. He’s looked better since, but rib injuries have a tendency to linger.
Apart from their star quarterback, the Bolts have been truly ravaged by the injury bug. Herbert’s best two receivers, Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, have each missed time with Allen not playing a full game since Week 2 (he played in Week 7 but caught just 2 passes for 11 yards in more of a decoy role) and Williams missing the past two games. Perhaps even more significantly, the Chargers’ starting tackle tandem has not been healthy; cornerstone left tackle Rashawn Slater is expected to miss the rest of the season after suffering a torn biceps in Week 3, and right tackle Trey Pipkins, who had previously been playing through injury, missed the past loss with a sprained MCL.
On Sunday, Los Angeles started a rookie sixth-round pick at left tackle, and a practice squad call-up making their first career start at right-tackle. Already being down his top two targets, Herbert lost his third choice receiver when tight end Gerald Everett went down with an injury in the first half.
All of this is just speaking to the injuries on the offensive side of the ball; on defense, the Chargers have been missing key players in Joey Bosa, J.C. Jackson, and Austin Johnson for much of the year, and put two more defensive tackles on injured reserve today. A defense already incapable of stopping the run is now down to their fourth and fifth choices at nose tackle.
There was, and still is, a great deal working against Justin Herbert by way of poor health. Nevertheless, the bigger concern to the young signal-caller and the rest of the offense is the coaching staff in charge.
Offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi has come under fire for ineffective play-calling. Image from: Chris Unger/Getty Images.
The Chargers are led by head coach Brandon Staley, a defensive-minded coach who got hired after one year of experience as a defensive coordinator in the NFL and who has yet to establish an above-average defense after his hiring. Though Staley learned under Sean McVay, he defers offensive play-calling to offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi (the grandson of one Vince Lombardi). With many years of experience under Sean Payton in New Orleans, most notably being the quarterbacks coach during most of Drew Brees’ best seasons including the year of their Super Bowl XLIV triumph, Lombardi was an exciting hire in 2021 to elevate Herbert’s game to the next level. That has not happened.
In truth, some improvements have been made; in his rookie season, Justin Herbert finished 18th in EPA+CPOE composite, and over the past two seasons under Lombardi he has moved up to 12th in that regard. The offense as a whole jumped up from 15th in EPA/play in 2020 to 9th during this span. Still, Lombardi’s offense has shown a consistent pattern of predictability, ineffectiveness on early downs, difficulties adjusting in-game, and frustrating conservatism.
In the second half of that Sunday Night loss to the 49ers, a two-quarter period where no points were scored, Lombardi opened the half calling five straight designed runs on 1st-and-10s. They gained more than two yards on just one of them. The sixth 1st-and-10 play call was a jet sweep to DeAndre Carter which resulted in a six yard loss. Austin Ekeler is a fine running back, but the strength of the Chargers’ offense is in its passing game. It has also been well-documented that a strong running game is not a necessity in order to execute a quality play-action offense. With a very banged-up offensive line facing off against one of the league’s best defensive lines, there was very little urgency from Lombardi to scheme up creative ways to get quick and effective passes out, or to really fool the defense at all.
Staley’s defense actually put up a valiant effort against a tricky Kyle Shanahan offense; one of the league’s most maligned run-stopping units stuffed Christian McCaffrey for only 38 yards on 14 carries and held San Francisco to just 22 points. The offense, however, held the ball for merely 8 minutes and 22 seconds in the second half, forcing fatigue on the other side of the ball.
The Chargers’ defense was let down by its offense in their Week 10 loss. Image from: Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports.
49ers linebacker Fred Warner even said in his postgame press conference, “we just kept it simple, we literally just ran one call… I feel like, the entire second half… first and second down, we literally just ran the same thing over and over”. That’s not a good sign for Lombardi! Poor play-calling and execution on early downs has been a consistent theme for his offense, forcing Herbert into hero-ball on third-and-long situations, but it was more apparent than normal in the second half of Sunday’s game, where the Chargers gained just one first down and only 60 yards of total offense.
Predictability was a problem for Lombardi in his previous stint as an OC with the Detroit Lions, where former wide receiver Golden Tate alleged that opposing defensive players would come up to him and say that they knew exactly what plays were coming. It’s worrying that it is still a problem now, with the stakes being so much higher.
Herbert was a checkdown machine for much of Sunday’s game, which isn’t always a bad thing (Tom Brady has won many a Super Bowl on the back of some well-timed checkdowns!) but Lombardi seems either unwilling or unable to uncork his quarterback’s near-unmatched arm with deep shots. In fact, according to RBSDM, Herbert’s average depth of target beyond the line of scrimmage ranks second-worst among all qualified passers this season, ahead of only 37-year-old Matt Ryan. At times, it seems like everyone but Herbert’s own coaches know how best to utilize Herbert’s talents:
Time and time again, we come back to the sport, despite our misgivings with it and with the NFL as a whole. I would assume it is to bear witness to things like this:
JUSTIN JEFFERSON OH MY GOODNESS 😱🤯
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) November 13, 2022
(via @NFL)pic.twitter.com/h71fuciUrv
The NFL is at its best when its best athletes are put in position to make spectacular plays involving superhuman athletic ability and razor-sharp technique. Unfortunately, lots of such athletes are often let down by either the supporting cast of players around them, lackluster coaching and play-calling, or a mix of both. Justin Herbert, after his team’s loss this past week dropped them out of the AFC playoff picture, is one of those athletes right now.
Justin Herbert has endured a tumultuous 2022 season so far. Image from: David Becker/Associated Press.
The Los Angeles Chargers, quarterbacked by Herbert, were a trendy preseason pick to win a highly-competitive AFC West and even to make a deep playoff run after bringing in a great deal of talent over the offseason (whoops). Instead the Chargers sit at just 5-4, currently on the outside looking in at the playoff race, after a disappointing Sunday Night Football loss to San Francisco which saw the Bolts muster just 16 points-- including being completely shut out in the second half.
Herbert, after bursting onto the scene with historic production -- his 69 touchdown passes are an NFL record through a player’s first two seasons -- has not put up the game-breaking numbers we’ve come to expect from him so far in 2022. While he ranks sixth in total passing yards, he sports a good-not-great 14:6 TD:INT ratio, ranks 18th in quarterback ranking (just behind Andy Dalton), and 14th in total QBR, a statistic he was third-best in last year behind only Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady.
Sunday Night felt like a low point for this offense, and for the team as a whole. It was a microcosm of their whole season in a way; glaring weaknesses due to injuries at key positions cropped up, bizarre coaching decisions hamstrung the team on numerous occasions, and above it all, the glare of the nationwide spotlight was unkind, unfairly, to Herbert. He finished 21-35 for just 196 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT. The performance set season lows for Herbert in pass completions, yardage, and passer rating, and his completion percentage and yards per attempt in this game were his second-worst marks of the year.
Then again, in that very same game Herbert also did this:
It does. https://t.co/FNOsbjqzSy pic.twitter.com/DzI1jd9wSx
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) November 14, 2022
It’s hard to put into words just how ridiculous that throw is, for so many reasons. Just the pocket presence and mobility alone to get that pass off was impressive enough, but the throw itself was positively absurd-- as a quarterback, moving laterally to your right and throwing to your left side is really hard. Herbert not only had to do that, but also had to adjust his arm angle to fit the throw in an impossibly tight window due to the interior pressure in his face and with the safety closing the gap on the receiver. Despite all that, the pass was money, a missile with just enough zip on it to beat the defensive backs, and with pinpoint accuracy right into the receiver’s hands (an aside-- that is what it means to have elite arm strength in the NFL, not the pretty moonballs that every starting-caliber QB is capable of, although they are fun to watch).
I speak no exaggerations when I say it-- that throw is something that very few quarterbacks in the history of the league are physically capable of. You could probably count the names on one hand, honestly. And it may not even be Herbert’s best throw of this season! Just look at this lunacy from the Chargers’ Week 2 game against the Chiefs:
This throw by Justin Herbert makes no sense if you're watching this game and know what's going on right now. pic.twitter.com/7x8PMRYKxb
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) September 16, 2022
Especially considering the context of that play -- a 4th down, gotta-have-it play in a crucial matchup after Herbert had just suffered a fractured rib cartilage injury -- this is one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen in a football game. Just laughing or coughing with a serious rib injury is painful enough; I can’t imagine how hard whipping a football 35 yards down the field is with such an ailment.
This is what a fully-unleashed Justin Herbert is capable of, and it’s downright scary. And yet, the Chargers continue to be a frankly underwhelming offense.
The Chargers are just the 20th-ranked scoring offense in the NFL this season, and the 21st-ranked team in offensive yardage. They’re 22nd in yards per play and in first downs gained on the season. In every single one of those metrics, Jacoby Brissett’s Cleveland Browns rank higher, for instance.
In terms of more advanced analytics, Los Angeles ranks 24th in Football Outsiders’ Offensive DVOA behind teams such as New Orleans and Pittsburgh, 20th in RBSDM’s Offensive EPA/play, 26th in Success Rate, and even 17th in just Dropback EPA/play. Again, they are helmed by a quarterback who can do things like this. So why in the hell is this happening?
Wide receivers Keenan Allen (#13) and Mike Williams (#81) have both missed time this season. Image from: Kyusung Gong/AP.
Part of the Chargers’ disappointment on offense (and as a whole team) can in no significant part be chalked up to injuries. This, again, starts with Herbert; the aforementioned injury he suffered in the loss to Kansas City didn’t keep him out of their following game, but had a pronounced effect on him in their 38-10 drubbing at the hands of Jacksonville. He’s looked better since, but rib injuries have a tendency to linger.
Apart from their star quarterback, the Bolts have been truly ravaged by the injury bug. Herbert’s best two receivers, Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, have each missed time with Allen not playing a full game since Week 2 (he played in Week 7 but caught just 2 passes for 11 yards in more of a decoy role) and Williams missing the past two games. Perhaps even more significantly, the Chargers’ starting tackle tandem has not been healthy; cornerstone left tackle Rashawn Slater is expected to miss the rest of the season after suffering a torn biceps in Week 3, and right tackle Trey Pipkins, who had previously been playing through injury, missed the past loss with a sprained MCL.
On Sunday, Los Angeles started a rookie sixth-round pick at left tackle, and a practice squad call-up making their first career start at right-tackle. Already being down his top two targets, Herbert lost his third choice receiver when tight end Gerald Everett went down with an injury in the first half.
All of this is just speaking to the injuries on the offensive side of the ball; on defense, the Chargers have been missing key players in Joey Bosa, J.C. Jackson, and Austin Johnson for much of the year, and put two more defensive tackles on injured reserve today. A defense already incapable of stopping the run is now down to their fourth and fifth choices at nose tackle.
There was, and still is, a great deal working against Justin Herbert by way of poor health. Nevertheless, the bigger concern to the young signal-caller and the rest of the offense is the coaching staff in charge.
Offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi has come under fire for ineffective play-calling. Image from: Chris Unger/Getty Images.
The Chargers are led by head coach Brandon Staley, a defensive-minded coach who got hired after one year of experience as a defensive coordinator in the NFL and who has yet to establish an above-average defense after his hiring. Though Staley learned under Sean McVay, he defers offensive play-calling to offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi (the grandson of one Vince Lombardi). With many years of experience under Sean Payton in New Orleans, most notably being the quarterbacks coach during most of Drew Brees’ best seasons including the year of their Super Bowl XLIV triumph, Lombardi was an exciting hire in 2021 to elevate Herbert’s game to the next level. That has not happened.
In truth, some improvements have been made; in his rookie season, Justin Herbert finished 18th in EPA+CPOE composite, and over the past two seasons under Lombardi he has moved up to 12th in that regard. The offense as a whole jumped up from 15th in EPA/play in 2020 to 9th during this span. Still, Lombardi’s offense has shown a consistent pattern of predictability, ineffectiveness on early downs, difficulties adjusting in-game, and frustrating conservatism.
In the second half of that Sunday Night loss to the 49ers, a two-quarter period where no points were scored, Lombardi opened the half calling five straight designed runs on 1st-and-10s. They gained more than two yards on just one of them. The sixth 1st-and-10 play call was a jet sweep to DeAndre Carter which resulted in a six yard loss. Austin Ekeler is a fine running back, but the strength of the Chargers’ offense is in its passing game. It has also been well-documented that a strong running game is not a necessity in order to execute a quality play-action offense. With a very banged-up offensive line facing off against one of the league’s best defensive lines, there was very little urgency from Lombardi to scheme up creative ways to get quick and effective passes out, or to really fool the defense at all.
Staley’s defense actually put up a valiant effort against a tricky Kyle Shanahan offense; one of the league’s most maligned run-stopping units stuffed Christian McCaffrey for only 38 yards on 14 carries and held San Francisco to just 22 points. The offense, however, held the ball for merely 8 minutes and 22 seconds in the second half, forcing fatigue on the other side of the ball.
The Chargers’ defense was let down by its offense in their Week 10 loss. Image from: Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports.
49ers linebacker Fred Warner even said in his postgame press conference, “we just kept it simple, we literally just ran one call… I feel like, the entire second half… first and second down, we literally just ran the same thing over and over”. That’s not a good sign for Lombardi! Poor play-calling and execution on early downs has been a consistent theme for his offense, forcing Herbert into hero-ball on third-and-long situations, but it was more apparent than normal in the second half of Sunday’s game, where the Chargers gained just one first down and only 60 yards of total offense.
Predictability was a problem for Lombardi in his previous stint as an OC with the Detroit Lions, where former wide receiver Golden Tate alleged that opposing defensive players would come up to him and say that they knew exactly what plays were coming. It’s worrying that it is still a problem now, with the stakes being so much higher.
Herbert was a checkdown machine for much of Sunday’s game, which isn’t always a bad thing (Tom Brady has won many a Super Bowl on the back of some well-timed checkdowns!) but Lombardi seems either unwilling or unable to uncork his quarterback’s near-unmatched arm with deep shots. In fact, according to RBSDM, Herbert’s average depth of target beyond the line of scrimmage ranks second-worst among all qualified passers this season, ahead of only 37-year-old Matt Ryan. At times, it seems like everyone but Herbert’s own coaches know how best to utilize Herbert’s talents:
on early downs, Justin Herbert throws 5+ yards downfield on only 40.7% of att
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) November 14, 2022
that's the lowest rate of any QB in the NFL
but when he throws 5+ air yards:
+0.27 EPA/att, 53% success, 8.9 YPA
and when he throws < 5 air yards?
-0.07 EPA/att, 42% success, 4.7 YPA
Joe Lombardi
Lombardi is capable of making this offense hum -- Herbert threw for over 5,000 yards and tossed 38 touchdowns last season, and the passing game looked just fine in the first quarter of this past game -- but always seems to revert to timid and predictable play-calling when defenses start to adjust to his plans. The offense as it is currently constructed, even amidst its many injuries, is capable of being a true Cover 2 beater. Herbert can essentially teleport the ball with accuracy on any mid-range throw, and doesn’t even necessarily need an elite corps of wide receivers to do so-- that’s sort of what Patrick Mahomes has been doing all of this season, albeit with a offensive line not made of papier-mâché like Herbert’s currently is. And when the deep ball is open, Herbert is willing and able to throw the ball over the mountains and hit his receiver in stride. Thus, it’s frustrating to see him under coaches not well-equipped to maximize his rare talent.
As is mentioned in the excellent round-table discussion of the Chargers’ flawed offense in this clip, it sometimes feels like Lombardi is trying to run a Drew Brees offense with Justin Herbert at quarterback. Brees, of course, is one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever pick up a football, but his skillset and style of play is just so wildly different to Herbert’s. It’s like Lombardi bought a Lamborghini and decided to use it to go off-roading in the sand dunes.
The Los Angeles Chargers’ offense has been, for the most part, a little boring. With certain quarterbacks, that can be a good thing, even a great thing! But Justin Herbert is not one of those quarterbacks. He’s simply too talented, too rare, and too electric to be part of a boring offense. Sooner or later, someone in that coaching staff needs to figure it out, or they’ll have ended up wasting the single most valuable asset in football-- an elite quarterback on a rookie contract. One thing is for certain, though: if Herbert ever leaves this team and wins a Super Bowl elsewhere, the books written about the Chargers’ many failures will be anything but boring. ■
As is mentioned in the excellent round-table discussion of the Chargers’ flawed offense in this clip, it sometimes feels like Lombardi is trying to run a Drew Brees offense with Justin Herbert at quarterback. Brees, of course, is one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever pick up a football, but his skillset and style of play is just so wildly different to Herbert’s. It’s like Lombardi bought a Lamborghini and decided to use it to go off-roading in the sand dunes.
The Los Angeles Chargers’ offense has been, for the most part, a little boring. With certain quarterbacks, that can be a good thing, even a great thing! But Justin Herbert is not one of those quarterbacks. He’s simply too talented, too rare, and too electric to be part of a boring offense. Sooner or later, someone in that coaching staff needs to figure it out, or they’ll have ended up wasting the single most valuable asset in football-- an elite quarterback on a rookie contract. One thing is for certain, though: if Herbert ever leaves this team and wins a Super Bowl elsewhere, the books written about the Chargers’ many failures will be anything but boring. ■
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