It couldn’t have been worse than this. The Los Angeles Chargers are 0-4, and there is no one to blame but the team’s offensive line, who are not doing their job of protecting their star quarterback, Justin Herbert, the way they were supposed to. This has led to head coach Jim Harbaugh feuding with a reporter as they threw a question at him.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
“Yeah, that just sounds more like an insult than it does a question, but that’s the way you look at it,” Harbaugh said, according to MLFootball, when asked why Herbert was still one of the most pressured quarterbacks in the league. “I’m saying that, yeah, it’s the kind of competitor that he is where I’ve never seen him flinch. I’ve never seen him rattled. He’s an amazing inspiration, and that’s what we do. We all feed off of that.”
Harbaugh continued talking about how the team has been improving, but the reporter wasn’t satisfied with his answer, and while he cleared that the question wasn’t meant as an insult, he said he was “just asking you why.”
Harbaugh then replied, “I think I answered your question. Can I answer it the same way?” to which the reporter disagreed, saying that he didn’t answer the question, with Harbaugh reiterating his thoughts again: “I think I did (answer the question).”
It was a back-and-forth with the reporter, with Harbaugh slightly drifting away from the question, but the stats really point in the other direction. The defending champions, Seahawks, welcomed Herbert at Lumen Field on Sunday and kept pressurizing him for the whole game.
Herbert recorded 19 of 31 passes for 189 yards and a touchdown, but was sacked four times during the game. He could have been sacked fifth time had DeMarcus Lawrence not hit Herbert too low on one play, giving the QB a chance to escape. He also threw two interceptions in the game, one of which was due to him being pressured.
Under pressure, Herbert completed 7 of 13 passes for 101 yards, which was impressive given that he “was pressured on 55 percent of his dropbacks, the second-highest pressure rate he has faced since the start of last season,” according to John Boyle of Seahawks.com. Both offensive linemen Cole Strange and Jake Slaughter each allowed six quarterback pressures.
Herbert has been sacked 12 times in four games, tied for the most in the league.
But this problem of Herbert needing to be a “superhero,” as the reporter mentioned, isn’t new. Herbert has dealt with the most sacks, being the second-most-sacked quarterback in the league in the last two seasons combined, with the number being a staggering 95. This stat makes more sense as Harbaugh was hired in 2024, with the sacks stat continuously increasing since then. Herbert was just mentioned in the same company as one of the NFL’s biggest busts.
“Herbert is the first Chargers quarterback with at least six picks and 10 sacks through the team’s first four games of a season since Ryan Leaf in 2000,” Kevin Patra of NFL.com said.
Not only that, Herbert played the worst first half of his NFL career on Sunday, completing just five passes for 36 yards (35.7% completion percentage) and needing to play aggressively in the second half.
This offense has been led by the Chargers’ offensive coordinator, Mike McDaniel, who was hired this offseason and wanted to change the way Herbert played, which included working on his footwork to “own” the position; meanwhile, he said he wanted to do everything to save Herbert from hits and help him perform even better.
Well, that has certainly not been the case, with Herbert hitting a new low of just 59.7% completion percentage in four games, and the offense struggling as well, with the Seahawks recording 9 tackles for loss in Week 4 alone.
Being last in the AFC West division, the Chargers will now face the Denver Broncos on Sunday, with the Broncos coming in with a 2-2 record.
The pressure is really eating Herbert’s seven-year experience away, and Harbaugh and McDaniel would have to take action quickly, or this could also be the last of what we see of Herbert with the Chargers, with rumors linking to him being available for trade to the New York Jets surfacing online.