Justin Herbert’s lauded right arm launched deep touchdowns and threaded passes through tiny windows. Now it’s quietly handing the ball off. Onlookers wring their hands about Herbert’s seemingly diminished role in an offense that suddenly ranks second in rushing, but the Chargers nod patiently as their plan settles in.
“A running game,” Chargers quarterback coach Shane Day said, “is a quarterback’s best friend.”
Through two games, Herbert’s personal stats have been mostly forgettable. Keeping pace with his first four record-setting seasons in which he threw 2,422 times for 17,223 yards seemed impossible anyway.
The only number he’s concerned with is wins, and for the first time since 2012 the Chargers had two consecutive wins to start the season behind a potent rushing attack that Herbert is content to orchestrate quietly.
“My job as a quarterback is just to be a point guard,” Herbert said. “To get [my teammates] the ball, to get us in the right looks. … As long as I’m doing that, I’m doing my job.”
Offensive coordinator Greg Roman has used a punishing ground game at his NFL stops in San Francisco, Buffalo and Baltimore. The Ravens were ranked in the top three in the NFL in yards rushing per game in each of Roman’s four seasons, including a record-setting 3,296 yards rushing in 2019 when quarterback Lamar Jackson was named NFL most valuable player. Even with Herbert’s elite arm talent, few seemed surprised at Roman’s offensive plan for the Chargers.
“Can you imagine Justin Herbert with a great running game?” Roman proposed after joining the Chargers.
The idea is only starting to take shape.
Herbert has maintained a high completion percentage (67.4%) through two games that is slightly better than his career average of 66.6%, but his yards per competition are lower than ever at a six-yard clip. Throwing for less than 200 yards in consecutive games for the first time in his career, Herbert has thrown only 46 passes during the first two games, the fewest for any two-game stretch.
But he still has three touchdown passes, surpassing the team’s two rushing touchdowns scored by J.K. Dobbins. While the running back was busy becoming the first Chargers player to rush for back-to-back 100-yard games to open a season, Herbert fired a pin-point pass to Quentin Johnston for a touchdown after the Panthers committed an extra safety in run support and left the second-year receiver in one-on-one coverage outside.
Amid the running game’s rise, Herbert’s throw “reminded everybody that he’s one of the best quarterbacks in the National Football League,” Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh said.
“Our vision is we get the run game going,” Roman said, “and the complementary play-action pass and the ability to throw the ball down the field when we can, or just check it down with numbing repetition underneath. That’s what we’re chasing.”
Herbert isn’t the only quarterback taking a backseat to the running game. During the NFL’s first two weeks, 47.6% of all plays from scrimmage were runs. The percentage has been ticking up steadily in recent seasons. The year before Herbert was drafted, teams ran the ball 42.8% of the time. Last season, they carried it on 44.3% of plays.
Roman consistently has been on the top of the rising running tide. Only twice in his previous 10 seasons as a coordinator has Roman’s offense had more passes than runs. More than 60% of the Chargers’ offensive plays during the first two games were on the ground.
But the 2019 NFL assistant coach of the year is no “cookie cutter” coordinator, offensive lineman Bradley Bozeman said. The center played for Roman in Baltimore for three seasons and signed with the Chargers in free agency this season.
“He does a great job of just continuing to grow his game and not be stuck in his ways,” Bozeman said. “He always looks at ways to utilize the weapons he has.”
Herbert, who Harbaugh compared to a “human computer chip,” is the ideal centerpiece for a system that is so dense that 10-year pro Taylor Heinicke struggled to even get a play call out when he first arrived following a post-training camp trade.
With previous stops in Minnesota, New England, Houston, Carolina, Washington and Atlanta, Heinicke called Roman’s scheme “probably the most complex” one he’s learned, especially regarding the quarterback’s responsibilities in the run game.
Some coordinators design their run plays to work against any look with minimal changes. Others refine each play to go toward a certain opposing player or to a certain technique, forcing quarterbacks to constantly process the offensive play and the defensive front and find the optimal matchup. Roman’s scheme makes quarterbacks think, Heinicke said.
Herbert might not flash his most obvious athletic gift when he’s handing the ball off, but the extra brain power required to execute a run play still uses one of Herbert’s equally valuable traits.
“We have so many checks and so many different things that we do, you got to have someone back there to be able to call that, to be able to recognize that, to identify it and to be able to get us going on the right page,” Bozeman said. “He’s the biggest part of the whole operation. Without him, we’re kind of stuck in the mud.”
After studying the scheme religiously for three weeks to get up to speed, Heinicke said he feels comfortable running the offense that has appeared effortless for Herbert from Day 1. But Day, who coached Herbert to the 2021 Pro Bowl and guided C.J. Stroud to offensive rookie of the year honors last season, knows it didn’t come easily.
The reason why Herbert can turn a scheme that might overshadow a quarterback into his perfect complement is because he “just shows up and works harder than anybody else,” Day said. “What’s his magic? He works really hard at the game and wants to be the best.”