The Herbert Blueprint, part 1 of 3
Introduction
I have been a Chargers fan long enough to know what hope does to your eyesight. When Justin Herbert arrived in 2020 and threw his way to Offensive Rookie of the Year, rewriting the rookie record book as he went, he did not look like a quarterback who would need anything from anyone. He looked like the answer, and for a long time I watched him that way: every sack was the line’s fault, every stalled drive the coordinator’s, every early playoff exit somebody else’s bill.
Seven seasons and five coordinators later, that view has been harder to hold. The flaws were probably always there if I was inclined to look for them, and over the last few years I had come round to accepting that he was not perfect. This season has pushed me further. Watching him in Mike McDaniel’s offense, I have had to accept something I resisted for a long time: Herbert has a tangible ceiling, and it sits below the elite tier of quarterbacks rather than amongst the very best of his contemporaries.
That is not a verdict on his physical talent, his toughness or his commitment, all of which remain exceptional. It is a description of the kind of quarterback he is. It was hard for me to see Herbert as human after the super-heroic efforts of his rookie season, but I think it is time the Chargers followed suit, and recognised that his next offensive scheme needs to be tailored to his limitations rather than hoping all the pieces fall into place for him to take the leap from good to great.
The thesis
The honest truth is that Justin Herbert is a reactive passer in a league that increasingly rewards predication. He identifies what a defense is doing quickly once it declares itself, and he has the arm to punish it the instant it does. What he seems less comfortable doing is seeing a window before it exists which is especially prevalent against the context of the complexities of split-field coverages and disguised presentations which defenses are proficient at running now. This isn’t a problem unique to Herbert but his style of play is suffering for it to a exponentially higher degree.
That makes him slightly too dependent on the offensive structure around him. He needs space to throw a line drive into, legibility in route distributions that resolve cleanly after the snap and time in a pocket that holds through his read. With all three he looks like one of the best throwers in football. Muddy any of them and he tends to hesitate just long enough for pressure to arrive. Five coordinators in, no system has supplied all three at once. This chapter sets out who Herbert truly is as a quarterback. The next will aim to set out the offense that would give him all three.
Justin Herbert in brief
Herbert is a 6’6″ line-drive thrower whose game is built on ball velocity and a flat trajectory rather than touch. Before the snap he is an elite reader who controls the motion, shift and check game at the line. After it, he processes quickly but reactively: he throws what he sees, not what he expects. His pocket movement and the threat of his legs extend plays and bend defenses on boot and naked action, and his toughness is beyond question. He is less complete in the parts of the position that require deciding before the evidence arrives, such as anticipation throws, protection ownership and checking out of a run, and in throws that need speed taken off the ball.
At his best, he has looked like a generational talent. He was Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2020 with a rookie-record 31 touchdown passes, followed it with 5,014 yards and 38 touchdowns in 2021, and has produced special moments few quarterbacks could: the late drives against the Raiders in January 2022, the 2023 masterclass against Minnesota, and a 2024 season in which he threw three interceptions on 504 attempts. He has done most of it behind unstable lines, and some of it through broken bones and strained ligaments.
At his lowest, the results have not matched the talent. He is still without a playoff win, after a 27-point lead collapsed in Jacksonville in the 2022 season, four interceptions in the 2024 wild-card loss to Houston and a 16-3 defeat in New England last January. Those results weren’t his fault, but each of them showed his worst traits in a bright spotlight. This season has been the hardest yet: an 0-7 start in which he has looked like a shell of himself, making uncharacteristically poor decisions to contribute heavily to every single loss.
Both versions are real, that’s an inescapable truth now, and the rest of this chapter tries to explain how they fit together through examining what he does best, where he is limited, and how each of the five offenses have brought out both sides of his game.
What he does best
Arm talent
Herbert’s best football comes in the moment a defender commits; a half step in the wrong direction and Justin is sending a missile mere inches beyond his reach to a place where only his receiver could have caught it. The best example is the sideline hole-shot; a personal favorite of mine. This tends to come when the corner clamps down on a flat control route and Herbert identifies it immediately. He fires a line drive over the corner’s head and under the half-field safety before the window can close.
The best part of it is he doesn’t even care if the corner recognises it ahead of time because unless they had completely abandoned their duties, they’d never get deep enough to match the ball speed he can generate. Few quarterbacks throw that ball as effectively, because few have the velocity to make so brief a window playable.
The same reflex runs through the middle of the field. Against pure zone coverage he fits flat, hard throws through the seams between levels, and whilst these are not anticipation throws, they can break any coverage, because they arrive fast enough that the window is still there when the ball does. His arm talent buys him patience. A receiver can break back to the ball late on a comeback or a stop and Herbert can still deliver it on time, which lets him wait out a picture that other quarterbacks would have to guess at.
Command and creation
He is at his most comfortable before the snap. He identifies shells and expected rotations, kills plays into better ones, and runs the motion and shift game himself, often correcting teammates as he goes. Before this season there was no-one on the field that knew the scheme better than him. So when the pre-snap picture holds he is able to work full-field progressions as cleanly as anyone. Earlier in his career, in systems that allowed for it, he could get to his fourth read in a flash, with his base firmly under him, ready to expose any window left vulnerable.
The command of his craft also extends to his immaculate form; if I was a high school coach I’d be telling my quarterback to copy everything Herbert does from taking the snap through to the release point. His base is never compromised by his footwork, his power creation comes from an efficient process from his back-foot to his shoulders and his throwing mechanics are both clean and consistent.
Herbert is by no means a robot though, his command blends with creation when is put on the move through play-action or when the play breaks down, especially in clutch moments. The credible threat of his legs pulls second-level defenders toward the line on boot, naked and keeper action, and the associated defensive hesitation enables him to reduce his reads down to a clear high-low. He still makes solid decisions in these situations though and that’s another measure of his control.
When a play breaks down down, he steps up or rolls out with equal comfort, keeps his eyes downfield, and throws accurately from platforms most passers would abandon, whether rolling to his left or finding late windows whilst being dragged down. He has the confidence to extend plays in the biggest moments because he knows he can rely on his strength and arm talent to buy his receivers the extra split second they need to get open. Herbert’s immense physical abilities rise to the surface in the game critical situations, ask a group of Chargers’ fans about his most clutch plays and they’d recall a different moment because his rรฉsumรฉ is littered with borderline impossible plays. His ability to claw back wins when everything else around him is imperfect is a trait that the best quarterbacks in history have, if that resilience could extend to his coaches and teammates then there would be a different discourse instead of this candid appraisal.
The competitor
That is also why he tends to be at his most dangerous on third-and-long and in late-game situations where the down has nowhere else to go. Once the mental runway provided by space and time is gone, his reactive style stops being a constraint. He is forced to throw ahead of schedule, and in those moments his version of anticipation looks close to what we see from the likes of Josh Allen, Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes. I have always liked that he tries to win games with his arm even when everything around him is failing. The interceptions against the Texans, whilst devastating in the moment, would have be praised by his coaches because that undying confidence is so hard to cultivate especially in someone as down-to-earth as Justin is.
Underneath it all are toughness and buy-in. He has played through injuries that would sideline most starters, he grits his teeth and makes plays in the tough moments because he wants to be a constant for his teammates. The incredible throw above came a few plays after he broke his ribs. Additionally, before the disastrous 2026 season he gave every scheme his full commitment. His leadership is quiet and understated, but his teammates follow his competitive spirit when it matters most.
Anticipation is a way of saving time: the ball leaves before the window opens. Herbert spends time instead. His willingness to stand in and take a hit, and an arm that can still beat the window late, let him wait for the picture other quarterbacks predict. He has found a way to make football work without the visual map the best of his peers carry, but every half-second he buys is paid for in hits taken and pressure invited.
Where he is limited
Post-snap processing
The other side of a reactive thrower is that they typically struggle when the evidence arrives late. Herbert does not seem to see things well enough before they develop. If a route distribution is poorly designed and leaves a murky read, where two defenders could plausibly take the same receiver or the key defender’s leverage never resolves, he tends to hold the ball until it does. That hesitation is often long enough to invite pressure.
Herbert’s processing has a specific shape. On the key defender a concept is built around, such as the depth of the corner he is reading, he identifies the adjustment quickly and throws on it. That speed does not seem to extend across the field to his third and fourth reads, or to defenders he has already discounted from the coverage plan based on pre-snap alignments.
If a weak-side edge player does not rush, Herbert appears to lack the non-visual map that would tell him that player has dropped into the very window he is about to throw into. By that stage of the progression he is often under pressure and throwing almost blind, which is where simulated pressure and dropping outside linebackers do their damage. He can read the defenders he is keyed on, but not, it seems, the ones he has ruled out.
He also appears to lack a deep understanding of where his receivers will be. Elite creators throw to a spot because they know the route, the depth and the timing, while Herbert tends to wait to see the receiver come open. That makes quick game play slower than designed and one-step shotgun throws an awkward fit. Layered backfield sequences such as RPOs, double fakes and pump-fake screens are harder for him too, because each layer asks him to decide before he can see.
Throttle and touch
Herbert’s arm has a comfort zone; it is built for velocity on a flat line, with limited control over his throttle and touch, and he seems to find it hard to take speed off the ball or drop it over one defender and in front of another. The flat trajectory also costs him at the line of scrimmage: a low release lane gives interior defenders a chance to get hands up, and he tends to have a notable number of passes batted down each season. Deep throws tend to fly low and get pinned to back shoulders, which require a cohesion with his receivers that isn’t often established, and high outside verticals and red-zone fades are rarely good bets due to the angle of the ball flight.
One area I thought time would improve more than it has is how he throws when space is hard to find. His ball placement against tight man coverage, his work in the red zone and his reliability on fourth-and-short all depend on him finding ways around the lack of room a line-drive thrower needs. His numbers don’t look bad in these situations but in reality it takes too much creation to overcome the shortcoming of not having a variable throwing style.
Mechanically, the wrong-foot-up shotgun footwork installed by Mike McDaniel seems to have replaced a pattern that worked, and I also find that from under center he sometimes sets deep enough to expose his tackles to speed rushers. Both are fixable with a better set of coaches in his corner, so they don’t form a large part of my analysis.
The burden of being the answer
The final three drives of regulation in the epic Week 18 game against the Raiders in January 2022 are always where my mind goes when I consider the difference between throwing because he is forced to and throwing because he knows a route will break open. When you watch that game back that was hero-ball at its finest, it was electric and exhilarating but it was not a sustainable trait; anticipation can’t grow from throwing early just because the clock demanded he had to.
Maybe if the team had surrounded Justin with receivers who sight-adjust with him, as Keenan Allen and Mike Williams did in that unforgettable fourth quarter display, the shared timing of those adjustments could have been the closest thing his game has to anticipation. Ladd McConkey has that feel, but his unavailability and the complete lack of other options have exposed deficiencies which a good coverage plan finds more often than not.
In 2025 Justin Herbert was averaging 8.9 Y/A and +0.12 EPA per play with Ladd McConkey on the field, against 3.9 Y/A and โ0.61 without him
The authority side of the position shows the same deference. He leaves protection identification to his center, and his run-pass checks are often wrong because he defers to what his teammates do best rather than to what the defensive presentation calls for. After the snap, that deference can turn into rescue mode. He waits on teammates as long as he can, then forces the ball once the runway ends, takes sacks rather than throwing it away, and tries to release so late, with defenders wrapped around him, that the ball comes loose.
This season has exposed a mental habit he needs to be coached out of. When frustration builds, he forces plays, because the failings of the wider organisation have taught him, unintentionally, that he is the only answer. He has never had a sure feel for when to push and when to hold. Early in his career he held too often; as the years eroded his trust in the offensive infrastructure around him, he has been moulded into a quarterback who is aggressive at all the wrong moments.
Five coordinators, five partial answers
Every offense Herbert has played in has exposed part of this profile.
Shane Steichen ran the offense in his record-setting rookie season and found a recipe that worked (more on this later in the series). But it was a scheme that took trust away from its quarterback, especially in tight games, where ultra-conservative play-calling invited losing scenarios to play out.
Joe Lombardi, a Sean Payton disciple, asked him to find the weak point in the coverage and hit it as defenders turned to the ball. It played to his reactive strengths, but it capped the offense’s explosiveness and only worked when execution was mistake-free. Drives took too long too which led to limitations of how the Chargers could win games in this era.
Kellen Moore brought good ideas from several systems with no single base beneath them. Some game plans suited Herbert brilliantly, with the 2023 game against Minnesota the high point, but most of the season felt disjointed, especially on the ground, and the offense had no identity to fall back on when the plan was imperfect.
Greg Roman bought time through volume control by way of a vertical boot action passing game that was paired with the power run game which protected him and simplified his reads. However the passing game was capped by its simplicity and the protection problems were never designed around.
Mike McDaniel asked for the one thing Herbert rarely supplies: quick throws to a spot on timing, with receivers trusted to arrive after his release. Herbert held the ball to see them, and when he tried to speed up, his mechanics broke down and everything was made worse for it. It has easily been the worst fit of his career, as the numbers portray.
The pattern is consistent; each system supplied some of space, legibility and time but none supplied all three, and they all failed to hold up when execution slipped. When combined with the roster building failures, it would have taken a transcendent quarterback talent to drag the Chargers to any Super Bowl of the past seven seasons; the fact that Herbert didn’t achieve it is not a mark on who he is as a player but it does humanize him in a way that I can no longer turn a blind eye to.
Conclusion: who Herbert is
Herbert is neither a franchise quarterback who has simply been let down, nor one who has let the franchise down. He is an elite reactive thrower: quick to identify a keyed defender, devastating into windows he can see, tough beyond measure and generous to a fault with his teammates.
He is also a quarterback who seems to need the picture handed to him to a degree, a player who tends to wait when it is murky, and whose arm is built to drive the ball rather than shape it. Those limits are what put his ceiling just below the elite tier. They are also specific enough to design around, which makes the Chargers’ next decision a design question before it is a talent question. It’s time the organisation acknowledged his flaws so that the next appointment can focus on winning in spite of them rather than blindly hoping he finds his way to the top of the food chain through sheer self-determination.
It is worth remembering that quarterbacks with limits have won, and won big, when the offense was built to cover for their flaws. Sam Darnold, long dismissed for seeing ghosts under pressure, won Super Bowl LX inside Klint Kubiak’s boot-heavy, play-action structure in Seattle. Jimmy Garoppolo reached a Super Bowl in Kyle Shanahan’s offense on the strength of designed, visible windows rather than creation. Jared Goff went to a Super Bowl with Sean McVay and an NFC Championship Game with Ben Johnson, two play-callers who did much of his seeing for him before the snap.
None of them was asked to be the whole offense. Each was given space, legibility and time by design. Herbert’s limits are not identical to theirs, and his physical talent exceeds all three, which is exactly the point. If a scheme can win with those quarterbacks with more severe limitations, then a scheme built in a way that is true to Justin Herbert should be able to win games in January and beyond.
Next: the offense he needs
Chapter 2 (dropping shortly) of this three-part series will assess what type of offense will suit Herbert best. The league’s defenses are changing shape, from the Quarters-heavy two-high shells that punish Herbert’s flat ball toward the vision-based and Palms-style match coverages that may re-open the windows he has thrived on. It maps what those defenses are doing to him, the offense that pays the taxes of space, legibility and time up front, and the existing schemes that come closest to building it.
Great read Ryan. It is evidently clear that this system isn’t working for him and to thrive he needs WR who can get even slight separation to give him a window. He also has severely lacked a true 50/50 guy that can be given a chance to make a play when everything breaks down. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
Brilliant as usual
I would venture to say that the answer is the Erhardt-Perkins system which will allow Justin to make specific (and simpler) pre-snap reads and motions.
I actually had Daboll as my number one target for OC last spring because of this system fit. The E-P system will be featured in parts 2 and 3 of this series.
Great article. Itโs clear Herbert has flaws, and itโs seems his prior coaches have been reluctant to teach him out of those. That sort of goes with trying to navigate a win-now job. McDaniel is actually trying to teach him something, but it looks like itโs going to take more time than anyone will have patience for.
I’ve felt for a while now that Shane Day has felt more like a comfort coach than the right QB coach for him based on the lack of improvement in those areas that have been common for most fans to have noticed such as the batted passes.
I agree, I personally think a clean sweep is required of the offensive coaches. That includes all legacy guys like Shane Day and Sanjay Lal as it’s clear they’re not doing their jobs to an effective enough degree to be conisered worth the continuity benefit.