{"id":903976,"date":"2026-09-21T10:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T10:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/903976\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T10:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T10:28:10","slug":"justin-herbert-has-been-the-quarterback-of-tomorrow-his-entire-nfl-career-whose-fault-is-that-nfl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/903976\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Herbert has been the quarterback of tomorrow his entire NFL career. Whose fault is that? | NFL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justin Herbert is one of the most promising quarterbacks in the NFL<\/a>. In fact, Justin Herbert has forever been one of the most promising quarterbacks in the NFL. That adjective, \u201cpromising,\u201d continued to be load-bearing on Sunday, as Herbert and his Chargers turned in an underwhelming performance in a 26-14 loss to the Raiders. Los Angeles are now 0-2 on the year, with those losses coming to the team that just picked No 1 in the draft and a moribund Arizona who picked No 3. Stockholders in Herbert\u2019s growth were taking a beating in after-hours trading. But, as ever, there\u2019s plenty of reason to debate whether Herbert underachieved or whether his team let him down.<\/p>\n

Herbert is 6ft 6in, can run, has a golden right arm and is capable of making astonishing throws<\/a>. NFL decision-makers view him as roughly the sixth-best QB in the league but also say things like<\/a>, \u201cHe should have more accolades at this point.\u201d Certainly, he should have more wins this season, but on Sunday the 28-year-old found himself outdueled by one of the league\u2019s senior citizens in Vegas quarterback Kirk Cousins, who is 10 years his senior. Herbert completed 15 of 27 passes for a touchdown and two interceptions, and he also took three sacks. Cousins threw a pick and took two sacks but was much more efficient from down to down (8.7 yards per attempt to Herbert\u2019s 7.1), and the Chargers offense mostly sputtered. In 13 possessions, Los Angeles put together two long touchdown drives and otherwise didn\u2019t march more than 30 yards in a series.<\/p>\n

How much of this is Herbert\u2019s fault, though? It\u2019s an eternal question, and one that came up after the Chargers\u2019 playoff wildcard loss to the Patriots last season. In that game, Herbert played miserably but arguably had no chance not to be terrible, because the New England defenders were in his face all evening. In almost any Herbert loss, one can easily find examples of his teammates letting him down. Sunday was another good example. Herbert wasn\u2019t terrific by any means, and given his billing, he\u2019d ideally be able to get over failures by his teammates. But there\u2019s not much the QB can do when tight end David Njoku bobbles a catch on an ever so slightly underthrown ball and turns it into an interception<\/a>. Or when an under-pressure Herbert throws a ball that either of two receivers could catch without a problem, but one cuts off the other and drops it. Then there\u2019s the injury luck \u2013 not so much to Herbert, who has generally been durable while playing through a number of injuries \u2013 but to those around him. Every year, a key member of his line or receiving corps seems to go down with a season-ending injury, leaving him exposed or without a weapon to deploy against opposing defenses. There are also question marks over the coaches who have overseen his career. Jim Harbaugh came to the Chargers with high expectations, but has yet to win a playoff game with the team, while Mike McDaniel, the team\u2019s new offensive coordinator, has a reputation as a schematic whiz, but the Chargers offense has sputtered.<\/p>\n

Herbert, of course, must shoulder some of the blame himself. The Chargers have not done a good job of protecting him, but the very best quarterbacks find a way to win even when the pocket collapses. He is also 0-3 in the playoffs \u2013 a small sample size, but it still raises question marks about how he performs against the very best teams. Unfortunately, this season there have been question marks against very average teams too.<\/p>\n

The blame game will be in vogue this week. A team that we expected to contend with the Chiefs and Broncos for the AFC West have already dug themselves a substantial hole, and they\u2019ve done it while using up one of the easiest stretches of schedule that any team will face all year. The Chargers are the only 0-2 team in the division and one of just four in the AFC. To recover, they\u2019ll need Herbert to be Superman. He has that gear, but consistency remains elusive, and the team\u2019s margin for error is now awfully thin.<\/p>\n

MVP of the weekBrock Purdy has led his team to a 2-0 record to start the season. Photograph: Kelley L Cox\/AP<\/p>\n

Brock Purdy, QB, San Francisco 49ers. According to ESPN\u2019s QBR ratings, Purdy had one of the 10 best games by a quarterback<\/a> since the rankings began in 2006 (in case you\u2019re wondering, the best was from Carson Palmer in 2009<\/a>). Admittedly, Purdy was playing against the Dolphins on Sunday but he was superb: he completed 20 of his 22 passes for 287 yards and two touchdowns. He was also his team\u2019s leading rusher with 30 yards and a touchdown on three carries. This came after another three-touchdown performance in the season opener against the No Sleep Till Melbourne Los Angeles Rams. Most of us expected the Niners to settle for a wildcard place out of the stacked NFC West this season but at this rate they could take the division.<\/p>\n

Stat of the week<\/p>\n

56. How many fewer points the Bears scored in their loss to the Vikings on Sunday, as compared to in their 59-37 romp over Carolina in Week 1. Chicago entered the week on as much of a spiritual high as the franchise has enjoyed in decades but ended it in a much more concerning place. Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores had Caleb Williams and the offense in a blender all afternoon, and then things got considerably worse in the fourth quarter. That\u2019s when Williams injured his hamstring, seriously enough that he wasn\u2019t putting weight on his right leg as he walked off the field. (Reporters did see him walking under his own power<\/a> as he left the locker room later.) Bears head coach Ben Johnson said he was \u201chappy it\u2019s nothing with the knee,\u201d ruling out a torn ACL, and that the team would learn more on Monday.<\/p>\n

Video of the week<\/p>\n

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The Steelers\u2019 dreadful offense painted their masterpiece on a third-and-7 at the Patriots\u2019 22-yard line, in a game that CBS subject millions to as its national game of the week with Jim Nantz and JJ Watt in the booth. Trailing 10-0 in the second quarter, Aaron Rodgers took a shotgun snap and quickly found himself in a New England situation, as his blockers let pass rushers converge from both his left and right. What followed was a circus. Both teams booted the ball on the ground for a solid seven seconds. The catastrophe came to a humorous end when the Steelers\u2019 left tackle, 317-pounder Troy Fautanu, fell on the ball for a loss of 36 yards that pushed Pittsburgh out of field-goal range. The Patriots went on to a 20-3 win. The Steelers\u2019 offense looks even worse this year under 42-year-old Rodgers and his once-and-present head coach, the supposed offensive thinker Mike McCarthy.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere around the league<\/p>\n

Williams wasn\u2019t the only top-two pick from the 2024 draft to get hurt. Commanders QB Jayden Daniels did not make it through his team\u2019s 37-20 loss at the Cowboys. Particularly upsetting was the location of his injury: the same left elbow that Daniels dislocated last season. An offensive lineman stepped on Daniels\u2019s foot during an under-center exchange, and he appeared to hurt the elbow while trying to break his fall to the turf. A replay of Daniels\u2019s elbow bending in the wrong direction prompted a relatable exclamation of \u201coh shit\u201d from Tom Brady, watching from the Fox booth. Daniels throws with his right arm (ie: not the one injured here), but that\u2019s only of mild comfort to the Commanders. Washington head coach Dan Quinn said after the game<\/a> that Daniels had indeed dislocated his elbow again, although no bones were broken. The quarterback is expected to return at some point this season.<\/p>\n

Jayden Daniels falls to the ground after his injury on Sunday. Photograph: Amanda Mccoy\/TNS\/ZUMA Press Wire\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Spare a thought for the players in the Eagles\u2019 win over the Titans in Nashville. Fox reported that the turf (not the air) temperature reached 157F (69.4C) and some players\u2019 cleats even melted<\/a>. \u201cIt was hot as shit, everybody was as hot as shit,\u201d Eagles<\/a> head coach Nick Sirianni said after his team\u2019s 24-20 win. \u201cI didn\u2019t play a snap and I had to get an IV.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeVonta Smith makes a catch to score for the Eagles. Photograph: John Amis\/AP<\/p>\n

The Browns beat the Buccaneers behind an unusually competent effort from their pitiful quarterback, Deshaun Watson. The QB on the losing end was Baker Mayfield, whom the Browns chased off after 2021 so that they could sign Watson to the worst contract in football history. Watson has spent his Browns career either injured, ineffective, or suspended after the league looked into allegations of serial sexual misconduct. Watson\u2019s 24-of-30 effort for 238 yards and two touchdowns doesn\u2019t absolve him, or the Browns, of anything but does save the franchise a bit of short-term embarrassment that would have come with Mayfield beating them.<\/p>\n

The Panthers enjoyed one of the most dominant wins of the young season, a 34-3 destruction of a Falcons team that again started third-string QB Cooper Rush (and also played training camp darling Jack Strand, an undrafted rookie from Division II Minnesota State-Moorhead). The story here was about a QB with a more robust pedigree: Bryce Young, whose career looks like it might amount to something after all. The 2023 No 1 pick came on strong in the last few months of last season and played well. Young averaged eight yards per throw while avoiding interceptions. Even better, Young\u2019s sharpest connection was with 2025 first-round wideout Tetairoa McMillan, who torched Atlanta corner AJ Terrell for a 26-yard completion in the first three minutes and went on to a 101-yard day. Young remains a work in progress \u2013 his third-down performance left much to be desired, and he took two sacks \u2013 but seeing that progress doesn\u2019t require a squint. Most of the best performances of Young\u2019s career have come between last November and now.<\/p>\n

The Chiefs have enjoyed many charmed moments in the Andy Reid-Patrick Mahomes era. They almost pulled off their greatest trick yet on Sunday Night Football against the Colts. Then they didn\u2019t, yet they won anyway. After kicking a field goal to take the lead on the first possession of overtime, the Chiefs turned the game over to their defense. A stop would win the game, a field goal would extend it, and a touchdown would hand it over to the Colts. Daniel Jones connected on a 48-yard bomb to journeyman wideout Laquon Treadwell, who went to the ground, got up, ran in a circle for a moment, and then seemingly fumbled away the game to the Chiefs. But video review found that Treadwell had possessed the ball before he was touched on his way to the ground, meaning the sequence that led to his fumble never really happened. Granted a reprieve, Indianapolis played ultra-conservatively and knotted things at 30-30 on a field goal. Surprisingly to no one but Colts coach Shane Steichen, Patrick Mahomes retook possession and marched the Chiefs to a winning field goal by Harrison Butker. Some guys have all the luck, even in the rare instances when they don\u2019t. The Colts have now lost nine in a row.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Herbert is one of the most promising quarterbacks in the NFL. In fact, Justin Herbert has forever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-903976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}