Another year, another injury that Justin Herbert has to play through. It has become a bit of a trend for the LA Chargers signal caller to play through lingering injuries that impact his production.
Herbert has even more working against him this season. The Chargers have one of the worst group of passing weapons in the entire sport and has an offensive coordinator who is not known for his passing concepts. As a result, Chargers fans have seen a muted version of Herbert.
The team's Week 4 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs revealed the worst version of this passing offense. Herbert could never get going outside of the first drive thanks to an injured offensive line and bad passing weapons. As a result, the Chargers squandered a 10-0 first quarter lead and did not score again the rest of the game.
It has not been pretty for Herbert and while offense is down across the league, his placement among the league's top passers through four weeks highlights how bad it has been for the former Oregon Duck, specifically.
Rank | Quarterback | Passing yards |
|---|---|---|
1. | Geno Smith | 1,182 |
2. | Brock Purdy | 1,130 |
3. | Dak Prescott | 1,072 |
4 | C.J. Stroud | 1,054 |
5. | Jared Goff | 1,015 |
6. | Baker Mayfield | 984 |
7. | Joe Burrow | 978 |
8. | Matthew Stafford | 978 |
9. | Sam Darnold | 932 |
------------ | ------------ | ------------ |
29. | Justin Herbert | 578 |
Justin Herbert's ranking in passing yards proves how broken the Chargers' offense is
There are 28 quarterbacks who have more passing yards than Justin Herbert through four weeks of the 2024 season. Granted, passing yards are not the end-all be-all, but it still helps highlight how unproductive Herbert has been because of the problems that exist within this offense.
Even in a slump, a quarterback who is meant to rank in the top five should never rank 29th in the league in passing yards. It obviously is mostly out of Herbert's control as the team has given him awful weapons and he is playing hurt, but it doesn't change the fact that the offense is broken.
Andy Dalton, who has only played two games this season, only has 39 fewer passing yards than Herbert. Jordan Love, who also has only played two games, has 71 more passing yards. Bo Nix, who literally had negative passing yards in the first half against the New York Jets this past week, has 82 more passing yards.
Name any mediocre quarterback and they probably have more passing yards than Herbert has this season. The only quarterback in the NFL with fewer passing yards while starting all four games is Jacoby Brissett. When Brissett is the only quarterback Herbert has bested you know it is a problem.
Again, this is not meant to be a take down of Herbert. It is quite the opposite. It is proving that this new offense is not serving its star quarterback. It looked great when the Chargers could run the ball against bad teams like the Las Vegas Raiders and Carolina Panthers but once a well-coached team loads the box to stop the run, like the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chiefs, there is nothing the Chargers can do on offense.
That sentiment should never even be plausible when you have a franchise quarterback like Justin Herbert under center. The Chargers need to do better by their star quarterback, plain and simple.