NFL 28, COVID 3
The league is blowing its lead against the virus. Plus, appreciating Chargers rookie QB Justin Herbert and our can't miss Thursday Night Football picks
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Justin Herbert might be the best quarterback of the Class of 2020
In appreciation of your new favorite Charger QB to never win a Super Bowl
Justin Herbert wasn’t the prize of the 2020 NFL Draft. He was a consolation pick after Joe Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa were snapped up within the first five selections. He was supposed to spend his rookie season slowly acclimating to Sunday football under the tutelage of veteran starter Tyrod Taylor.
Instead, he’s been the Chargers’ starter for three of the first four weeks after Taylor missed his scheduled Week 2 start after a team doctor punctured his lung while attempting to treat a rib injury. Although head coach Anthony Lynn has suggested the starting job is still the veteran’s once he’s healthy again, Hebert’s performance Sunday should mean Taylor’s trip to the bench is permanent. The former Oregon star looked like anything but an afterthought — 290 passing yards, three touchdowns — in a Week 4 loss to the Buccaneers.
Herbert went toe-to-toe with Tom Brady in a game Austin Ekeler left in the first quarter with a hamstring injury and Pro Bowl tight end Hunter Henry failed to record a first-half catch. He staked his claim as a future star behind an arsenal of perfectly placed passes to players who may have been buried in Tampa Bay’s pregame scouting report. Here he is, uncorking an absolute rainbow to Tyron Johnson for the undrafted free agent’s first NFL catch:
A couple drives later, he pushed the Chargers to a two-possession lead with a precise back-shoulder throw to Donald Parham, who is listed on the depth chart as the team’s FOURTH tight end:
The coverage on this play is solid! Second-year cornerback Sean Murphy-Bunting, one of the bright spots of Tampa’s 2019 season, is close enough to stick his helmet in Parham’s chest. There’s a roughly two-foot window where the ball needs to be to make this play a touchdown. Herbert fit it in there as though it were a screen pass.
When the Buccaneers erased a 17-point deficit to take a third-quarter lead, Herbert responded the same way he had all game. He dropped a gorgeous deep ball to a lesser-known target in the face of pressure. This time, it was a 72-yarder to Jalen Guyton.
This precision wasn’t limited to his more anonymous teammates. Herbert incorporated his stars more in the second half, showcasing his ability to not only step up against pressure but fit passes into spaces where either his guy is going to get it … or no one will. This was *another* high degree of difficulty throw the rookie turned into a Los Angeles first down, this time targeting perennial Pro Bowl wideout Keenan Allen.
Herbert’s also shown a certain level of fearlessness when it comes to extending plays and drives with his legs. He’s proven happy to throw his 6’6, 236-pound frame into linebackers and safeties with little consideration for sliding. That’s made him a valuable, if not prolific, weapon on the ground thanks in part to his 4.6-second 40 speed. Though he’s only run for 47 yards in three games, Lynn has been happy to throw him into the running game the same way he might have with Taylor. That includes strategies lifted directly from the pages of a service academy playbook.
There’s going to be a reckoning for Herbert. These tight window throws are going to backfire at some point turning his high-risk, high-reward throws downfield into turnovers. We saw it with just over two minutes to play when he floated a touch pass into zone coverage and gave Carlton Davis a way-too-easy interception to end the game. The growing pains will be very real as teams gather NFL game tape on him and pick apart his bad habits.
But! There’s so much to like about the way he’s played, especially after losing the catalyst to his running game in Week 4. Through a quarter of the season, he ranks seventh in the league in completion rate (72 percent) and fifth in average yards per pass (8.7). He’s not coasting on easy dump-offs and big runs after the catch, either; at 7.1 air yards per attempt, his average pass covers more distance than notable deep-ball savants like Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray, Philip Rivers, and Cam Newton.
Does that mean he’ll be the best quarterback in his class? It’s way too soon to tell. Tua Tagovailoa hasn’t played yet and will continue to sit behind Ryan Fitzpatrick through at least Week 5. Joe Burrow is stuck behind one of the NFL’s worst offensive lines. Here’s how the Bengal quarterback and his Los Angeles draft-mate shake up through one quarter of their rookie campaigns:
Burrow’s been a bright spot for a typically frustrating Cincinnati team. The same goes for Herbert in Los Angeles. His ceiling may not be as high as the man coming off quite possibly the greatest college football season of all time but Herbert can, at the very least, put himself in the race for 2020’s offensive rookie of the year.
That would be a major win for the Chargers, who knew 2020 would be a rebuilding year after Philip Rivers departed for Indianapolis. In three games, Herbert has shown the promise of a franchise quarterback. The question now is whether he can keep this pace, or if those rapidly shrinking windows will snap shut once opponents can properly scout the rookie QB. — CD
Thursday Night Football picks
This week’s opener is a kinda, sorta rematch of Super Bowl 52. Tom Brady and not-the-Patriots will face Nick Foles and not-the-Eagles on Thursday night. Both teams are 3-1, though they’ve taken different paths to get there.
Brady’s Buccaneers have won three straight and currently sit atop Football Outsiders’ efficiency rankings. The Bears started the season 3-0 by relying mostly on their top-10 defense, but they’re coming off their first loss of the season and not coincidentally, it came against their first opponent with a pulse (the Colts). Foles, who usurped Mitchell Trubisky as the Bears’ quarterback midway through a comeback against the Falcons, is looking for his first win as a starter since Jan. 6, 2019. That was also the Eagles’ last playoff win, and it came on the same field where the Bucs and Bears will be playing.
We’re not optimistic about Foles’ chances this time at Soldier Field, however. The entire panel is taking the road team.
In honor of Bill O’Brien’s ousting, we recruited Texans fan Luke Zimmermann to be this week’s guest picker. Luke is relieved O’Brien’s reign of terror is over, but is terrified of the prospects of Jack Easterby consolidating power. Like previous guest pickers, Luke is a former SB Nation employee. He helped direct college football and basketball coverage, and he also started up Ohio State blog Land-Grant Holy Land. Since leaving the company (on his own terms, a rarity), he’s worked in the video game space.
By Friday, we’ll know if we nailed the TNF game, and we’ll also have the rest of Week 5’s picks ready for your enjoyment/judgment. — SH
NFL vs. COVID
COVID is storming back to crush the NFL’s 28-3 lead over the virus. Another Patriots player has tested positive, reigning Defensive Player of the Year cornerback Stephon Gilmore, but the league is, so far, still planning to play Sunday’s game in New England between the Patriots and Broncos.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, two more Titans players have tested positive for the virus, and the league is investigating whether or not players have been working out together off-site. The team was supposed to reopen its facilities today, but that’s off the table now. The Titans-Bills game scheduled for Sunday could get rescheduled.
But wait, it gets worse! The Miami Dolphins have been given the green light to fill all 65,000 seats in their stadium this week by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who seems like a slightly dumber version of the president. Granted, that means the Dolphins would have to find that many fans willing to watch them play, but the team is limiting it to a mere 13,000 for its next home game on Oct. 25.
It doesn’t seem like the NFL is taking its role in stopping the spread of the disease —one that can be especially damaging to the long-term health of football players — very seriously. The league seems determined to forge ahead with its relentless schedule, incubation periods be damned, and it doesn’t seem especially willing to tell team owners to not host massive superspreader events.
The jury is still out on what they’ll do if they find the Titans have violated protocols. But that’s another problem — football coaches are the smartest bunch, and we’ve already seen at least a couple instances of coaches openly defying the already limited regulations aimed at controlling the spread of the disease within the league.
For at least two weeks now, the writing’s on the wall that the NFL, despite its outward appearances and supreme knack for saying the right things, is capable of controlling this and by extension, being able to play a full season. If all this sounds familiar, it should. The league has been reluctant, at best, to correctly handle the kinds of crises that threaten the game, from concussions to player conduct issues. The only thing the league has succeeded at is blackballing players who had the audacity to peacefully protest the murder of black and brown people by police.
Is there going to be a full football season? I have very real doubts if the league can make it through a full 17-week regular season without succumbing to COVID, not unless it's willing to make drastic changes, something that seems equally unlikely given precedent. — RVB