Chessboard Tilts Against Justin Herbert

"This is the worst team that Jim Harbaugh is going to coach, talent wise."

-Daniel Jeremiah of the NFL Network, January 11, 2025.

Away from the violence of football, Justin Herbert finds solace in chess. After being humbled by his own offensive lineman, he dedicated himself to becoming one of the best chess players on the team.

In a bit of strange irony, this story begins with Rashawn Slater. Allegedly defeated by the star left tackle during a road trip, Herbert committed himself to the game, and through study, repetition, and practice, he improved enough to eventually avenge that defeat.

The solitary game enables Herbert, who leans towards introspection, to tap into the scientific-pattern-based-scholarly side of his mind, and, though some strategies are designed to leave chess pieces defenseless, nobody has ever hit him in the middle of his spine as he sized up the board.

For the sake of this narrative, progress was decidedly linear. Herbert was not great at something, so he applied himself and got better.

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After the Houston Texans ended the Chargers' 2024 season in the playoffs, pundits, podcasters, and barstool polymaths all agreed that if Justin Herbert was ever going to stand a chance in the postseason, then his offensive linemen would have to do a better job of standing between him and the freakish athletes who insist on doing him harm.

Pressured on 18 of his 36 dropbacks (50.0%) in the Wild Card loss to the Texans, Herbert threw 2 interceptions while completing only 3 of 14 passes (when pressured) for 112 yards—86 of those yards coming on a touchdown to Ladd McConkey in which the sandwiched receiver out-leapt the defensive backs to avert another potential turnover before racing to the end zone.

The Texans generated 11 quick pressures, including 5 unblocked pressures, resulting in the 2nd-highest quick pressure rate (30.6%) faced in any career regular or postseason game according to Next Gen Stats. Even when not under pressure, the quarterback felt the specter of it; completing 11 of 18 passes for 130 yards and 2 more interceptions.

"He's got to be able to finish a throwing motion," head coach Jim Harbaugh said. "Quarterback's gotta be able to do that. And we didn't put him in the position to do that enough."

If you did not watch the debacle, you probably just saw that the quarterback threw 4 interceptions and gifted the game to Houston. And, though winning is not solely a quarterback stat, the loss dropped the 27-year-old's playoff record to 0-2, which, ironically, is the only stat that matters on morning sports shows.

Shouldering the blame for every loss, behind the podium, Herbert speaks as if he alone played below his standards. He speaks as if he had played a poor game of chess.

“No one felt worse than I did,” Herbert said. “I think it’s important to continue to move forward and realize that it’s what happened, and it would be crazy of me to deny the truth of what happened and to live in this reality where, if I tried to block it out, I don’t think that’s gonna be any good.”

Reality is also where the Chargers have another chance in the playoffs. The team rested 14 starters last Sunday in Denver, including Herbert, to prepare for a matchup with the New England Patriots on Sunday, where the team hopes to finally solve the Rubik's Cube of protection plans.

That the gameplan to protect Herbert in a playoff game is still theoretical says all you need to know about the matchup.

The last time we saw Herbert play, he got his rematch with Houston at Sofi Stadium. Unlike his rematch with Slater, the results were the same, albeit with a better stat line. Despite again playing under siege in the pocket (sacked another five times), he threw for 236 yards, with one touchdown pass and an interception. He gave no quarter against the Texans' dominant defense.

Given the chance, Herbert, who suffers physical torments that would impress Job, might even have led a last-minute comeback to win the game.

But, after Odafe Oweh sacked C.J. Stroud on a 3rd-and- 9 play, which should have forced a Houston punt and given Los Angeles a chance at a potential game-winning drive with just over two minutes remaining, a flag was thrown on cornerback Tarheeb Still for illegal contact with Texans receiver Xavier Hutchinson downfield, beyond the five-yard limit.

The penalty awarded the Texans an automatic first down, allowing them to run out the clock. That the Chargers were in the game until the final minute was little consolation to them.

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The story of the Chargers' season also begins with Rashawn Slater and a ruptured patellar tendon on August 7 that changed the entwined fates (another Hargaughism) of the entire franchise.

Since that time, the position has been manned by Joe Alt, Austin Deculus, Alt (back briefly after recovering from a high ankle sprain), Foster Sarell, Deculus again, Trevor Penning (acquired in a midseason trade), Jamaree Salyer, back to Deculus, to Bobby Hart, who was pulled after 36 ineffective snaps and replaced by Deculus, who finished the season with the backup lineman against Denver last week. And that is just the revolving door at one position!

If the season were a game of chess, then the Chargers had lost one of their most valuable pieces before the game even started.

The pressure coming from both edges would be mitigated if the Chargers had fortified the interior of their line, but that did not happen.

Hart filled in admirably this season at right tackle after being out of football for over two years, but the degree to which the team has had to rely on him, when he wasn't even invited to a training camp, speaks volumes.

Against the Texans' star edge rushers, Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson, Hart was asked to switch sides and start at left tackle. The experiment was a painful one for his quarterback.

On the Chargers' third offensive snap, Hart was beaten immediately by an inside move from Hunter, who sacked Herbert before he could even look downfield.

Hart was in over his head, but he wasn't alone. Minutes later, Trey Pipkins was beaten off the right side for a sack on another third down, terminating the next drive.

“I mean, it’s just football,” Hart said when asked about losing a one-on-one against Texans defensive end Hunter in the first quarter. He's right, too. It is just football. If it were chess, then the Chargers are running out of moves.

Harbaugh said he pulled Hart in the third quarter because the 31-year-old was “having trouble getting in the rhythm.”

Deculus replaced Hart, and Penning temporarily replaced right guard Mekhi Becton for a drive, creating the Chargers’ 29th offensive line combination of the season, for those of us keeping count. (This stat climbed even higher last week in Denver.) If you looked in the dictionary for the antonym of "continuity," you'll find posts like this.

As a team, the Chargers picked an inopportune opponent to play their worst game in a month. The best defense in the football going up against the Chargers' injury-ravaged offensive line slide the margin for error to zero.

Almost everyone had a hand in it. A broken coverage on the third play of the game resulted in a 75-yard touchdown to rookie Jayden Higgins.

Trailing 14-3 and getting the ball to start the second half, the Chargers were in an ideal position to double up and change the complexion of the game. With a chance to trim the deficit, Herbert threw his 13th interception of the season. Though on the play before the interception, Herbert completed a 60-yard rainbow to Quentin Johnston all the way to the Texans' 14-yard line.

The Chargers rushed to the line without a huddle to prevent the Texans from substituting. From the shotgun, Herbert fired a pass into Oronde Gadsden's hands. The ball ricocheted off them, over his head, and into the waiting arms of linebacker Azeez Al-Shiaar.

As the Most Interesting Man in the World would say, "I don't always throw interceptions, but when I do, I prefer to hit my teammates in their hands with them first."

What else could go wrong? Well, Cameron Dicker, who is the most accurate kicker in NFL history, missed a kick from inside 40 yards for the first time in his career. Late in the 4th quarter, he would miss an extra point that would have brought the Chargers within a field goal.

Recently, the fan favorite kicker teamed up with the Chargers' social media team to cut a conspiracy theorist video satirizing why he had never made a Pro Bowl. Then Dicker was voted into his first Pro Bowl.

I would believe that Dicker fell in with the wrong people and was shaving points for the mob before I told you that the real kicker had been abducted by aliens and that his beta unit malfunctioned.

You don't need a tinfoil hat to wonder about the timing of those misses. The likelihood of Dicker missing both those kicks in the same game is astronomical, yet it happened.

But, I'm no alarmist. As Bobby Hart said, It's just football.

Tell that to the guy who has taken more hits than a piñata this year. Hit 129 times in 16 games, somehow Herbert survived despite enduring the second-highest single-season total in TruMedia’s database, dating back to 2000.

Pressured on 42.8 percent of his 615 dropbacks, Herbert didn't have the luxury of stat-pilling in late-season games to campaign for awards like Mathew Stafford and Drake Maye. His case is built on guile, leadership, and ice bags.

The beatings he has taken on Sundays have been painful to watch.

In a chess move of sorts, the Chargers elected to aggressively retreat against the Broncos by resting their veterans and their players who have been playing through injuries.

Trey Lance felt the teeth of the Broncos pass rush in Herbert's place. Assigned with protecting him from left-to-right were Austin Deculus, Branson, Taylor, Andre James, Trevor Penning and Bobby Hart. On a 3rd-and-one in the first quarter, the Chargers lined up to run a quarterback sneak. At the snap, Lance was engulfed by so many orange shirts that he looked like a spot of white skin that Donald Trump's makeup artist missed. The play lost a yard, and the Chargers punted.

“It’s not the easiest thing,” Chargers guard Zion Johnson said of the weekly — and sometimes quarterly —offensive line reconfigurations. “But I think we have guys in this room who are up for the challenge. We’ve got to take a hard look at the tape, see where we can improve technique-wise and where we can raise the level of execution.”

After the loss to the Texans in the playoffs, the front office knew that it needed to upgrade the interior of its offensive line. But, as the only real marquee free agent that the team chose to sign, Mekhi Becton has not lived up to expectations.

According to ESPN, Becton ranks 46th as a guard in pass block win rate (91.2%) and 61st out of 62 eligible guards in run block win rate (63.4%). In other words, he’s working through becoming the biggest free agent bust the Chargers have signed since David Boston.

Though he sat out against the Broncos, the week prior (and, honestly, most of the season), Becton gave the Texans a 6-7, 363-pound orange cone for the defense to run drills around. On one play in the second quarter, he was pushed so far into the backfield that Omarion Hampton was tackled by his backside instantly for a 5-yard loss.

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"To me, it was an MVP season with all the attrition we had and what he's been able to do to lead the team to a playoff berth.”

-Greg Roman

Herbert's MVP candidacy (yes, he has one) is built on the media's understanding that his performance in 2025 has been anomalous to the support he has been given. He's taken five-plus sacks five separate times this season, amazingly winning four of them.

Missing the finale meant that Trey Lance protected Herbert (54 sacks) from becoming the NFL's sack leader. When Miles Garrett does it on defense, his team drops balloons from the ceiling. But when your quarterback leads the league in sacks, his general manager should have to tie balloon animals at Chuck E Cheese.

For context, co-leaders Geno Smith of the Raiders and Cam Ward of the Titans (55) have combined for five wins.

The Chargers' line ranks last in Pass Block Win Rate (54.4%) and is second-to-last in Run Block Win Rate (69%). They allow the second-highest pressure percentage on quarterback dropbacks (38.4%) and have not fared much better running between the tackles.

As a piece on the chessboard, the quarterback is every team's queen. Topple the queen, and the game is yours. Even before playing through a surgically repaired, broken left hand over the last month, Herbert was shouldering the load of the offensive production.

The first time he threw his bandaged left hand out to stiff-arm a defender against the Eagles, you could practically hear the announcers cringe. A month later, it happens a half-dozen times per game and goes unnoticed.

By being so exemplary, or rather, by being himself, Herbert raises the physical expectations of what a one-armed quarterback playing behind the worst offensive line in football can accomplish.

Which is absurd if you put it under any degree of scrutiny. Patrick Mahomes lost both of his starting tackles late in November. His team lost every game since. His body barely survived for two games playing under the conditions Herbert has dealt with since September. A torn ACL ended his season prematurely on December 14.

"There's almost something about it, he takes that hit, and there's no facial expression change, there's no limp, there's no grabbing," Chargers Head Coach Jim Harbaugh said earlier this season. "It's almost like it didn't even happen.

Herbert has become so accustomed to dealing with immediate pressure in the pocket that passes he doesn't complete have gone viral.

Like this one making the rounds, where both Becton and Pipkins lose in synchronicity —a split second after the snap. With Will Anderson (51) bearing down on him, Herbert leaves the pocket and takes a glance downfield, where he sees Sheldon Rankins (90) waiting for him. He gives Rankins a fake to the sideline and breaks his ankles. Having evaded three Texans, Herbert climbed two more steps and fired a missile to Gadsden, who had separated. The ball hit Gadsden in his hands without breaking stride before the safety reached in to punch it free.

It is one of the most remarkable incompletions you will ever see. If it were chess, the gambit might even have garnered a name: The Herbert Gambit.

"Every week he does things that are reserved for only the best in the game," Harbaugh said after the most recent loss to Houston. "I kind of ran out of the superlatives, really. It's just who he is. Don't change. I think he's the best there ever was."

"I don't want to imagine my life without him," said Derwin James. "All I know is that I have him. And that we always have a chance of winning if he's on my team."

The Chargers survived a gauntlet and won 11 games to earn a spot in the playoffs. But, surviving is not how you lift trophies. In the playoffs the best coaches will exploit your inabilities and expose them.

“It’s so funny that we’re like ‘Thank God that Jamaree Salyer might be back for this game.’”

-Ben Solak of ESPN

A chess board does not get pieces back once you’ve lost them, but offensive coordinator Greg Roman said that Salyer would start in New England at left tackle after missing the last two games with a hamstring injury. "Jamaree is ready to go. I think he's definitely going to be the left tackle. I think he's played really well out there."

What else is he going to say?

If the team can mitigate some of the pressure up front and keep Herbert clean for longer than two seconds, then they could win against any team left. But if they continue to leak like a rusty pipe, then this postseason will be over as quickly as the last one.

“It starts with us up front," said guard Zion Johnson. "We’ve got to protect [Herbert] better. We got to execute better in the run game. There’s too many missed opportunities.”

A missed opportunity is exactly what the Chargers hope to avert in New England.

After a win everyone has seen Harbaugh ask his team in the locker room, "WHO'S GOT IT BETTER THAN US?" The question is rhetorical. No players ruminate on it longer than a nanosecond. The answer is, and has been since his father, lifelong football coach Jack Harbaugh coined the family expression decades ago: "Nobody."

Cameras caught Herbert giving a different answer this season; a more nuanced answer; an amalgamation of how the man's puzzle-solving mind works, and how his battered body feels. The answer that only a nerd (non-pejorative), or perhaps, a chess player could give.

"Future us."