Chargers wasting another year of Justin Herbert

Los Angeles Chargers followers should be bored with seeing this identical film week after week, 12 months after 12 months.

They noticed it once more on Sunday in a 41-38 loss to the Detroit Lions.

Quarterback Justin Herbert will play nice, submit enormous numbers and lightweight up the scoreboard with what ought to be sufficient factors to win. 

Then the protection takes the sector and all of it goes to waste. Head coach Brandon Staley by no means appears to have any solutions to get it proper on that facet of the ball.

Inevitably, the Chargers fell to 4-5, losing one other sensible efficiency from Herbert as he threw for 323 yards and threw 4 touchdowns.

The constant narrative across the Chargers is that they’re too gifted to have the file they’ve, too gifted to overlook the playoffs. However regardless of how good a workforce is on paper, outcomes converse for themselves. In some unspecified time in the future, we could have to just accept that that is simply who the Chargers are. 

Let’s not mince phrases. The Chargers are a badly flawed workforce with a clumsy protection and an in-over-his-head coach. In addition they occur to have the most effective quarterbacks within the league. The expertise on this roster is all on the offensive facet of the ball, and most of it’s concentrated at quarterback.

There’s solely a lot one participant can do, particularly with none assist from the defensive facet of the ball. 

That is Herbert’s fourth 12 months within the NFL, and he has by no means performed on a workforce that has completed increased than twenty first within the NFL in factors in opposition to. After Sunday’s sport, the Chargers are permitting 23.8 factors per sport this season, a quantity that has them as soon as once more among the many bottom-10 defenses within the NFL. 

This isn’t a successful components, and is a giant motive why the Chargers have made the playoffs only one time in Herbert’s first three full years. Even in that playoff look, the Chargers protection nonetheless let a four-touchdown lead slip away. Already taking a look at a 4-5 file this season in a really robust AFC playoff race, the Chargers could be taking a look at one other wasted 12 months for Herbert except one thing modifications dramatically over the following few weeks.

Staley got here to Los Angeles with a fame for being a defensive guru. That is his system. It’s his gamers. He makes the calls. It hasn’t been ok.

This defensive ineptitude is inflicting the Chargers to carry out a very tough activity within the NFL — waste a franchise quarterback.