Some of what Brandon Staley’s doing to build a bond with his quarterback is pretty informal, stuff no one would think twice about.
You get these stories every spring, when a new coach gets hired and tied to a young, ascending quarterback, and Staley’s not the only one on the staff making this kind of effort.
And what I’ve tried to just be for him is just somebody who he can trust and that he can talk about big things, to small things, stuff in the middle.
It’s not just his talent; he’s got a great heart, and he’s got a great head on his shoulders.
The easy thing for the Chargers to do in January, and what most people fully expected them to do, was always going to be to hire a young offensive coach in the model of the one Staley just worked for in 2020, on the other side of Los Angeles, to try and maximize Herbert in short order.
Now, the curveball —Staley’s not exactly quarterback-illiterate either.
The team’s quarterbacks ran the sort of postpractice quarterback challenges that Drew Brees used to with the Saints.
“And Justin blew us all out today,” Staley said.
“I just got done talking to Drew and Al Michaels, and I just think there’s just that ultimate respect of what that position requires,” Staley said.
And so while Staley wanted that scheme for the diversity it brings in personnel groupings, and how the passer is protected within the scheme, and just his own familiarity with it, the Chargers aren’t just lifting Sean Payton’s playbook and putting a powder-blue cover on it.
Like how Drew may throw a Q route may be different than Justin, in terms of that timing and being able to talk through that, because there’s that same, Hey, I’ve run that play and this is how I did it.
“Some of it comes down to identification from a protection standpoint, how much you’re going to put in the plan, on his plate,” Staley continued.
Along those lines, getting Lombardi and Herbert to see the game through the same lens has been a focus, too.
Part of that’s just experience, which will, admittedly, take time.
“When they don’t need the coach, when they are the coach, that’s a much more dangerous person to have to defend, because you’re not waiting for the coach to help them.
“Like, when you play Aaron Rodgers, he’s aware of all 22 guys on the field, he’s aware of your sideline, he’s staring at your sideline, he knows your substitution patterns, he’s so aware of the time and score and the game situation.
At the point, they’re doing their jobs at a high level, Staley continued, “and they can help everybody else do their job, too.
The 11-on-11 work is at a jog-through pace, with the idea being that the players’ feet are moving slowly, preserving their legs, but their minds are being trained to move fast.
“We put a lot on him because, most times in OTAs, maybe the starting quarterback gets 20 plays or something like that ,” Staley said.
And so what that adds up to for Herbert is not only running a lot of offense, but also having to digest a lot of defense over those snaps in the spring.
We’re having to defend a ton of groupings, a ton of formations, with a ton of motions, Keenan Allen, Mike Williams, Jared Cook, Austin Ekeler—they’re over there.
“And we felt like because of it, we’ll be ready to have a really good training camp.
Staley, Lombardi and Day’s being open with Herbert on just why they’re handling things this way—teaching him calculus at a time when some just try to make sure their players are adding and subtracting correctly—is part of this, too.
“People don’t look at Aaron and Tom as they were when they were young; they see them now, like that full commander,” Staley said.
“So I think that where Justin and myself and Joe, where we will get the furthest the quickest is by being completely connected.
Which is where you come back to what Staley’s seen in Herbert that isn’t the obvious, that any of us can see by watching a handful of snaps from his starry rookie year.
He wants to know everything and have that full command and that full rhythm that the premium quarterbacks have.
And then these last two weeks, there’s been this explosion, in terms of his command in the operation, because he had to work on it.
We’re concluding our 2021 award series today! So far, we have Washington LB Jamin Davis as DROY, Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence as OROY, Cowboys QB Dak Prescott as Comeback Player of the Year, and the Saints’ Sean Payton as Coach of the Year.
1) Myles Garrett, DE, Browns : Garrett’s been a top-of-the-NFL edge rusher for a while, and this year he’s getting Jadeveon Clowney as a bookend, and Greg Newsome and Troy Hill to complement Denzel Ward behind him.
3) Jalen Ramsey, CB, Rams : Ramsey’s a little bit of a longshot, but he was great last year, and if the L.A.
1) DeAndre Hopkins, WR, Cardinals: I just think Arizona is going to get him the ball a lot, the added speed to the offense is going to open things up for him and his team will be playing in a bunch of big TV games in what is, I believe, the most watchable division in the football.
2) Stefon Diggs, WR, Bills: He 100% could have won it last year, even though he didn’t get a vote for it.
3) Jonathan Taylor, RB, Colts: In my Wednesday mailbag, I picked Taylor to win the rushing title, so I might as well go all-in with the second-year pro.
4) Patrick Mahomes, QB, Chiefs: Hard to leave him off any list like this.
Can he do it again? Based on his career workload and the history of his position, I think it’s hard to count on that.
1) Patrick Mahomes, QB, Chiefs : Mahomes is the only player with better than 10-to-1 odds to win MVP, and rightfully so.
2) Tom Brady, QB, Buccaneers : My feeling is the way Brady finished last year brought a renewed appreciation for who he is, which I believe will spill over into this coming year if the good times keep rolling.
3) Matthew Stafford, QB, Rams : An easy way to think of this: Sean McVay got great runs out of Kirk Cousins and Jared Goff, so what might be possible with Stafford? A lot, I think.
4) Russell Wilson, QB, Seahawks : These awards sometimes hinge on story lines, and Wilson could have a pretty good one if he can find a fairytale ending for what’s been a rocky offseason in Seattle.
5) Justin Herbert, QB, Chargers : A breakout sophomore season’s always provided a path to this award.
On Tuesday, Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa threw five interceptions in a minicamp practice, leading to a social media firestorm of analysis on what exactly the 2020 first-round pick’s mid-June faceplant meant.
On the other, there are people who tie it to Tagovailoa’s up-and-down rookie season, during which he went 6–3, but he endured multiple benchings and clearly looked behind draft classmates Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert.
That means teaching, conditioning and fundamentals, with the focus being on getting the roster ready for training camp, rather than having players necessarily competing for their place on the team.
That said, the ex-co-worker of Flores’s conceded, “It’s really hard to throw five interceptions in practice.” Another ex-player said that, with the better quarterbacks he’d played with, seeing three in one day would be rare, and only a one-off.
It’s also worth noting that if legitimate, and just circumstantial, interceptions are happening now, at a lower level of intensity, they probably won’t disappear when things are more competitive in training camp.
“The thing I’d wonder about, it’s not necessarily how he’s going to respond, because he got to this point, he’s confident, he’s talented, he’s battle-tested, it’s more how his teammates respond.
And on the flip side, maybe there was something the offense was trying to accomplish, or some other element, that led to this.
I don’t know if Aaron Rodgers, Jamal Adams or Stephon Gilmore are entrenched enough in their positions to take what we can now call holdouts into training camp.
Rodgers, Adams and Gilmore are each subject to $93,085 in fines for missing the three days of minicamp , that’s not nothing.
That’s when teams are required to fine guys $50,000 per day and can go after signing bonus money, and when the players lose a credited year toward free agency and postcareer benefits.
Think about it like this: These minicamps usually close the offseason program, so missing the minicamp will cost you $93,085, tops, and then the team knows you’re gone for five weeks after that, which is a lot of runway with which both team and player can work on some sort of new deal.
And in a month or so, we’ll know whether it worked—or whether those guys are willing to take things to the next level.