FIRST THINGS FIRST | Nick Wright RIPS Justin Herbert For NOT Being Great With Los Angeles Chargers

FIRST THINGS FIRST | Nick Wright RIPS Justin Herbert For NOT Being Great With Los Angeles Chargers | NFL
#firstthingsfirst #nickwright #losangeleschargers

And I think what gives him covering, Nick, because you’re right. I mean, it was like you’re downgrading your other players, but he included the coach and staff. Oh, yeah. Everybody knows he thinks he is and is a great coach. So, by throwing yourself in there, players can be like, you know, they it’s not like he was just saying, “Yeah, our receivers need to be better, our running backs need to be better, whatever.” Um the thing though is that and I don’t I I think he does really believe in Herbert but it’s I don’t disingenuous probably too strong but he said you so you don’t change a thing but except you did like when when Herbert when he took over he took the ball to some degree out of Herbert’s hands like he threw the less last year than ever game manager. Right. Right. No, he was literally a game manager last year. And so, and and the other thing is they don’t have the other player. Like, obviously the defense is strong. The only receiver I think that’s anything close to a top level receiver is Lad Makanki. The running game should be good, but they just don’t have the the receivers for him to I have this incredible. But it’s not for lack of trying. Like I So here’s my frustration because the last few years the almost every year we would hear about the Chargers how stacked they were on paper. You know what I mean? About how talented of a roster they were. They were very often what the Broncos are this year like the trendy pick to beat the win the AFC West. And then at the end of the year it would be man Justin Herbert needs more help. You know what I mean? But before the year it was how talented they are. They he will go into this season with all of a sudden the highest paid left tackle in football. Rashawn Slater, a guy they must like a lot. Uh number five overall pick at the other tackle position. A firstrounder that they drafted at playing center. Mai Beckton who they took over from the Eagles at one of their guards. He will have at wide receiver the 21st pick Quinton Johnson has not worked out. The 34th pick Lad Manki who’s excellent. They just spent another second round pick on a wide receiver and a first round pick on a running back to buttress the running game. And last year they had the number one scoring defense and we all think Jim Harbaugh is an excellent coach. it it’s year six with that situation with that coach with that you know much investment on players on the offense other than he has the most yards cuz that’s the thing everybody always mentions and by the way if we show where Herbert is across the league since he came into it you know over the last five years is listen the yards number jumps out and the touchdown interception number jumps out the other numbers are more middling you know Okay, this is where we really do just fail to understand how to have sports conversations because this team that Harbaugh has built now is obviously clearly significantly better than it was when Herbert entered the league. You want to talk about stacked roster? I went through it already to show you the team that Justin Herbert got to and the coaching staff has played for two coaches who have been fired who will never be in the NFL, who will never be head coaches in the NFL ever again. Ever again. And the amount of Pro Bowlers that Justin Herbert has played with relative to Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Jaylen Herz, any of these other quarterbacks, it’s night and day. Absolute night and day. And when you say, “Oh, everyone talks about how stacked the the the Chargers roster is.” Then you downplay injuries and then you downplay just awful coaching like that none of that stuff matters. Or not to mention that I don’t really recall anyone ever really saying that the that the that the Chargers are stacked and that was a case in where all the Pro Bowls cuz I I I don’t know where they are then. Wake me up when when when they show up. And then again, you want to talk about this is what everyone was saying before and after. Well, so keep that same energy. For instance, when you were talking about the Philadelphia Eagles because before the season started, you didn’t say that they were stacked and you said they had bad coaching, bad coordinating, and a bad team. And there was the and there was that that’s why they weren’t even not only were they not going to win the division, they weren’t even going to make the playoffs. And then they won the Super Bowl, and now it’s well, they’re stacked. Of course they are. I I don’t I don’t understand. That doesn’t make sense to me. And in fact, going into last season at 24 said that the Chiefs had the best roster or the best team. And yet then you want to say, well, they have no they they need help. They need help. This is where these conversations make fundamentally no sense. Okay, I’m going to do everyone’s favorite thing right now and we’re going to talk about this and we’re going to use a couple quarterbacks, but we’re going to we’re going to use Patrick Mahomes, of course, because we look at these numbers, okay? Justin Herbert essentially for his entire career has had similar rosters to that of what Patrick Mahomes had in 23 and 24, which is why everybody explains away his lower numbers and his lower stats. And yet it’s really bizarre because his completion percentage, Patrick Mahomes had a 67.2. So that’s Justin Herbert has a 66.5 completion percentage. It’s like, okay. Not to mention, every single year but one, Justin Herbert had threw the ball further had had a further average depth of target than Patrick MS. every single year except for Justin Herbert’s rookie year. Justin Herbert won that. During this time, Justin Herbert clearly has a better touchdown to interception ratio. His passer rating is 96.7. And yet, Patrick Mahomes was also in the low 90s. Okay. In 2023, he had a 92.6 passer rating. Justin Herbert has a 96.7 passer rating. Justin Herbert over the last three years has had a PFF rating of 91.8. Patrick Mahomes over those last two years has an 85.8 for a PFF offensive rating. So I I I really don’t understand yards per attempt. Patrick Mahomes 7.0 over these last couple of years. Justin Herbert 7.2. too. So, what we’ve seen with Justin Herbert is essentially have why, you know, everyone explains why someone like Patrick Mahomes’s number has went down and they say it’s bold because look, look at the roster that he has. Look at the team that he has. And this is what we have with Justin Herbert for essentially his entire career. And if you want to say, “Yeah, but Patrick Mahomes has won Super Bowls and look what he’s been able to do.” Justin Herbert has never been given a great roster. And then you want to say, well, they took the ball out of his hands. Do you want to know how much that doesn’t make sense? Justin Herbert had 54 passing attempts. Okay, 504 in 24. had 3,870 passing yards, 7.7 yards per attempt, 23 touchdowns, three interceptions, and a 65.9 completion percentage. Okay. And a passer rating of 101.7. Patrick Mahomes had 520 or uh 484 attempts. 484 attempts, less attempts. And remember, Justin Herbert wasn’t even fully healthy. He left game early. He was dealing with injuries all year. And this is 2019 for Patrick Mahomes. The year they won the Super Bowl. The year they won the Super Bowl. Did anyone ever say that they asked Patrick Mahomes to do less. He only threw 26 touchdowns, five interceptions. I don’t recall anyone saying that. This is where we just construct madeup narratives. The reason why I use Patrick Mahomes so much as a reference point is because the narratives are so clearly defined about Patrick Mahomes, unlike any of the other quarterbacks that we have to work with. Whether it’s Jaden Daniels, well, it’s only been one year. Uh Jaylen Herz, well, he has a stacked roster and doesn’t really do a lot. Lamar Jackson, well, he’s kind of great during the regular season, kind of not good in the playoffs. Well, it’s not really his fault in the playoffs. Well, it is. No, it’s not. Yeah, it is. No, it’s not. Josh Allen, oh, he’s unbelievable, but he just can’t get the job done in the playoffs. Well, it’s not really his fault. Yes, it is. No, it’s not. Yes, it is. No, it’s not. It’s like every other quarterback, it’s just like kind of this whole mess. But yet, when we talk about Patrick Mahomes, it’s like clearly defined. He’s the best. He’s the greatest. He’s the best quarterback of this generation. Well, his numbers have been down these last couple of years, but it’s not really his fault. And then with these other quarterbacks, we don’t want to ever have this conversation. So, you mean to tell me that Justin Herbert throughout his career, who’s clearly had an inferior roster every single year, every single year than Patrick Mahomes has ever had and clearly inferior coaching every single year. And yet, Justin Herbert has still put up comparable and in some instances better numbers than Patrick Mahomes did when he for finally for a couple years had not a, you know, not as great of rosters as years past. I mean, h how does that make sense? How does that make sense? It it does not. It does not. And then you want to downplay all the other stuff, all his other accolades, which I’ve already gone through, you know, with uh you can see how it says right there, most passing yards through first five seasons, but he’s got a whole bunch of those other ones that that you know, and I’m just I’m not going to go through it right now. But it’s like we pick and choose when we want to say something like, “Oh, look how bad this yards per pass is and this or that.” It’s like, okay, but then why aren’t you doing that for Patrick Mahomes over these last couple of years? And yet when you when someone is forced to talk about it, you say, “Well, the drops, the drops.” In 2022, Justin Herbert had 26 drops. Patrick Mahomes had 26. That year that everybody was freaking out about Patrick Mahomes and all the drops. 28. I don’t remember anyone freaking out and saying, “Oh, Justin Herbert has lots of drops. Everyone uh defend him.” I mean, in 2023, Justin Herbert played 13 games. Patrick Mahomes played 16. Patrick Mahomes had 29 drops. I think I said 28 a second ago. I meant 29. And Justin Herbert had 22 in three less games. And one of those games, I think he left early. Why wasn’t anyone ever freaking out about the drop passes for them? And like I also talked about in previous videos, Matthew Stafford had 29 drops. Dak Prescott had 29. Why is it that anytime someone like Patrick Mahomes isn’t perfect, all we do is make excuses? And yet for someone like Justin Herbert, we want to just try to find the reasons why he’s not great rather than even remotely defend him. We want to pretend like Justin Herbert’s just been given a silver. We right now we’re going to try to pretend like Justin like you know what’s also really funny because Nick will say something like all I heard was that the the Chargers had this stacked roster and how amazing they are year after year. It’s like this year’s Broncos or whatever. But Nick never believed it. Nick never believed that that roster was great, that those players that those teams were great, that the coaching staff was great. So, why is Nick now evaluating Justin Herbert, this quarterback, through the lens of an opinion that he never agreed with in the first place? You understand how that makes no sense? It doesn’t. It doesn’t. If your own view was, I don’t think this roster is that good. I don’t think they’re good. Yeah, other people are saying that, but I disagree with them. So, then why are you going to evaluate the quarterback through other people’s opinions about the roster? That doesn’t make any sense. That makes none. Zero. I mean, it’s it’s just kind of it’s just it’s kind of absurd at this point. It really is. So, we just we just keep going in circles. We really do. I mean, it’s just when you’ve had I mean, he’s had Harbaugh for one season and everything was radically transformed, immediately competitive. And again, you wouldn’t go through, well, they have a first round this and they have a a top 10 left tackle and this and that and they just went out and got this guy and they just went out and got that guy. I again, wake me up when you do the same thing for the Kansas City Chiefs. I mean, it’s actually kind of funny because year after year, someone like Nick will go out and say the Kansas City Chiefs have the best. Well, they have, you know, Rasheed Jerry Rice and Pacheco’s the top five running back in the NFL. Andy Reid’s one of the greatest head coaches of all time. Travis Kelce is the greatest playoff performer of all time. uh you know the defense insert whatever name you want to use depending on when we’re talking about Spag’s best defensive coordinator in the NFL and then yet when it’s time for Patrick Mahomes to get the glory it just all goes to him and no one else. Nobody else. And then when he struggles it’s what do you want him to do? You only had Rasheed Rice and Pacheco and Travis Kelce. You told me they’re amazing and they had the best defense in the NFL. Why do you want to downplay that and I distinctly remember in 23 when people were saying, “I don’t know about the Chiefs.” Nick said, “This defense is so amazing. They’re not giving up any points. They’re averaging like under.” And it was during like a specific stretch. I forget exactly when it was. He’s like, “They’re they haven’t given up more than 17 points in whatever.” It’s like all Patrick Mahomes has to figure out is how to score 18 points and they’re going to win. And it’s like now when they won it’s Patrick Mahomes carried this team. He carried this team. It was all him. And it’s like wait a second though. When you were trying to defend the Chiefs, you talked about how amazing this defense is. And when people tried to downplay Rasheed Rice, you literally called him Rasheed Jerry Rice. And you literally said that Pacheco runs like he’s on fire and that you know Travis Kelce will be great in the playoffs because he’s the greatest playoff performer of all time. This is what I talk about with consistency. This is why I use Patrick Mahomes as a reference so much. Someone recently was like, “Why do you always use Patrick Mahomes?” And it’s like, “Who else do you want me to use right now? You want me to compare Tom Brady stats right now? That doesn’t make sense. Different era, different time, and who cares? Tom Brady’s not playing right now. No one’s buying Tom Brady’s jersey right now. It’s not an interesting video. You want me to compare Justin Herbert to uh Payton Manning to Brett Favre? No one cares about that. I don’t care about that. And like I said earlier, someone like Patrick Mahomes has the most clearly defined narrative and opinion surrounding him. And when you have such a clearly defined outlook on someone like Patrick Mahomes, it makes it so much easier than to be like, “Okay, but then what about this? Why is this okay, but not that? Why is it okay for this quarterback but not that? Why is it okay? Why is this an excuse for this quarterback but not for this quarterback? And these are conversations that I’m continuing trying to grow and evolve. And I have them with people like I I I’ll have them like me and uh you know who I always reference a lot Travis O’Shea always talking about like you know what what why is it that we’ll give some quarterback the benefit of the doubt but not another quarterback or why is it okay that like someone like Josh I remember asking this question last year. I was like, Josh Allen could miss a throw. Uh like he missed technically like a throw against uh in that Rams game where Josh Allen played absolutely out of his mind. And I’m like, why is it okay that he misses that throw and we’re like, oh, okay, it’s fine, but then if Dak Prescott misses a throw, we’re like, this is so bad. And it’s just like, well, because like look what Josh Allen did in that game. Like you he can’t be perfect. And so it’s like, yeah, that that that makes sense. And so it’s like it’s always kind of trying to figure out like you know the where the scales are more than anything. And the problem is someone like Apach Mahomes his scale was weighed so down because of what he did in 2018 2019 2021 22 and whatnot. And we just want to explain away everything else. And we have to recognize that many quarterbacks were just given Patrick Mahomes’s team in 23 and 24. in throughout their entire career or in the beginning of their career. And again, if you want to say, “Yeah, but see, Patrick Mahomes went to two Super Bowls with those rosters.” It’s like, look what those teams did. Look what his team did to help support that. Not to mention in the playoffs, someone like Patrick MS Pacheco was there. DeAndre Hopkins was there. Hollywood Brown was there. Andy Reid was there. That great defense was there. Nobody was coming to rescue the Josh Allens and the Justin Herberts of the world or the Lamar Jacksons. In fact, the very opposite. Mark Andrews is dropping passes while Travis Kelce’s diving and catching them. the the Kansas City Chiefs defense is holding the the the the top scoring offense to 10 points while the Buffalo Bills defense is giving up 30 to a lower offense to a lower level offense. And so I’ve already done a handful of these deep dives of Justin Herbert. And so that’s why it’s just like it’s it’s always interesting to me like when we kind of have to rehash things and like I always reference it’s like I try to have different conversations and I and I and I wish there would be other quarterbacks to use outside of just Patrick Mahomes but it’s just like to me it just makes the most clear argument. Like what am I going to call compare Justin Herbert to Brock Pury? Man doesn’t make sense. Lamar Jackson doesn’t make sense. Like none of it makes sense. It makes sense, especially when it’s Nick Wright’s take. And it’s like, okay, then why aren’t you saying this about Patrick Wilton? It’s like, well, because look what he did in 2018, 19, 20. It’s like, 2019, they asked him to do less. They literally asked him to do less than what they asked Justin Herbert to do. And he had Travis Kelce in his prime and Tyreek Hill in his prime. And that doesn’t matter at all that they asked him to cut his touchdown passes in half from 2018 to 2019 and a thousand less yards. And yet not one person, not one person said they won because they asked Patrick Mahomes to do less. Not one person said that. Not one. And yet Justin Herbert is finally on a team that’s organized with a coach that finally knows how to run a team and run a game, you know, and and and and manage a game. And the narrative is is well, they asked Justin Herbert to do less. How does that how does that make sense? I mean, seriously, how does that make sense? And the last thing I’ll show is like this is also when pass attempts and yards can be inflated a bit. Again, Patrick Mahomes has 124 pass attempts behind the line of scrimmage. About a fifth of his pass attempts and 645 yards. Justin Herbert has half that. He has 70 pass attempts and 329 yards from behind the line of scrimmage. And in screen passes, 83 attempts, 423 yards. Justin Herbert, 47 attempts, 234. When you’re throwing behind the line of scrimmage, when you’re throwing screen passes, you are asking your quarterback to do less. you’re literally asking him to throw the shortest little passes you possibly can and that these are all like schemed throws that you know exactly what you’re doing when you’re coming out of that huddle. So just because you have a lot of those doesn’t mean that you’re relying on your quarterback more. So we have to expand the type of conversations that we’re having and we have to be open to having them. even if they go up against what our exist pre-existing beliefs are, but it is wild. This will be the very last thing I’ll say because I really want to emphasize this. I wish I said it within the first two minutes. Nick throughout Justin Herbert’s career has emphasized that the Chargers are not a good team, that the roster is not a good roster, that the coaching staff is not a good coaching staff, but then wants to evaluate Justin Herbert through the views of people who wrongfully evaluated this Chargers team. It doesn’t really make sense. I I was really high on the Philadelphia Eagles last year and they won the Super Bowl. I don’t know if you know this. And I when I said, “Oh, they won the Super Bowl. They praised.” I never said, “Well, Jaylen Herz carried a bunch of bad players to the Super Bowl and won.” You know, because you guys all said that he was so bad. When I bring that up, I go, “Well, which is it? You’re now saying that this is a stacked roster, but before you said it wasn’t a stacked roster, so which is it?” I’m I’m still giving credit to everyone involved, but I want to know, you know, you guys said Kell Moore was a bad hire. Fan Joe’s a bad hire. Taquon Barkley’s not good. This O line won’t be that good. Like, so it’s just like I I’ll push you in the corner and say, well, which is it? Which is it? Because that’s like me saying, see, Jay, the Philadelphia Eagles weren’t a good team. It was all Jaylen Herz. Because everyone said that they had a bad roster and that they weren’t that good and Saquon Barkley won’t be good and no line this that. Like it’s amazing what Jaylen Herz was able to do because this this roster was clearly not good. That’s essentially what you’re doing there, but just like kind of in a reverse way. Not that tape wouldn’t make any sense because you would be like, “Wait a second. Of course, Saquon Barkley was great. He rushed for 2,000 yards. Of course, this O line was really good. It was, you know, top 10 in the NFL. Of course, this defense was good. Of course, Fangio was a good defensive coordinator. Of course, Kell Moore was a good coordinator.” It’s like, “No, you guys said Kell Moore was bad. You guys said Fangio wasn’t good.” And it’s like, well, but the evidence shows us otherwise. And it’s like, right, doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t make any sense. Those are just my thoughts. I’d absolutely love to hear yours. What do you guys all think about Justin Herbert just not being good enough and Harbaugh actually being honest and saying his biggest weakness is all those he’s counting on on offense to get up to his level. I want to know why that’s an accurate statement for I want to know why it’s an accurate statement for someone like Patrick Mahomes but inaccurate for Justin Herbert. Let me know in the comments below. I read every single comment. So whether you agree with me or disagree with me either way, let’s get in some discussions. Let’s get in some fights. But ultimately, let’s just have some fun. And please do consider subscribing. We are building an amazing community here and absolutely love to see you part of it. I want to build something that we all generally feel connected to. Something that we’re really excited to be part of. I think we’re on our way to doing it. Please don’t forget to give this video a thumbs up as it really does help the visibility and the algorithm. Thank you so much.