Rich’s Advice for How to Fix Justin Herbert and the Chargers’ Low-Voltage Offense

The lasting image of the Chargers' 0-2 start isn't a bad throw. It's Justin Herbert on the sideline with a thousand-yard stare while new offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel tries to talk to him.

Rich was careful about reading too much into it. "We don't know what was being said," he acknowledged. Maybe McDaniel was giving Herbert an attaboy or a coaching point. Maybe Herbert was just sitting there thinking he couldn't believe the team was 0-2, and "he needs to be alone in his thoughts, which by the way, I don't blame him."

The problem, as Rich sees it, is that Herbert is normally quiet on the sideline and normally gives you nothing in a press conference. So when the losses pile up, people start searching for a pulse. Even Jim Harbaugh got asked how vocal his quarterback is, and he pushed back on the premise. "There's not a thing I change about Justin," Harbaugh said. "I wouldn't change a thing about Justin and that's since I got here."

That, Rich said, is par for the course. "This is what happens when you go 0-2 unexpectedly at home against two opponents that were in top three on the clock just a few months ago."

Rich also went to bat for Herbert on a separate criticism, calling it "patently unfair" how often he sees the training camp moment of Madison Beer playing with Herbert's hair replayed as if it explains everything. Someone in studio pointed out that the broadcast treated it as "the moment the season ended." Rich wasn't having it. "Spouses are allowed to show up at the workplace and have a moment," he said. "They're in love with each other." Chris, for the record, does not want his hair rubbed between Overreaction Mondays.

So what's the fix? Rich's answer is Buffalo. Herbert has to "dig deep and this is the week to do it," in Highmark Stadium, where Josh Allen has already laid down a marker in the new building and, through two weeks, as the clubhouse MVP leader.

Rich's specific prescription: use Herbert's legs. "Let's get him running. He's just as big and just as elusive. Let's get him in the run game plan." Put more of the game plan on him, and make it a look-in-the-mirror moment for the quarterback.

"Run it with him," Rich said. "Give the defense multiple problems. Right now the defense is giving multiple problems to the Chargers. Flip the script and you got the QB to do it."

A win would calm everything down and turn an 0-1 conference record into a road conference victory built on Herbert. Rich even manifested the aftermath for Chargers fans: Herbert beating Josh Allen in Josh Allen's house, followed by stories about Jim doing "something crazy on the flight" or the team playing Twister in the hotel the night before. "Oh, it was a bonding experience. And the season's turned."

He wondered aloud why the Chargers aren't calling run plays for Herbert at all, since he isn't hurt. "Let's get him on the edge and make problems for people in the same way Josh Allen does to everyone else."

The studio offered a reality check. "You can't just wish somebody to be Josh Allen." There are guys the same size as LeBron, as one voice put it, "that ain't LeBron." Rich had already filed the whole plan under his "two unsolicited cents for our neighbors across the way."