Justin Herbert and the Imprecision of Elite Quarterbacking

Alex Katson looks at whether Justin Herbert can learn to color outside the lines in 2025 and finally live up to his "elite" billing.

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The last episode of season 2 of HBO’s The Rehearsal opens with Nathan Fielder flying a plane. As footage of his time in pilot school plays, it’s revealed that Fielder is so slow at learning to land the plane that his flight school passes him around to various instructors to figure out what's wrong with him.

“Don’t do everything just like a robot,” one of the instructors tells Fielder to end the montage. “Look at everything.”

Seventy-eight miles to the west of that airspace over San Bernardino, two days after the episode aired, I wonder if a Los Angeles Chargers coach told Justin Herbert something similar.

Do You Dread a Robot?

The NFL’s elite quarterbacks — Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson — are rare talents. Their franchises have weaponized their skill sets, creating an ecosystem in which they can fully unleash their otherworldly talent upon an opponent. There is a reason they have won the last three NFL MVPs.

But beyond those skills, all three instill a sense of existential dread in opposing fans, at least, rational ones. A good friend of mine, a Broncos fan, and I often lament the choices that led us to cheering for teams that have to play Mahomes twice a year.

Allen is liable to hurdle a linebacker or throw the ball 75 yards downfield for a touchdown on any play. Jackson bends the laws of not just quarterbacking, but physics, to deliver crushing plays like his touchdown pass against the Bengals in Week 5:

That’s not to say that any of these players are perfect, but that’s not the point. Being on the wrong end of a highlight is one of the worst things that can happen as a terminally online sports fan. As an opposing fan, I am afraid of my team playing these guys anytime they come up on the schedule.

It’s a harrowing afternoon of waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing they have some alien bullshit that could fall from the sky any second, destroying your hopes and dreams of seeing something good happen to the cursed franchise you’ve stupidly been born into rooting for.

I don’t think people feel that way about Herbert. I’m not positive about this, because I am a Chargers fan, but it seems obvious based on the larger discourse about NFL quarterback play that he is not feared like Mahomes, Allen and Jackson.

One of the most plausible reasons is that Herbert plays sort of robotic, like Fielder learning to land that plane. The Ringer’s Steven Ruiz, who ranks Herbert as the fourth-best quarterback in the league behind the elite trio, calls the Chargers signal-caller “a machine,” notes a “lack of artistry in his game,” calls him “programmed to follow the direction of his coaches” and doubts his game’s ability to pass the Turing Test all in the span of a 184-word paragraph in his quarterback rankings.