LOS ANGELES — Perhaps for the first time in their two seasons together, Los Angeles Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh and quarterback Justin Herbert were both enraged.
In the second quarter of their Week 11 game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, outside linebacker Alex Highsmith made contact below Herbert’s knees shortly after the ball left the quarterback’s throwing hand. Herbert spun around, arms outstretched and barked at the nearest official. Not far away on the sideline, Harbaugh was doing the same.
The Steelers pressured Herbert 12 times and sacked him five times in the Chargers’ 25-10 win. Throughout the game, Herbert was more animated than he had been all season, at times yelling toward officials after hits that he believed were illegal. The game reflected a season of hits for Herbert, who has been contacted 149 times and pressured 196 times, both league highs, according to ESPN Research and NFL Next Gen Stats.
But Herbert’s eruption was surprising because it broke character. Even before he entered the NFL in 2020, Herbert was known for his stoicism, but Harbaugh has implied that calmness has come with a cost. As other quarterbacks argue for calls, Herbert’s politeness, combined with a 6-foot-6, 240-pound frame that absorbs hits differently from those of other quarterbacks, has made him easy to overlook, Harbaugh has argued.
“I [complain] more than Justin does,” Harbaugh said last season. “I mean, I’m a lesser man. I’m not ashamed to admit that. … It’s Hack-a-Shaq.”
But the numbers tell a different story. Herbert has two accepted roughing the passer penalties this season, tied for second in the league. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is first with four. Herbert has eight since he entered the league in 2020, which is tied for fifth behind Kirk Cousins, Prescott, Josh Allen and Jared Goff. Still, Harbaugh’s point begs the question: Is there any correlation between arguing and penalties? And should Herbert be arguing more? Many quarterbacks say that the answer is no in the short term but that they hope advocating for themselves will influence future calls.
“Arguing isn’t going to get me anywhere,” Herbert said. “If I make a big deal out of it, odds are they’re not going to call it. The more I fight and the more I push for it, I think they’re going to get more and more likely to not call it.”
Former NFL quarterbacks Matt Ryan and Josh McCown, as well as current starters Tua Tagovailoa and Matthew Stafford, say it isn’t as simple as yelling louder but rather a delicate dance with officials between protecting oneself and preserving credibility. Herbert will look to stay upright against the Philadelphia Eagles on “Monday Night Football” (8:15 ET, ESPN).
“You don’t want to be the guy who cried wolf,” said Ryan, the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback, who has the most accepted roughing the passer penalties since 2000, according to ESPN Research.
IN THE FOURTH quarter of the Los Angeles Rams’ Week 5 game against the San Francisco 49ers, outside linebacker Trevis Gipson burst past Rams tackle Alaric Jackson and jammed a hand into Stafford’s face mask, twisting the quarterback’s head as he hit the turf. It was the kind of play that could easily have drawn a flag for roughing but didn’t.
The Rams got a flag for defensive holding on the snap, but that appeared to hardly matter to Stafford.
Stafford bolted up and sprinted toward the nearest official. He yelled and pointed two fingers toward his eyes — a not-so-subtle suggestion for the official to open his. Then he spun back, waved his arms and smacked his helmet. It was a performance befitting a Hollywood movie but the official barely acknowledged it.
Stafford, who is tied with Herbert in roughing penalties since 2020 with eight, said that kind of theater is a way to plant a future seed. “If I see something, I just try to make those guys aware,” he said.
Quarterbacks around the league are routinely accused of flopping — exaggerating falls, flailing their hands — in hopes of being rewarded with a 15-yard gift. In Week 6, the reactions from Chargers players and the team’s sideline appeared to suggest that they believed Miami’s Tagovailoa was doing just that.
In the fourth quarter of that game, defensive tackle Teair Tart shoved Tagovailoa to the ground after he had released the ball. Tagovailoa bolted up with his arms raised and a flag for roughing the passer followed. Tart was later fined $17,389.
“I don’t just flop,” Tagovailoa said. “If somebody touches me, if they hit me and I fall, I’m falling. And if I feel like I get the ball out and then there’s a couple seconds in between where I’m getting hit, then I’ll be like, ‘Dude,’ and I look back to the ref.”
Prescott, who leads the league with the most accepted roughing the passer penalties this season with four, joked that he is probably near the top of the uncalled list, too. Still, even in his 10th season, he said he hasn’t figured out the best way to draw flags.
“I usually get fired up, mad that he didn’t give me the call, and their response isn’t usually pleasant either,” Prescott said. “So I really haven’t figured out the dialogue.”
Complaints about the way Herbert is officiated began last season. After the Cleveland Browns sacked him six times, Harbaugh used his weekly news conference to argue that his quarterback wasn’t being officiated fairly. Harbaugh even compared Herbert to NBA great Shaquille O’Neal — too big to draw calls.
“Does it sound like I’m complaining? Maybe? I could be,” Harbaugh said. “I think he doesn’t get some of those calls when they should be called.”
A week after Herbert’s uncharacteristically heated exchange with officials this season in Pittsburgh, he took another big hit — this time from Jacksonville Jaguars defensive lineman BJ Green II, who was flagged for landing with his body weight. An offsetting Chargers flag wiped out the penalty, but the roughing call drew some national ire.
“How do you want them to play?” former outside linebacker J.J. Watt later said on “The Pat McAfee Show” in reference to the hit. “That tackle was as textbook of a tackle as you can make. It just pisses me off.”
The flag raised another question that only the officials in Jacksonville could answer: Did Herbert’s frustration in Pittsburgh lodge in officials’ minds the following week, or was it just another reminder of how muddled the roughing rule has become?
“For me, if they call it great, if we get that 15 yards, then we’re moving forward,” Herbert said. “… But at the end of the day, it’s out of my control.”
NO PLAYER HAS been more successful at drawing roughing flags than Ryan. Since ESPN Research began tracking accepted roughing the passer penalties, Ryan had 26 across his 15 NFL seasons, ahead of Ryan Fitzpatrick (22) and Tom Brady (21).
“I got hit too much,” Ryan joked, who said he was shocked to be first on the list.
Watch any of Ryan’s 26 and they look similar: He whips his head toward an official — sometimes even before he hits the ground — arms outstretched in disbelief.
Ryan credits his total to the era in which he played — he has the seventh-most pass attempts in NFL history — and the 2009 rule change that emphasized low hits on quarterbacks. The change came after a hit from Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard on Patriots quarterback Brady’s left knee in the 2008 opener resulted in season-ending ACL and MCL tears for the NFL legend.
Still, Ryan said there was a method to his reactions, centered on his credibility. Now an NFL analyst for CBS Sports, he works alongside Gene Steratore, a former official who called many of his games. Through Steratore, Ryan has come to understand that when he chose to speak — or when he didn’t — actually didn’t matter much.
“From my mindset, never hurts to ask, right?” Ryan said with a laugh. “I feel like all of us felt like we could have got more. But at least I’m sitting on the top of something.”
One of the more surprising names near the top of the list is McCown — a backup quarterback for most of his career who played for nine teams over 16 seasons. McCown is tied for the sixth-most roughing the passer penalties accepted since 2000 with 17 despite throwing almost 6,000 fewer passes than Ryan.
“I usually remember getting up and thinking, ‘Man, you’d give Drew Brees that call,’ or, ‘You’d give Tom Brady that call,'” said McCown, now the Minnesota Vikings’ quarterbacks coach. “I never felt like I got the calls, but I guess the evidence would say otherwise.”
McCown said his relationship with officials was unusual because, as a backup, he had time to actually talk with them on the sideline even though he was disappointed that he could never influence any calls.
“I probably owe a few officials an apology,” he said with a laugh.
For all the frustration Herbert showed in Pittsburgh — and all the punishment he has absorbed this season — he remains convinced that arguing accomplishes little. His outburst in Pittsburgh might have been an anomaly, but it seems that Harbaugh and the Chargers wouldn’t mind if he kept lobbying for himself.
“I’ve let the refs know when I thought there was a late hit,” Herbert said. “But it’s part of the game and they’ve got a job, too.”
Sarah Barshop, Marcel Louis-Jacques and Todd Archer contributed to this report.