Picture this: It’s the dying seconds of the NFC Championship, fourth and goal. The crowd’s roar is a physical thing, vibrating in your bones. The quarterback takes the snap, eyes scanning a collapsing pocket – that split-second decision between heroism and heartbreak defines legacies. In Los Angeles, under the relentless SoCal sun, two quarterbacks are living their own versions of that pressure cooker. One, Justin Herbert, just got publicly nudged down the league’s pecking order. The other, Trey Lance, is fighting for his NFL life. And Coach Jim Harbaugh? He’s watching it all unfold like a seasoned general surveying his troops.
Down the Chargers’ depth chart, Lance – the former 3rd overall pick whose NFL journey reads like a Madden franchise mode on hard difficulty – is grinding. His stats are modest (1,063 pass yds, 5 TDs, 4 INTs in 12 career games), a far cry from his NDSU days where he threw 28 TDs with ZERO INTs en route to a national title. He’s the small-town Minnesota kid with ‘Child of God’ inked on his back, known for preseason highlight runs (like a 46-yd TD vs. the Chargers last August) and meeting rooms so meticulously mapped they look like “a beautiful mind”, per Mike McCarthy. Now backing up Herbert, Lance caught Harbaugh’s ear – and earned public praise.
“Really excited about Trey,” Harbaugh declared, his voice carrying the gravelly conviction of a coach who’s seen comebacks before. He tipped his cap specifically to former Cowboys head coach McCarthy, who witnessed Lance’s daily grind firsthand in Dallas last year. “Mike McCarthy actually got that message to us…to me, & appreciate him for that,” Harbaugh added, highlighting the internal belief in Lance’s progress.
The message was clear: In the Chargers’ camp, it’s not just about the star QB licking his ranking wounds. “Right now, we’re just training and rolling,” Harbaugh stated, framing Lance’s development within the team’s relentless forward momentum. It’s a subtle but powerful vote of confidence in the former phenom, a nod that in Harbaugh’s world, every rep matters, every player is being sharpened.
Herbert snubbed: Dropping in PFF rankings
Meanwhile, the latest Pro Football Focus QB rankings dropped like a poorly thrown screen pass for Chargers fans. Herbert, the guy with over 21,093 career yds, 137 TDs vs. 45 INTs, and a pristine 96.7 passer rating, landed at… 8th. Eighth! Behind names like the 2024 ROTY, but untested beyond one-season Jayden Daniels (Commanders) and the venerable Matthew Stafford (Rams). The ‘elite tier’? Mahomes, Burrow, Jackson, Allen. Herbert? PFF dubbed him merely a “high-end starter,” pointing to his 0–2 playoff record – including that brutal 4-INT Wild Card meltdown against the Texans this January.
It’s the kind of snub that makes you spit out your Gatorade. Especially for a guy who just finished a season with a 101.7 rating, 23 TDs to only 3 picks, and holds records like most completions by a rookie (396 in 2020) and most combined TDs in his first three seasons (102, beating Marino!).
This is the culture Harbaugh, alongside Herbert, is forging in LA: demanding yet deeply supportive. They took a 5–12 squad in 2023 to 11–6 and a playoff berth in their first year together, building the NFL’s stingiest D (14.5 ppg allowed). They see Herbert’s elite arm and Lance’s untapped potential not as separate puzzles, but pieces of the same relentless machine. Herbert’s snub? Fuel. Lance’s fight for relevance? Proof that opportunity burns bright under this staff.
As the Chargers prep for their 2025 opener in São Paulo, the narrative isn’t just about redemption for one QB, but the symphony Harbaugh is conducting. It’s about proving that rankings are just noise, and the real measure of a quarterback – like that fourth-down stand – happens between the lines, one snap, one throw, one beautifully executed play at a time. The season looms like a kickoff hanging in the air. Let the doubters keep their lists. In LA, they’re building something louder.
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