Jim Harbaugh Predicted Justin Herbert Would Be the Best Ever. Mike Florio Says That Is Hurting Him.
The Chargers are 0-2 and Herbert is 0-3 in the playoffs. One argument says the coach is backing his quarterback; the other says he is loading him.
Jim Harbaugh does not hedge. Asked about his quarterback on a podcast this month, the Chargers head coach reached for the largest comparison available in American sport and made a prediction that will follow Justin Herbert for the rest of his career. Two weeks later Los Angeles is 0-2, Herbert is being asked in press conferences whether his locker room lacks vocal leadership, and the prediction has become the frame through which every throw is now read.
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The mechanics of that are worth separating from the sentiment. Nobody disputes that Harbaugh believes what he said, and nobody serious disputes that Herbert is a good quarterback. The argument is about what public hype of that magnitude does to a player who already carries a specific, repeatedly cited hole in his record: he is 0-3 in the postseason.
Allow me to call my shot, like Babe Ruth pointing his bat over to centerfield: Justin Herbert, when it's all said and done, when his career comes to an end, I predict he will be known as the greatest, best ever to play the position of quarterback.— Jim Harbaugh, Los Angeles Chargers head coach, on The White House with Michael Irvin (via ProFootballTalk, Sept 12)
Mike Florio's objection is not that the claim is wrong but that it is expensive. Writing at ProFootballTalk under the headline that Harbaugh needs to stop, he put it plainly: "The relentless hype regarding quarterback Justin Herbert needs to stop. It's too much. It's over the top. And it puts too much pressure on Herbert." It is a genuinely unusual criticism — an analyst arguing that a coach is being too supportive — and it only works because of the gap between the prediction and the current record.
The prediction and the pushback
Predicts Herbert "will be known as the greatest, best ever to play the position."
"The relentless hype regarding quarterback Justin Herbert needs to stop. It puts too much pressure on Herbert."
Herbert is 0-3 in the playoffs, which is the record the prediction has to overcome.
Rejects the premise: "I'm going to stop you right there and say that it's very present."
0-3 in the playoffs, which is the whole basis of the objection.
"I don't think anyone is panicked or worried because that's not going to be the sentiment."
Herbert's own answer is the sharpest rebuttal in the whole exchange, and it does not address Harbaugh at all. Asked about a perceived absence of vocal leadership, he rejected the premise outright: "I don't think there's a lack of vocal leadership at all. So, I'm going to stop you right there and say that it's very present. I don't think anyone is panicked or worried because that's not going to be the sentiment." That is a quarterback declining to accept the media's framing of his own room, which is the most direct evidence available that the pressure Florio describes is being generated outside the building rather than inside it. Harbaugh, for his part, has not blamed his quarterback for either defeat. What makes the exchange genuinely unusual is its direction. Analysts normally criticise a coach for undermining a player, not for believing in him too loudly, and Florio's argument only works because of the distance between the size of the claim and the state of the evidence. A prediction that a quarterback will end his career as the best who ever played is not falsifiable for another decade. A 0-3 postseason record is available to anyone right now. Every week the second number sits unchanged, the first one reads less like conviction and more like a bill coming due. That is the mechanism Florio is pointing at, and it does not require Herbert to be bad - only for the gap to stay open. The counter-case is just as simple, and Herbert made it himself: the panic is being described from outside a building where, by his account, nobody is panicking.
A coach calling his shot is only a problem if the shot misses. Buffalo, Seattle, Denver and Kansas City over the next month will decide which of these two men was describing reality.
Support Or Weight
A quarterback with visible postseason scar tissue benefits from a coach who is publicly, unambiguously behind him.
The prediction is now the standard every throw is measured against, and the standard is the highest one available.
A playoff win. Nothing else in the argument moves, because the entire objection is built on a 0-3 postseason record.
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Sources: ProFootballTalk — Harbaugh: Herbert will be remembered as the greatest ever, ProFootballTalk — Harbaugh needs to stop the Herbert hype, ProFootballTalk — Herbert disputes perception of a leadership vacuum, The Sporting News via Yahoo — Inside Justin Herbert's playoff record