THE FOOTBALL LEAVES Justin Herbert's hand and appears to travel downhill, nose down, a plane forever on approach. It rotates through the air roughly 12½ times per second, the laces spinning vertiginously into a white fuzz. A football released by Herbert's right hand and powered by his right arm has always been more than a mere object. Its path, a straight line for longer than seems possible, sends a message of hope and expectation -- for him, for his teammates, for those who run the Los Angeles Chargers. His receivers call it a heavy ball, but they're describing it solely in the literal sense. Its figurative weight can be measured only by the man who throws it.
On its own, stripped of its greater significance, the arm is a marvel. During a Friday practice more than a month ago, two days before the Chargers played the Miami Dolphins on a Sunday night, Herbert rolled about 15 yards to his right, planted his back foot, turned his hips and sent a spiral more than 60 yards to the opposite corner of the field.
After the ball landed in receiver Mike Williams' hands, muffled and polite applause sifted its way through the team. And after practice, standing at his locker next to Herbert's, third-string quarterback Easton Stick describes the throw just so he can get to the part about the applause.
"Everyone goes 'Yeah, yeah, yeah,'" Stick says, rolling his eyes and tapping the fingertips of his right hand into the palm of his left, an exaggerated, patronizing version of a golf clap. "But: No, no, no." Stick's got his right hand in the air now, like a traffic cop. "I wanted to stop practice and scream, 'Guys, that's not normal. Like, really not normal."
Roughly 54 hours after the throw on the practice field and roughly 56 hours after Stick's awed description, on Sunday night of Week 14 in a season-defining game against the Dolphins, in a game against a quarterback (Tua Tagovailoa) chosen one spot ahead of him in the first round of the 2020 draft, Herbert rolled about 15 yards to the right, side-stepped a rusher, planted his feet at his own 22-yard line and threw across his body to hit Williams near the opposite sideline at the Dolphins' 21. It was the same exact pass Stick described two days before: more than 60 yards in the air, never seeming to climb higher than 15 feet off the ground, plausible for perhaps four of the 7.8 billion inhabitants of the planet.
This is nothing new. Herbert has always been great at this throwing business. He was 7 when he entered his first all-comers track meet in his hometown of Eugene, Oregon, where his grandfather was a track coach. There was no discus or shot put for 7-year-olds, so Justin competed in the softball throw. From one week to the next, he kept throwing and winning until that arm carried him all the way to Hershey, Pennsylvania, where he competed in a national meet. That arm has continued to carry him, to stardom at Sheldon High School in Eugene to the University of Oregon and now to Los Angeles.
Despite the arm -- or maybe because of it, and its near flawlessness -- the focus always seemed to shift to Herbert's personality. NFL evaluators, paid to hunt weakness, wondered if his introverted nature would translate to a professional huddle and all the attendant demands the position requires. John Elway was once asked what was harder, doing the job or having the job? Having it, he said without hesitation. It was obvious Herbert could do the job, but could he have it?
