EL SEGUNDO — If you go strictly by the numbers, then the 2025 regular season wasn’t the best of quarterback Justin Herbert’s six seasons in the NFL. He didn’t top 5,000 yards passing, as he did during the 2021 season. He didn’t limit his interceptions to only three, as he did in ’24.
Coach Jim Harbaugh said Monday that Herbert would sit out the Chargers’ regular-season finale Sunday against the Broncos in Denver in order to rest and ensure his fractured, non-throwing left hand doesn’t suffer any unnecessary damage before the playoffs begin the following week.
So, Herbert’s regular season totals were as follows: He completed 340 of 512 passes (66.4%) for 3,727 yards with 26 touchdowns and 13 interceptions in 16 games, leading the Chargers to an 11-5 record and earning his second Pro Bowl selection. Trey Lance will start Sunday and Herbert will not suit up.
It wasn’t what Herbert accomplished, but how he did it, according to Chargers offensive coordinator Greg Roman. After all, Herbert played the past five games with a fractured hand that required surgery one day after he hurt it in the first quarter of the Chargers’ victory Nov. 30 over the Las Vegas Raiders.
What’s more, Herbert played the entire season without left tackle Rashawn Slater, his blind-side protector who suffered a season-ending knee injury during training camp in August. Herbert also played the past seven games without top right tackle Joe Alt, who sustained a season-ending ankle injury Nov. 2.
“Well, to me, it was an MVP season,” Roman said Thursday.
Roman praised Herbert for the many things great and small that he did to weather the twin storms of playing at a high level with a debilitating injury and behind a patchwork offensive line that lacked cohesion because of the injuries to Slater and Alt, two Pro Bowl candidates going into the season.
“When you look around the league with the other teams that have had attrition such as this, the results aren’t quite the same,” Roman said. “So, when you go back and look at it, just the way he has gutted through and found a way to will us to victory, and I’m not going to name the games.
“But those are the games that get you to the playoffs. You don’t come by it easy, and when you have so much attrition like that, it just funnels to him. It rolls uphill to him. It changes everything, so his ability to navigate through that with a steel mind and, really, just not blink. Not for one second was there a ‘Why us?’
“Not at all.”
Roman could have mentioned comeback victories such as the Chargers’ 23-20 victory over the Broncos on Sept. 21, their 29-27 win over the Miami Dolphins on Oct. 12 or consecutive victories over the Philadelphia Eagles, 22-19, and the Kansas City Chiefs, 16-13, last month.
Herbert missed only 10 snaps total after breaking his hand against the Raiders, eight while he was being checked by the Chargers’ medical staff in the SoFi Stadium locker room and two at the end of the game when Lance performed two kneel-downs to kill the final seconds off the clock.
So, if 300-yard games have been few and far between this season, it certainly hasn’t dimmed the Chargers’ appreciation of Herbert. Things could have turned sour in the wake of the injuries to Slater and Alt, but Herbert shouldered a heavy burden despite being sacked a career-high 54 times.
“That’s where we are right now,” Roman said of Herbert’s ability to lead the Chargers to the playoffs in consecutive seasons for the first time since 2008 and’09. “It’s the whole team, obviously, but in terms of Justin and what he’s had to deal with this year, I think it’s a career-defining type of year.”