The Fantastic Gymnastics of Taking Back Bad Justin Herbert Takes
In which we talk about Justin Herbert Guys, Pumpkin Pie Guys, and Foot Guys.
We’ve all been basking in a Post-NFL Draft glow, and I’m reminded of how special this time is for many media folks whose job it is to project a player’s pro potential. None of them have been proven right, but none of them have been proven wrong, either.
Everybody is just waiting to know if the guy you said was going to be a bust actually ends up being a bust. And if he isn’t, then good luck ever being allowed to forget it.
Just ask Pro Football Focus’ Seth “The Justin Herbert Guy” Galina, who has found himself to be so wholly defined by a single opinion that his online reply guys have made it part of his name.
Seth unfortunately said that Herbert flat out, “can’t play,” back before the 2020 Draft, and after a season where the Offensive Rookie of the Year went out and absolutely played, Galina has had to answer for that bad take ever-since.
That’s the nature of the sportswriting gig though, right? Much like Sith lords, we’re all just dealing in absolutes—hoping something sticks, and then hoping we turn out to be right.
I’ve even fallen victim to this myself, as my legion of reply guys have incessantly (yet, fairly) dubbed me as: “The Camden Lewis Guy.”
Hand up, I can admit where I was wrong. Henry Katleman is easily the better boot for this Oregon team, and I was too stubborn and too resistant to even question Lewis’ status as K1.
But I now see that I was wrong to die on that hill, and—even though I still would rather not lose the Wazzu game—I can say that Cam isn’t the guy for the job.
And that’s how you walk back a take.
That’s why I decided to explore all of the worst “Justin Herbert can’t play” takes from before his Rookie campaign, and then review how well any of these so-called “professionals” did at owning up to their mistakes—seeing how good they walked it the hell back.
Let’s start with what the Cain and Abel of NFL Draft projecting said about our boy.
Todd McShay came out and said that, “[Jordon Love] is going to be a better quarterback than Justin Herbert in five years.”
Oof. Rough start for our guy. He has since recanted that slander and admitted that Justin is exceeding even Tua, and will probably continue to do so, but I guess Aaron Rodgers is giving Todd’s take one last chance by getting out of Green Bay earlier than scheduled. There’s still time, Todd.
Mel Kiper Jr.—the man who eats a slice of pumpkin pie for breakfast—was actually kind of right on this one. He was skeptical of Tua’s injury history, and he was more confident in Justin being drafted higher than many other major guys.
Mel may miss a lot more than he gets right these days, but I guess there’s a reason that Mr. Pumpkin Pie single-handedly invented the industry of NFL Draft coverage.
So what about all the other talking heads?
ESPN’s Mike Greenberg was never really aggressive in his “anti-Herb” stance prior to the Draft, but Greeny was quick to utilize the “Art of the Concession” while arguing for Herbert turning out better than Tua.
“I will admit when I’m wrong,” Greeny said midway through last season, “I didn’t buy into Justin Herbert at all…but there’s no question, Justin Herbert should have gone ahead of Tua.”
Now, Greeny definitely spent that entire next week on Get Up! constantly pivoting his Herbert “apology” into a fancy new “Tua is a bust” take, and that’s because he went to Northwestern, and he was taught by the best of the best.
It’s a fine walk back of a bad take that nobody really knew about in the first place, but there were much bigger and much badder Herbert takes floating around the world that deserve our attention.
“He’s inconsistent and he can’t get to the second level.” - Alex Rollins, NFL Analyst
Alex Rollins is one of the smartest film reviewers on YouTube, and his videos legitimately have made me a better football watcher—but boy, was he wrong on this one.
And he admitted it. His original video was titled Justin Herbert is the Next NFL Draft BUST, and Alex made an entire follow up video after the season about how absolutely off he was on Herb. He dove deep back in the same clips he had previously critiqued, and tried to determine why he missed so thoroughly.
He said that while he knows that there’s still a small chance that Justin doesn’t pan out in the long-term, that he has completely retooled his scouting process based on this single mistake.
“Justin Herbert could easily be one of the biggest mistakes of the Draft.” - Emmanuel Acho, ABC’s The Bachelor
As far as I can tell, Acho never actually walked back this gigantic statement of skepticism, instead he just started talking positively about Herbert one day and pretending like nothing happened.
But we here at Ditch Rich never forget, Mr. Acho. You’ll get no roses from us.
“I’m just not sure he can win the locker room.” - Desmond Howard, Cover of EA Sports NCAA 06
Unlike the rest of these bad takers, Desmond has actually pulled a James Vos and he still refuses to admit that he was wrong.
He took all his wrongness and went live on an episode of Get Up!, looked our friend Greeny in the eyes, and he asserted that he still believes that Tua is the better pick than Herb.
An interesting choice by Des, but we’ll follow up with him some day down the road to catch his eventual admission of incorrecthood.
But not everybody was so damn wrong about Justin Herbert.
(I mean, I was obviously right but that’s mostly thanks to bias, hope, and giddy optimism)
I talked to Shaker Samman, who wrote a piece for The Ringer back in April 2020 called Justin Herbert Is the NFL Draft’s Unassuming Franchise Quarterback. In that piece, Samman wrote about how his physical tools immediately made NFL teams excited, but that he also thought Herbert was more than just the Mitch Trubisky of his class.
“Tua and Burrow are inarguable talents,” Samman told me, but he wondered if Herbert was unfairly being held up against those two as just another in a long line of tall, “Gunslingin’ White Dudes.”
For the piece, Samman talked to a whole host of teammates, coaches, and even Willie Taggart about what made Herbie special. Taggart even gave him a story I had never heard:
“He brought the guys up and he told them, ‘Look, we’re going to go out here, we’re going to take this ball, and we’re going to go shove it up the defense’s ass,’” said Taggart, who now coaches South Florida. “Our offensive tackle, Tyrell Crosby, started laughing when Justin said that because I think it surprised him, too. … Justin told him to shut the fuck up, and everybody went ‘Whoa.’”
-Shaker Samman, The Ringer, April 8th 2020
It was stories like that—that refuted the popular media narrative that Herbert was incapable of commanding a locker room—that caused Samman to conclude in his piece that Herbert was one of the most, “intriguing” quarterbacks in that Draft.
Even that isn’t a glowing endorsement, and I asked Samman point-blank how it felt to be proven right about Justin Herbert not being a bust, and he resisted giving himself that much credit. “I’d be lying if I said that I expected to see all that success last year.”
Along with myself, Samman exists in a small group of Believers in Justin Herbert—which also apparently includes Rex Ryan.
As we feared, the venn diagram between Foot Guys and Justin Herbert Guys is much closer than any of us would like to admit.
At the very least, none of us had to take back any shameful statements after Justin went on to set records upon records despite being the most pressured, the most hurried, and that second-most hit quarterback in the whole league.
So what does a sophomore encore look like for the Rookie of the Year?
The Chargers drafted a much-needed offensive tackle in Northwestern’s Rashawn Slater, whose immediate message for his QB1 was literally: “I got your back.”
Slater joins new o-line signees, Corey Linsley and Matt Feiler, along with a finally healthy Bryan Bulaga. Maybe, just maybe, Herb might have some protection in 2021.
Sophomore slumps happen, but Justin still forced so many fantastic media voices to admit defeat, and graciously validated a select few. And for that, we can’t thank him enough.
I want to give a huge shoutout to Shaker Samman for giving Ditch Rich our first real interview of any kind. Do yourself a favor and go follow Shaker on Twitter, he’s a Duke fan but he’s also one of the smartest sports brains I’ve ever read.
I asked Shaker about how Oregon lost in the Elite Eight after Coach K attempted to instruct Dillon Brooks, and how that would make Coach K (0-1) the worst coach in Oregon history.
His expert response:
“If I was tasked with litigating Coach K’s decisions, I’d be a much richer man than I am today.”
Give him a warm welcome to the Ditch Rich-averse.
Go Ducks.