Outside of one big mistake, Los Angeles Chargers star quarterback Justin Herbert put up another stellar performance in a narrow loss to the Kansas City Chiefs Thursday night.
Unfortunately, Herbert also suffered what looked to be a painful rib injury in the fourth quarter of said game. While he did return to action to throw a touchdown, the quarterback was seen in a tremendous amount of pain as the game came to a conclusion.
The fact that Herbert remained in the game showed just how tough he is. It also seemed to indicate that the injury was not as serious as it initially looked.
With that said, the third-year quarterback was seen heading into the X-ray room following the game. Amazon Prime noted during its postgame press conference that he was indeed undergoing X-rays.
Obviously, it’s way too early to tell how serious this injury might be. We can’t look too much into the fact that Herbert returned to the game after one play. He’s as tough as nails. He was also visibly in pain.
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Los Angeles Chargers should have pulled Justin Herbert
Kansas City was able to pin its ears back and go after Herbert after taking a two-score lead. There were just over five minutes remaining in the game when Herbert went down. He returned to lead the Chargers to a punt before Kansas City scored a field goal to put this away with a 10-point lead.
At that point, a lot of people were questioning whether Herbert should have been in the game with Los Angeles in desperation mode. Why risk further injury?
- Justin Herbert stats (Week 2): 33-of-48 passing, 334 yards, 3 TD, 1 INT
From an in-game perspective, Herbert was able to bounce back from throwing a pick-six to lead the Chargers on a touchdown-scoring drive to pull Los Angeles within three points. His toughness really is a major takeaway here.
Chargers head coach Brandon Staley did note post-game that they’ll find out a lot more about Herbert’s injury on Friday. We’ll have updates at that point.