EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) — Justin Herbert has accomplished several personal milestones during his first five years in the league.
However, it hasn’t resulted in playoff success for the Los Angeles Chargers.
Herbert can change that on Saturday when the Chargers travel to Houston for an AFC wild-card round game.
It will be Herbert’s second postseason start. While he realizes the stakes involved with Saturday’s game, he is trying to take the same approach as he would any other week.
“It would mean everything for us (to get a win). It is the most important game this year because it’s the next one,” Herbert said.
Herbert and the Chargers raced out to a 27-0 first-half lead two years ago at Jacksonville in a wild-card round game, only to have the Jaguars rally for a 31-30 victory.
One thing Herbert is trying not to do is make sure what happened in that game doesn’t impact what happens on Saturday.
“You never let a previous game affect the next one. There have been plenty of games we have won or lost the past couple of years we haven’t brought up,” he said.
Despite helping lead the Chargers to 11 victories — their most since 2018 — it has been a mixed season statistically for Herbert. He averaged a career-low 227.6 passing yards per game, but has a career-best 101.7 passer rating.
Herbert also became the second player in league history to have at least 500 pass attempts and throw three or fewer interceptions in a season. Aaron Rodgers was the first in 2018. Despite having only two 300-yard games this season, Herbert still has the most completions (1,945) and passing yards (21,093) by a player in his first five seasons in NFL history.
Going into the season, Herbert was learning his fourth offense in five years and trying to build a rapport with an inexperienced receiving unit after the offseason departures of Keenan Allen and Mike Williams.
To compound matters, Herbert missed two weeks of training camp because of a foot injury. He then was limited in two early season games because of a high ankle sprain suffered on Sept. 15 at Carolina.
Herbert admitted this week that the learning curve of coordinator Greg Roman’s offense was a bit steep.
“It takes a long time, especially to have a feel for why he’s calling a certain play and understanding the different checks and what he wants,” Herbert said. “It’s something you can’t just learn in camps and OTAs where you’re not facing a true defense or feeling the true pressure.”
The most significant area of improvement in Herbert’s game this season has been using play action. The Chargers used play action on 32.6% of his drop-backs, the second-highest rate in the league.
“I feel like he has improved incredibly from day one to now,” Roman said of Herbert and play action. “He wasn’t into the play action a whole lot, so the ball handling, the fakes, the various actions, some quarterbacks do it well, and others it is an afterthought. It’s a token. I feel like he has really brought that level of his game up and continues to ascend.”
Since being hired by the Chargers last January, coach Jim Harbaugh has been Herbert’s biggest fan. Harbaugh has developed more of an appreciation of Herbert watching him in practice.
“He gives no keys. There’s nothing with his eyes that tell a defender where the ball is going, nothing with his shoulder tilt or his posture,” Harbaugh said. “The ball is released so quickly that it is by people. Defenders don’t have the advantage of getting a set.
“I think, too, for receivers, his anticipation and timing are so incredible they can’t count on seeing the ball out of his hand. A lot of times when they are running the routes, the ball might be halfway there.”
Herbert said the points of emphasis against the Texans on Saturday will be the same they have been the entire season — executing on third down and in the red zone along with limiting turnovers.
Herbert and the Chargers will face a Texans defense that is ranked sixth against the pass, allowing 201 yards per game. Houston was second in the league in interceptions with 19.
“The most important thing is to trust yourself and know we didn’t get here by chance or luck. We earned the spot, and nothing else is given. We have to survive, make plays and trust we know what we’re doing and play the way we can,” Herbert said.
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Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert speaks at a news conference after an NFL football game against the Las Vegas Raiders in Las Vegas, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert celebrates with fans after an NFL football game against the Las Vegas Raiders in Las Vegas, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert (10) prepares to enter the field before an NFL football game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Inglewood, Calif. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)
Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert (10) passes against the Las Vegas Raiders during the first half of an NFL football game in Las Vegas, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon’s parliament voted Thursday to elect army commander Joseph Aoun as head of state, filling a more than two-year-long presidential vacuum.
The vote came weeks after a tenuous ceasefire agreement halted a 14-month conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and at a time when Lebanon’s leaders are seeking international assistance for reconstruction.
Aoun, no relation to former president Michel Aoun, was widely seen as the preferred candidate of the United States and Saudi Arabia, whose assistance Lebanon will need as it seeks to rebuild.
The session was the legislature’s 13th attempt to elect a successor to Michel Aoun, whose term ended in October 2022.
Hezbollah previously backed another candidate, Suleiman Frangieh, the leader of a small Christian party in northern Lebanon with close ties to former Syrian President Bashar Assad. However, on Wednesday, Frangieh announced he had withdrawn from the race and endorsed Aoun, clearing the way for the army chief.
Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Institute, said that the military and political weakening of Hezbollah following its war with Israel and the fall of its ally, Assad, in Syria, along with international pressure to elect a president paved the way for Thursday’s result.
In a first round of voting Thursday, Aoun received 71 out of 128 votes but fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to win outright. Of the rest, 37 lawmakers cast blank ballots and 14 voted for “sovereignty and the constitution.”
In the second round, he received 99 votes.
The head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, Mohammed Raad, implied that the group's legislators had withheld their votes from Aoun in the first round but voted for him in the second in bid to show that Hezbollah - even in its diminished state - cannot be politically sidelined.
“We postponed our vote because we wanted to send a message that just as we are protectors of Lebanon’s sovereignty, we are protectors of the national accord," Raad said after the election.
Aoun was escorted by a marching band into the parliament building in downtown Beirut where he took the oath of office.
Some streets erupted in celebratory fireworks and gunshots. In Aoun’s hometown of Aichiye in Jezzine province, southern Lebanon, people waved the Lebanese flag and distributed traditional sweets, while local media showed the slaughter of a sheep in celebration.
In a speech to parliament, Aoun pledged to carry out reforms to the judicial system, fight corruption and work to consolidate the state’s right to “monopolise the carrying of weapons,” in an apparent allusion to the arms of Hezbollah.
He also promised to control the country’s borders and “ensure the activation of the security services and to discuss a strategic defense policy that will enable the Lebanese state to remove the Israeli occupation from all Lebanese territories” in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military has not yet withdrawn from dozens of villages.
He also vowed to reconstruct “what the Israeli army destroyed in the south, east and (Beirut’s southern) suburbs.”
Lebanon’s fractious sectarian power-sharing system is prone to deadlock, both for political and procedural reasons. The small, crisis-battered Mediterranean country has been through several extended presidential vacancies, with the longest lasting nearly 2 1/2 years between May 2014 and October 2016. It ended when former President Michel Aoun was elected.
The president's role in Lebanon is limited under the power-sharing system in which the president is always a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament Shiite.
However, only the president has the power to appoint or remove a prime minister and cabinet. The caretaker government that has run Lebanon for the last two years has reduced powers because it was not appointed by a sitting president.
Joseph Aoun is the fifth former army commander to ascend to Lebanon’s presidency, despite the fact that the country's constitution prohibits high-ranking public servants, including army commanders, from assuming the presidency during their term or within two years of stepping down.
Under normal circumstances, a presidential candidate in Lebanon can be elected by a two-thirds majority of the 128-member house in the first round of voting, or by a simple majority in a subsequent round.
But because of the constitutional issues surrounding his election, Aoun needed a two-thirds majority in the second round to clinch the election.
Aoun, 60, was appointed army chief in March 2017 and had been set to retire in January 2024, but his term was extended twice during the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. He kept a low profile and avoided media appearances and never formally announced his candidacy.
Other contenders included Jihad Azour, a former finance minister who is now the director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund; and Elias al-Baysari, the acting head of Lebanon’s General Security agency. Al-Baisary announced Thursday that he was pulling out of the race.
The next government will face daunting challenges apart from implementing the ceasefire agreement that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war and seeking funds for reconstruction.
Lebanon is in its sixth year of an economic and financial crisis that decimated the country's currency and wiped out the savings of many Lebanese. The cash-strapped state electricity company provides only a few hours of power a day.
The country's leaders reached a preliminary agreement with the IMF for a bail-out package in 2022 but have made limited progress on reforms required to clinch the deal.
Slim, the analyst, said that “the fact that (Aoun) has the backing of Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and the Europeans give him a big boost in terms of being able to get things done,” Slim said.
But he will still have to “navigate the contradiction that are inherent in domestic Lebanese politics,” she said, including relations with Hezbollah, which is not only a militant group but a political party with a strong base of support.
Aoun “has never had a conflictual relationship with Hezbollah, but he has also never acquiesced to Hezbollah,” Slim said.
The army commander’s relative lack of experience with economic matters means he will likely lean heavily on his advisors.
Newly-elected Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, center, smiles and waves to journalists upon his arrival at the Lebanese Parliament to be sworn in as a new president, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Newly-elected Lebanese President Joseph Aoun addresses his first speech at the Lebanese Parliament after being sworn in as a new president, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Newly-elected Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, center, reviews the honor guard upon his arrival at the Lebanese Parliament to be sworn in as a new president, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Newly-elected Lebanese President Joseph Aoun reviews the honor guard upon his arrival at the Lebanese Parliament to be sworn in as a new president, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A Lebanese lawmaker casts his vote to elect a new president, at the parliament building in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc members attend a parliamentary session to elect a new president, at the parliament building in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, right, casts his vote to elect a new president, at the parliament building in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (Lebanese Parliament media office via AP)
Lebanese lawmakers count the votes after casting their ballots to elect a new president, at the parliament building in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Lebanese army soldiers block a road that leads to the parliament building while lawmakers gather to elect a president in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Lebanese army soldiers block a road that leads to the parliament building while lawmakers gather to elect a president in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Lebanese army soldiers stand guard in front of the parliament building before a session to elect a new Lebanese president in down town Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri opens the session to elect a new president at the parliament building in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A Lebanese army soldier with a sniffer dog checks a road that leads to the parliament building while lawmakers gather to elect a president in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Lebanese troops stand guard in front of the parliament building before a session to elect a new Lebanese president in down town Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Lebanese army soldiers block a road that leads to the parliament building while lawmakers gather to elect a president in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Lebanese lawmakers gather to elect a new president at the parliament building in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Lebanese lawmakers gather to elect a new president at the parliament building in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
FILE - Lebanese Army Commander Gen. Joseph Aoun arrives for a meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, Dec. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
FILE - In this photo released by the Lebanese Parliament media office, Lebanese lawmakers attending a parliament session, in Beirut, Lebanon, April 18, 2023. (Hassan Ibrahim/Lebanese Parliament media office via AP, File)
