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# The Chargers' Offensive Slide Isn't Justin Herbert — It's Three Straight Years of Interior-Line Decay
- URL: https://www.statsdigest.com/chargers-2025-offensive-line-decay-not-herbert/
- Published: 2026-08-12T11:39:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-12T11:39:29.000Z
- Description: Three straight seasons of rising sack and pressure rates show the Chargers offensive line, not Herbert
- Author: Bill Seifert
- Tags: Chargers, Justin Herbert, offensive line, EPA, pass protection, 2025 NFL

Los Angeles rode a top-10 defense into January — LAC finished 2025 with the **8th-ranked defensive EPA/play at −0.079**, behind only Houston, Seattle, Minnesota, Cleveland, New England, Jacksonville, and Denver. The story hiding under the "top-8 defense" narrative is that Justin Herbert has been quietly playing through a **three-season, monotonic collapse of his pass protection**, and the seams are finally showing.

## Table of Contents

1. Herbert himself is still playing very well
2. The three-year protection decay is a straight line
3. Herbert is covering for it with career-high scrambling
4. Where the tax landed: intermediate INTs and the interior run game
5. What it means

---

## 1\. Herbert himself is still playing very well

Start with the quarterback, because everything downstream is a reaction to protection breaking, not to Herbert breaking.

In 2025, Herbert threw for **3,886 yards on 543 attempts, 26 TDs, 13 INTs, and +0.159 EPA/play** as a passer. Split by protection state, the picture is even more flattering:

| Situation                  | Plays | EPA/play   |
| -------------------------- | ----- | ---------- |
| Clean pocket               | 463   | **+0.240** |
| Pressured (QB hit or sack) | 140   | −0.857     |

The clean-pocket number is on par with the best of his career — his clean-pocket EPA/play by season since he entered the league has been **+0.246, +0.258, +0.143, +0.180, +0.244, +0.240**. He is not the problem in a clean pocket. The problem is how often the pocket isn't clean: **23.22% of his 2025 dropbacks came under pressure**, and on those plays the offense bled almost a full EPA per snap.

## 2\. The three-year protection decay is a straight line

This is the number that reframes the whole season. Chargers pass protection has gotten monotonically worse for three years running:

| Season | Dropbacks | Sacks | Sack rate | QB hits | QB-hit rate |
| ------ | --------- | ----- | --------- | ------- | ----------- |
| 2023   | 756       | 43    | **5.69%** | 99      | **13.10%**  |
| 2024   | 663       | 48    | **7.24%** | 114     | **17.19%**  |
| 2025   | 758       | 66    | **8.71%** | 148     | **19.53%**  |

Sack rate has climbed from 5.69% to 8.71% — a **+3.02-point jump in two years**. QB-hit rate has climbed from 13.10% to 19.53% — **+6.43 points**. Both moved in the same direction, in the same seasons, at roughly the same pace. That is not noise from opponent quality, or a one-week outlier, or a bad-luck sample. It is a trend line.

## 3\. Herbert is covering for it with career-high scrambling

When the pocket stops holding, quarterbacks either take the hit or move. Herbert has decided to move — a lot more than he ever has:

| Season   | Scrambles | EPA/scramble | Yards/scramble |
| -------- | --------- | ------------ | -------------- |
| 2020     | 25        | +0.396       | 5.56           |
| 2021     | 36        | +0.600       | 7.75           |
| 2022     | 23        | +0.606       | 6.78           |
| 2023     | 31        | +0.501       | 7.74           |
| 2024     | 31        | +0.388       | 10.03          |
| **2025** | **56**    | **+0.556**   | **8.73**       |

Fifty-six scrambles is a **career high by 20 attempts** over his previous mark, and they're still coming in at +0.556 EPA a pop. In other words: the single most efficient thing the Chargers' offense did in 2025 was Herbert manually deleting broken plays with his legs. That's a compliment to him and an indictment of the situation. Scramble volume like that isn't scheme — it's a QB solving problems his line created.

## 4\. Intermediate INTs and the interior run game

Herbert has been carrying the offense, but the tax always comes due somewhere. In 2025 it came due in two very specific places.

**Intermediate interceptions exploded.** By pass depth, Herbert's INT distribution has been:

| Season | Short (<10) INTs | Intermediate (10–19) INTs | Deep (20+) INTs |
| ------ | ---------------- | ------------------------- | --------------- |
| 2023   | 4                | **0**                     | 3               |
| 2024   | 1                | **2**                     | 4               |
| 2025   | 7                | **5**                     | 1               |

That intermediate window — the 10-to-19-yard throws — is exactly where a quarterback pays for a collapsing pocket. You either rush the trigger, drift off your platform, or force it into a closing window. Five picks there in 2025 after **zero in 2023 and two in 2024** is not a Herbert-choice problem so much as a Herbert-under-duress problem, and the short-INT jump from 1 → 7 tells the same story.

**The run game only works to the edges.** Split LAC's 2025 rushes (excluding scrambles) by direction:

| Location / Gap | Rushes | YPC      | EPA/rush  |
| -------------- | ------ | -------- | --------- |
| Left end       | 64     | **5.81** | +0.18     |
| Left tackle    | 44     | 3.86     | −0.08     |
| Left guard     | 47     | **3.06** | **−0.34** |
| Middle         | 133    | **2.78** | −0.10     |
| Right guard    | 50     | **2.58** | **−0.27** |
| Right tackle   | 52     | **6.15** | +0.18     |
| Right end      | 20     | 5.15     | +0.22     |

Every edge run gap — LE, RT, RE — averaged **5.1 YPC or better with positive EPA**. Every interior gap — LG, middle, RG — averaged **3.06 YPC or worse with negative EPA**, with both guard gaps sitting **below 3.10 YPC and around −0.30 EPA/rush**. When runs to your guards and up the middle are that much worse than runs to your ends and outside your tackles, on that kind of volume (230 interior rushes to 128 edge rushes), you are not looking at a scheme problem or a running back problem. You are looking at your interior offensive line.

## 5\. What it means

Put the pieces together:

- Herbert's clean-pocket EPA/play (+0.240) is on par with his career norms.
- His scramble rate is a career high and still elite-efficient (+0.556 EPA on 56 attempts).
- His sack rate has climbed from 5.69% → 7.24% → 8.71% in three straight seasons.
- His QB-hit rate has climbed from 13.10% → 17.19% → 19.53% in the same three seasons.
- The interior run game — both guards and the middle — is well below 3.10 YPC with negative EPA, while every edge gap runs at 5+ YPC and positive EPA.
- The intermediate-depth INT count has gone from 0 → 2 → 5.

That's not a QB regression. It's a QB compensating for a line that has been getting worse in a straight line for three years, and the compensation finally starting to leak through as picks in the intermediate window and a run game that can only function outside the tackles.

I'd expect the offseason conversation in LA to be about a quarterback contract or a scheme adjustment. Based on what the data actually says, the more urgent question looks like the interior of the offensive line — because the quarterback and the edges of the run game are doing their jobs, and the guys between them are the ones the numbers keep pointing at.