Quentin Lake took a swipe at Justin Herbert after the Rams’ win over the Chargers last week, then followed it up with an apology once the comments started making the rounds.
Lake had said on Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown’s podcast that Herbert was “throwing deli meat out there” during a two-interception performance that helped Los Angeles hand the Chargers their seventh straight loss to open the season. After the reaction picked up, Lake said Friday he texted Herbert to say he didn’t mean any harm.
“I don’t know if he read it,” Lake said Friday, via the Los Angeles Times.“ He probably says, ‘I don’t care about it anymore.
I’m not trying to see this. It doesn’t matter.
You said what you said.’ But at the same time I . . . felt like it was right for me to at least say,’ Hey, man, I didn’t mean it in any disrespectful way.’”
Lake also said after the game that Herbert “was seeing ghosts out there” and that the Rams’ defense expected him to make mistakes.
Herbert, for his part, didn’t want to spend much time on it when reporters asked this week.
“I haven’t looked into it, haven’t heard anything about it, so I can’t really make a comment about it,” Herbert told reporters this week. “We’re really just focused on what’s going on in the building, playing football and doing what we can and doing our best to, you know, go put our best effort out on Sunday.
And that’s all that really matters. Anything outside of that is out of our control.”
Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh backed his quarterback after watching the film.
“I thought he played - did his job exceptionally well,” Harbaugh said after reviewing the game film. “You know, two throws he would have liked to have back.”
On Thursday, Mike McDaniel, who’s struggling in his first season as the team’s offensive coordinator, brushed off Lake’s take on Herbert.
“People are saying whatever they want with whatever facts they have when we’re not living up to expectations,” McDaniel said. “Keep it moving.”
Herbert has now thrown an interception in every start this season, and he leads the NFL with 10 while also sitting with the lowest QBR among starting quarterbacks at 32.5. Even with that rough start, he’s expected to stay put ahead of the trade deadline after a report this week said the Minnesota Vikings were interested.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported last month that the Chargers would not move off their franchise player.
“The person cut me off mid-sentence, stopped me in my tracks and said, ‘Let me be very clear about this: we have never even discussed that idea. Should we trade Justin Herbert has never been uttered in our organization, nor will it be,” Schefter said last month.
“This is what the person said. … I didn’t even hear a ‘we will listen.’
They won’t discuss it, they won’t think about it.”
The Chargers, who haven’t scored a touchdown in their last nine quarters of play, will host Houston on Sunday. The Texans are 2-5 this season, with both wins coming over their last three games.
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