Justin Herbert, the BEST QB in the NFL | The Drue Tranquill Show

as long as you work hard you do you do your best and you never give up i think you're setting yourself up for success and whatever it looks like [Music] uh i'm joined right now by justin herbert my man patrick we're doing an official introduction here in my eyes the best quarterback in the nfl yes i really appreciate that drew but uh it's i think a lot of work to be done more of an honor to be on your show and uh thank you for having me yeah i'm excited that you're here you're certainly uh helping me out by doing this but i'm excited to chat uh i'm bummed the listeners we were just talking about pat mcafee and how awesome he was and how poor my intros are relative to pat pat really does a stellar job yeah but he's had he's had a few years of experience you'll get there yeah hopefully i can just get the crowd riled up and excited for our guest um all right getting back to the twitter and instagram thing so in high school was it something that bothered you and so you're like i'm gonna delete it because of that i thought it was great in high school because there was no there was no really attention on it and it was just like me my friends my my family you'd post a picture and you know your classmates would would like it and things like that but as soon as i got to college there was a little more attention and i didn't really want that and kind of like i said um you know it was actually my freshman year and people started tagging me in these like start justin herbert like i was the backup at the time i didn't want any attention i just wanted to do my job um and get along with it but people started tagging me in that and i didn't really know how to deal with it so i just deleted everything and said you know i don't need this i don't need twitter i don't need any of it i'll just do my job and play football so you were just trying to scroll and catch your friends catch your family and you were just seeing this stuff and it it bothered you or was it kind of like how did it make you feel were you like yeah they should start me no i didn't want to be in the limelight like i didn't want any extra attention like playing football is one thing and being out on the field i think that's great but like anything outside of that in the spotlight i try to avoid and um i just wanted to see you know keep up with my friends family and i was getting tagged in these like start justin herbert i didn't want any controversy i didn't want to start anything because the guy in front of me i respected him as a teammate as a player as a friend um and i didn't want any part of that i actually i think i trained with him at pro code this last offseason he's a really cool guy yeah the goat was awesome he played at uh montana state with my older brother and so i was friends with him before and it was just kind of a tough yeah i don't know it's it's it's yeah the way he described to me he said you guys were just struggling with the season yeah and they were like let's just let's try out justin yeah i feel like that's typically how it goes in football yeah so we weren't uh we didn't finish the way we wanted to my freshman year i think we went four and eight and so it was a tough year coach got fired um but uh it was interesting to go through for sure wait so before i like we talk about your upbringing with not liking the limelight how have you like mentally processed the last two years because it's one thing to like be elite in college but i mean being your teammate i've seen like the chargers just kind of like push you out there the nfl kind of push you out there and there's obviously a lot of attention when you're rookie of the year and an elite quarterback how have you like mentally processed that yeah i think one of the things that we're the guys on our team are doing a good job of is like filtering what's important and what's not whatever's being said on social media on twitter doesn't matter it doesn't really have any pertinence to what's going on and if it's not coming from you know a teammate a coach my family i don't put too much effort into it and i don't really pay attention to it and um you know thousands of things are being said on the news and if you start getting caught up in that and you start worrying about that i think you're already losing your job um and so it's important for me to just focus on football play football and if it's not coming from shane day joe lombardi chase easton or one of you guys i'm not gonna pay too much attention to it but what about like the like the marketing like deals and in the nfl wanting you to do all of these interviews i feel like it would be natural to feel like you're a big deal i don't know i i think as long as i'm genuine in myself i think that makes it easy um you know you talk about these deals like nike and um you know you look at like chipotle and things like this those are products that i've grown up using in like nike being from oregon it doesn't get any better than that and um you know they were kind of late to getting a deal with me but i told everyone i said i'm not you know i'm not going any other way like nike's i've always been nike and it's going to be genuine it's going to be myself and whatever happens happens but i'm going to stick with them in terms of like going out in public has that been like more of a challenge have you felt yourself like staying at home more what's that like for you i feel like i get it a little bit if i go back to like fort wayne or south bend where i'm from and i can like whether it's like church on sunday and i'm like like you know i'd rather just watch it from home type deal like how do you like handle that how have you has that like changed your day-to-day yeah unfortunately it's kind of like a tough because i love just going and hanging out with my friends like if you go sit down at a restaurant and eat food like i love just hanging out with them and talking with them and um so i know we went and we went and drove those uh k1 cars that was awesome things like that um but at the same time you always have to kind of worry about you know cameras social media and people taking clips and whatever you say out in public you have to be careful because everything is so connected now and um i think it has been tough because you want to enjoy you know these years of your life of of being young and being able to do things but at the same time you have to be responsible and respectful respectful of other people yeah patrick do you need him to move any closer to the mic i feel like it's cutting out a little bit sorry come closer more intimate with the mic justin all right uh is that how you've always been like more out of the limelight or was that something your parents taught you your dad showed you it's a good question um i don't know i feel like it's just kind of always been like that i grew up uh playing for a high school coach that was always best one of the best coaches i've ever had coach johnson coach jay and uh you know it was always about the team and we never really went to these camps uh that you see like the the opening and the elite 11 things like that i was playing basketball and baseball at the same time so i didn't have time to go to these camps and it was all about winning for for our high school and growing up and being a part of that team it wasn't about any individual it wasn't about getting recruited and seeing how far you could go is about giving yourself to something bigger than yourself and for the team to win and do all these great things that you have to give up and you have to make sacrifices but did you not have like any personal ambitions for like getting scholarships no not not in eugene we had uh maybe a couple guys that we know curtis white went and played it organ he was a scholarship guy you know you can name a couple a couple guys before us that really went on and played and you know alex brink and chris miller these are quarterbacks that played well before me but uh they're guys that you knew that that went on and played it whether it was washington state or oregon um those are kind of the stories you heard but nothing more more than that so a lot of the guys at oregon they were from out of state yeah so not a not a whole lot of guys from our high school went and played um division one football you know you get these exceptions my older brother and you get connor strom and these guys that really you know were exceptional players but uh i never really had any goals of going on to play and because i didn't really think i was going to so i was just expecting you know to play baseball basketball football in high school and go get a real job after that that's so funny i so my high school in fort wayne it wasn't known for like sports at all it was a very like academic like driven high school and they were very very good like academically like had a good placement deal they had a good basketball team he had a baseball team the baseball team actually won state i think one or two times during like the few years i was there and in the years before but like football really really struggled and so i got involved with like a performance training place yeah where i started going to like all these camps and that's how i got recruited so for you if you weren't going to these camps what was recruitment like for you um there wasn't much you know i my first scholarship offer was from northern arizona and one of the coaches actually went to sheldon high school which is where i went so we kind of had that connection that way and then the next one was portland state which was two hours north of me and then another one was montana state where my older brother played and so those are the three schools and then organ finally came around and so i i told them yeah i'm in and i didn't really have to think too much about that one i was uh reading did you you broke your leg your junior year yep my femur so were all those offers before your leg uh all of them were after oh they were after yeah so i started my junior year that was the first year i played varsity football um broke it in the third game so i didn't get to play for the rest of the year and then my senior year got i think all of those offers were you like as big as you are now then or were you just like a late grower um my sophomore year i was probably six three and then my junior year i was probably six five six six okay was football your favorite sport at that time it was actually baseball was it really yeah so i thought i was gonna be a baseball player growing up um i was a pitcher played shortstop and then i grew a little bit and ground balls started going between my legs so they had to move me from shortstop but you were a good pitcher i like to think i used to be able to throw the ball pretty hard um i don't know what were you throwing like low 90s yeah i don't know i i heard multiple things i don't know i never got got to see the gun myself but i feel like i could throw it so baseball was my first love too oh really i played yeah i played center field and grew up everybody would everybody told me like you're a great baseball player they were like your brother's a little bit better of a football player and so in my mind i was like i want to play pro baseball yeah and like in high school i was like i just don't know if i can give up football and i started getting some offers did you have any offers to play baseball or did you get drafted no i never did um i think by the time i kind of got better at baseball in high school football had kind of already been established and i think uh late my junior year senior year i committed so it was kind of like i'm playing football and i think everything else kind of backed off okay all right backing up a little bit uh you were so born and raised in eugene and does your family still like live in the same spot yeah we're about a mile away from the stadium um and so we grew up you know oregon fans of my grandpa uh he played there in the 60s early 60s and so we were always big organ fans and so we'd watch the games and we'd end up walking home just because traffic was so bad and it was probably a 10-15 minute walk and so i just remember going to the games with my grandfather my brother and my dad and we went for probably eight or ten years um and then i started playing there so they kept the season tickets and everyone kept watching and you were one of three boys yep the middle of the three and were was sports just kind of with the stadium being there did your your parents played sport like was that just something that was always it was very competitive it's kind of brutal uh might give us a little insight into some family competition so we played every we played soccer basketball baseball football um my older brother he ended up playing at montana state as a receiver but i spent my childhood trying to beat him just because he was my older brother and he would he beat me in basketball baseball doesn't matter like what it how many years older two years older okay and so we were very competitive and i think he he's kind of the guy that made me into like how competitive i am today is because of him because i tried to spend all these years trying to beat him and i think i finally remember beating him in baseball somehow we played one-on-one like t-ball or something like that and i know i beat him and i remember that and that was the first time i ever beat him and i think i that was kind of a moment that i i still kind of think about and i don't know if i've talked to him about it but uh it got very competitive so i have a brother that's 16 months younger than me and we were like super close but also like really competitive were you guys icy like fighting like yeah it wasn't always like super nice um we we kind of got at it and we'd play football in the front yard and we'd play tackle football sometimes and things got physical but um you know it made us better and we've got so much respect for each other now and i think that's the greatest part is you know we grew up in pushing each other and we competed and we all made each other better but now we're kind of able to look back and say you know i'm thankful for you guys i'm thankful that you guys pushed me because i'm the player that i am today because of you um and so i would have been there without them how does that ultra like competitiveness how does that like manifest itself like mentally with you now like do you does it like obviously like does it bother you a lot like when you would lose just like really small things whether it was like a game of cards or was it really only the things that mattered or was it kind of everything i think it's great because i think it's everything whether it's madden or whether it's golfing um even lifting at the facility like there are always times where you're pushing each other and you know we've got a pretty close group of friends and whenever you compete with them like you want to you want to beat them and you want to you want to embarrass them and so that's kind of my goal whenever we go golfing and whenever we go you know whenever we go race go-karts like you want to win and you don't want you never want to get second place so that's kind of the fun part about it when did the golf introduce itself i grew up playing with my older brother just kind of for fun and my grandpa was a big golfer as well so we kind of always went with my family and kind of just grew up playing joking it wasn't very serious and until maybe college when you kind of had more time to actually go play and you kind of enjoy playing in these nicer places and especially the past two years with all the guys that we have golfing on our team um it definitely has has kind of grown into something these past few years is eugene known for for his golfing i don't know if it's known what's eugene like known for is like organ rain yeah rain probably oregon football for three-fourths of the year it's gonna be raining um and i honestly i love that it's it's it's really nice june july and august um you get all four seasons and that's kind of the part i miss about oregon in california is it's always sunny and you never really get the rain you never get the snow or anything like that but eugene was pretty cool you just said yeah it rains like 75 of the year it's great i mean that's unique dude that's really green yeah like the northwest is awesome you go hiking fishing um you can get all you can get everything out there so you enjoy the rain i think it's nice i mean it's it's just kind of what i grew up in so used to it by now gosh that's what so when moving out here i moved from indiana like the midwest and it's very like bipolar like it can be like blizzarding one day and then the next day it's like 50 or 60 degrees it's like what is going on the sunshine is like the thing i enjoy most about southern california it is really nice you never really have to worry about the rain you can golf year-round that's that's the biggest that's the biggest thing that's the biggest thing like in january and february when you're when you're going out to practice like it's still 70 degrees so you don't have to worry about putting hand warmers on except we did have a couple weeks where it was pretty brutal but that's fine yeah i remember one i don't know which team we were playing but it was a brutally yeah it was the thursday night week wasn't it might have been we were outside it was like pouring down rain one of the 10 days that it rains here in southern california and it was like 40 degrees some guys were upset about it i i was like this is uh this like i don't know youth football yeah and i was gonna be tough too like i didn't wear any sleeves or any um like compression tights or whatever and so i just went out and shorts and a t-shirt and that was a big mistake you regret it yeah i was really cold um but i think it was cool that i went out there and kind of toughed it up so i tried to send a message there you go what uh what were your like parents like growing up were they like pretty strict or kind of just let you guys do what you want like what was that i think they were the right amount of being strict like obviously they didn't let us just go out and be irresponsible whenever we wanted to but they always gave us the opportunity to to kind of learn for ourselves and um you know my older brother did a great job of kind of showing us the way and he did a really good job in school he was very responsible never got in any trouble and so we kind of my younger brother and i we kind of looked at that and you know we said like we kind of want to be like him and so our parents kind of gave us that platform of growing and developing and making mistakes and learning from them and and obviously not punishing us too hard because um you know that i i think that could probably do more harm than good but uh to have that guy the leader of our house mitchell my older brother was definitely a good influence on us i think you've talked a lot about your older brother how much younger is your younger brother than you you guys played together right two years yeah so he's at oregon right now he plays tight end um and so didn't get to throw many touchdown passes in college but uh got to throw him one in high school which was pretty cool that's so rad what uh so what i guess let's fast forward a little bit to oregon was that a place you grew up a fan like was that where you wanted to go like when they offered it kind of sealed the deal or because i feel like breaking your leg i don't know for you but for my brother like when he tore his acl going into senior season like it really kind of halted his recruiting and i think it does for like a lot of high school athletes you know they go through something and teams kind of become disinterested was that a little bit like your case like you played really i don't know you said you weren't going to camps or anything like when they offered what did it seal the deal for you yeah i when they offered i i was on board immediately uh i remember coach halfridge called me and um you know he said we're gonna offer you scholarship and i said great like i'm in and and like that was that um but i did actually go to one camp i went to a washington husky football camp and that was um maybe a week after i got the screws taken out of my knee i had surgery to to repair the the femur and then got the screws taken out so i went to one camp and was hobbling on one leg and i told him like i'm gonna do my best effort but like i'm on one leg and so i never heard back from them and then organ ended up coming around and i said yeah i'm in i'm in for oregon so it was kind of glad that the way things worked out i feel like you're such a simple like content you're like yeah i'm good is that how you are about most things i feel like most people like weigh the options yeah like they're like well oregon came around like you know maybe some other schools or come around like i don't know dude i didn't really think a whole lot about it and i think in the long run it worked out really well but maybe i probably should have spent more time thinking about you know my future um but i just played football i played basketball in baseball and whatever happened was was gonna happen and um you know i'm thankful that it worked out it might have gone a different way if i you know if i thought more about it but uh i don't know it just kind of worked out and and didn't really worry about it i didn't spend too much time you know panicking or worrying that what if i don't make it and i always had a plan is i was gonna go you know study biology do what my dad did try and be a doctor do these things um but uh glad really glad football worked out so was it that fallback plan that kind of gave you the comfort of like i'm playing with the house house money right now it was never really like a fallback plan it was like that was the plan and if football works out great um going to school i you know i i worked really hard in college and i don't think i'm naturally very smart but i had to work really hard like i had to study and you know i didn't really watch too much tv i didn't really play a whole lot of video games in college um but school worked out and so like i went through school and i had a plan and then football ended up working out and so i thought that was the greatest thing is um you know i wasn't worried i always had something to do and whether football worked out or whether it didn't you know i was gonna go do something and i think that was the most important thing but what for you what how do you handle it when thing like when it doesn't go according to plan has there ever been a moment in your life where like let's say your plan was to go follow in your dad's footsteps be a doctor like if that wouldn't have worked out is there ever a moment where like you had a plan and it didn't work out and you had to um not yet um you know i think that's well and one thing too i i have to i probably have to correct it my dad he was a biology major he wasn't the doctor my uncle was the doctor um but he was biology major and we kind of always grew up you know studying animals doing all those fun things but i guess everything's kind of worked out so far and i think as long as i'm not worrying and i'm not trying to force anything i don't think it really can go wrong as long as you work hard you do you know you do your best and you never give up i think you're setting yourself up for success and whatever it looks like you mentioned one thing that i'll take away from this conversation it's like you didn't think a lot about it i feel like i struggle over analyzing and overthinking a lot of things i imagine there's just some freedom with just taking it as it comes and not thinking too much about it what uh i guess fast forwarding to your time at oregon other than like teammates is there anything like you really like miss about college football yeah um i mean you probably said it like the teammates and always being around those guys and um i think that's what makes college football so special is like you're all in it together and and now in the nfl everyone's got their own families they live in their own places and you're kind of separated outside of football like the facility is the greatest part because everyone's lockers are right next to each other and you have to talk with each other and i i think that type of camaraderie is like is the greatest because i mean you get to hang out with your friends and play football all day and it doesn't get any better than that and i think that's what made college football so great is like you get to live with these guys you get to go play football with them you get to wake up and camp was was horrible like 10 or 12 hours of football was was tough but at least you were in it together and that's what i missed the most is like you you have these great relationships with these guys and and now you're kind of off on your own and and now you got to build new ones but uh college football is great yeah you get it in the nfl you get the locker room camaraderie but then guys like go home and they have families yeah and the unique element about college football was i mean you're probably going back to an apartment with one of your teammates yeah and it's it's it's tough too because in the nfl like guys come and go and there's a lot of turnover and the guy that's on your team last year might not be on it this year and you have to kind of you know manage your expectations of you know you're not going to be here forever and you're not going to be able to it's not like college where you've got these four years and you know all right i'm going to be with these guys for four years so it's kind of tough like that when you got to oregon you said you weren't starting initially dakota was starting what was how did you i guess what were your expectations going in i had none i i showed up as the sixth string quarterback was just happy to be on the team because like oregon i get to go play for oregon and i get to play quarterback and it doesn't happen too often so i i went there and was was literally just trying to do my best to study the playbook learn everything get to know all the guys earn their trust and i remember sitting down with my quarterback coach at the end of fall camp and he says you're going to be the second string quarterback and i remember asking him like are you sure like like you want me to be the backup quarterback because i like i really didn't worry about anything i was just i just went and played football and next thing you know did you not think you were worthy of being the second string no i had no idea i just went and like i had no clue of you know i i thought all these other guys were were so great and you look at all the heist like the rankings and the camps and you think all these guys are so much better than me so i came i grew up in eugene oregon and didn't really have a whole lot of expectations i was just happy to be there and next thing you know i was the backup quarterback and and playing in the first game and i just thought it was the coolest thing ever i get to run out on the field you know the field that i grew up watching and now i'm running through the tunnel my parents are out in the stands and i remember looking up and seeing them i know exactly where they're sitting so i thought that was really cool but how do you balance that humility with like the confidence i feel like you need as a nfl player as a college player like believing you're the best and you should be out there and you're going to dominate yeah and that's that's one of the things that i've kind of had to learn the past couple of years um i had a great conversation with coach staley about it because he told me he's like you can't oh shucks your way through it like you know you can't be like just happy to be here like you got to go competing and there's the competition part of football that i love that i just want to win and it doesn't matter what like whatever we're doing and now we're to the point of like i know that i can throw the ball i know i can do these things and now i've got these expectations of well just go out and play football like go do what you know you you can do and good things will happen and um you know i think i can always become a better leader and you know i think there are ways of going about it being yourself being genuine and just like you like you're not a you're not fake like you you're you and guys respect that they they respond to that and that's what they need in the leader and i think it's really easy to just go be a rah-rah guy when things are good but when things are bad and when you're down and you go into the huddle in the same thing when the bullets are flying and saying hey guys we're fine like we've been here before we know exactly what we're gonna do we know how to get out of this i think that's the most important part so you get told you're gonna be the second string uh quarterback and you're like shoot you sure coach sure sign me up uh that was going into your sophomore season freshman year my troops so after camp yeah you so i was there you had must had a good camp i showed up uh in june and that was probably maybe july or august so you didn't get any sense at all during camp that you're outperforming the other guys no i i mean you're not blind they were watching the tape there were signs like they started giving me some one reps and i probably should have known that like that was a good sign you did know but i really didn't i didn't really pay too much attention to it i was just like you know what shoot i get to throw to these these really fast guys so that's that's got to be fun you because you got to know like when i when i you would think you'd think dude you're one of the more interesting guys and i love it uh that i know so your second string and then did you end up starting your your freshman year or was that yeah probably game four or five okay and then you played four years four years at oregon could you have come out after your third year so what kind of led to your decision to come back i went through the same thing but i was uh coming deciding whether or not to come back for my fifth season yeah because i had had a couple injuries and uh had a red shirt what was kind of the deciding factor for you i feel like did you even consider coming out okay so this is gonna this is gonna sound crazy but i i grew up like obviously dreaming about playing for the ducks right and so organ has had multiple guys leave early for the draft and i always grew up thinking if i'm ever in this position i'm gonna come back like for the team like whatever it is i'll be around all four years like i'm not i'm not thinking of myself before but and obviously it's a tough situation like it is life-changing to leave early and do all those great things so i'm not saying it's a bad thing but i knew for me personally i was coming back regardless and so i always thought it was going to be funny if people were kind of like making it a big deal like oh is he going to leave or is he going to come back and i just always kind of wanted to just show up and not say anything and just be like yeah like where did you guys think i was going to go like i'm here for my fourth year but uh i ended up saying like you know i'm coming back and um talk to my family about it briefly but i was always gonna come back so when the agents came knocking you were just like hold the brakes or pump the brakes guys yeah i actually coming back i told my parents to to handle all that so i didn't talk to any agents until after my senior year was done wow so was there a was there a wolf a wall street moment i'm coming back no not really i i think oregon maybe on twitter or instagram probably announced it but at the time i didn't have one so it wasn't for me gosh what was uh what was your best memory during your four years there was there a game or did you have a spot on campus that was like a go-to spot if you know things were going bad to kind of my i think our greatest memory at oregon was probably winning the rose bowl especially having started four and eight my freshman year because you know we coach got fired a bunch of guys left you go four and eight and oregon never really went four and eight during that time period because oregon was you know in the national championship in the rose bowl fiesta bowl um and so that was obvious obviously really tough to go for an eight but uh to climb back to go seven and five the next year nine and four and then to go 12-2 win the rose bowl um you know i thought that was huge for us to kind of battle and fight our way through what do you think the future is for the the pac-12 i've always thought really highly of the pac-12 you know i think it's at its best when oregon usc washington are at their best um and so it's gonna be really interesting to see you know how usc comes back with uh with their new coach and oregon got a new coach and you know a lot's changing in the pac-12 but i think the football's really good and um you know i'm proud to have come from the pac-12 because i think really highly of it i think very highly of notre dame and we don't have a copy yeah well if you want to join the pac-12 we're not going to join the pac-12 i think uh the pac-12 honestly has an issue with the time they play their games i think it's hard for young kids who aren't staying up to like become fans of the pac-12 and so i feel like it really sometimes limits the recruiting options like west coast kids yeah i don't know maybe you guys need to negotiate some terms with abc and espn for a little earlier i think it is cool though because you do get some night games at autumn stadium and like the lights are obviously really cool and you always dream about playing under the lights and in a big football stadium so to be able to do that in the back 12 i think that's pretty cool though so you're you had no expectations going to oregon but coming out as a senior you obviously were being projected as a as a first-round draft pick what were your expectations then um i heard a whole lot you know you know you always hear about the leadership qualities of you know could i lead could i do all these things i have accuracy issues um you know i'm not a real competitor things like that and so i had a great chance at the senior bowl the combine where did you hear those things if you didn't have social media that was just from coaches and from like agents and you go to these interviews and they they ask you about that and um you know i remember a bunch of interviews of people pulling up filming you know what happened on this play and i'd say well you know maybe my mechanics weren't as good as you know i thought they were and i've spent a lot of time fixing that and i had that opportunity to answer those questions and to be real with everyone and tell them you know this is who i really am yeah i only had one sit down interview at the nfl combine and it was with the bengals they asked me to do the most random stuff they said if i need they were giving me like math problems they were like if i need 57 cents and i can only have five coins what coins do i need and i probably spent two minutes like i was like no guys i'm gonna figure this out and that's probably where i lost my my potential to be taken by them they're like this guy's going to be out there thinking way too hard we're not drafting him yeah no there there have been some really interesting questions like i was asked by a team who i'd want to punch more out of everyone in the room and you really can't say like oh i wouldn't punch anyone because they're gonna force you they're gonna think you're passive like they're gonna be like we need an answer and i'd be like all right i'll punch this guy who who did you decide to punch uh it was actually the quarterback coach because i had the best relationship with him and so i knew that he'd understand if i said him like i feel like we'd be able to move past that so what were those overall what was your i guess nfl pre-draft process experience it was a lot of fun i i actually where'd you train i trained down you're not gonna believe this probably five minutes away from our facility um really so down in costa mesa like kind of like by santa ana as well we we trained a proactive this this gym together for athletes first and so sure a bunch of guys that i still talk to that are still in the nfl that are playing and you know we had a great group of guys that kind of went through everything together so we went to the senior bowl went to the combine together and so we were all kind of miserable together because those are obviously really tough weeks but to have those guys and to be able to you know stay with them hang out with them play football live do all those fun things i really enjoyed the process so when you were competing who were the top quarterbacks in your class yep it was you were too uh joe burrow to uh and jordan love okay so when you're competing against those guys to potentially be taken ahead and be slotted ahead how did you handle you obviously that competitive side of you how did you handle the pressure of like needing to perform well at the senior bowl or did you not even think about it yeah i i kind of took a different approach to it i kind of understood that i'm not really competing against those guys and i'm competing against myself and i just wanted to go to a good team that you know felt like they believed in me and it didn't really matter you know whether i thought i was better than one of the quarterbacks or not it didn't come down to that and i didn't really have a whole lot of say in where i went or you know when i went but uh to have the chargers believe in me draft me um you know i i don't think it could have worked out any better and whether it was first or whether it was 31st or whether it was 250th in the long run it didn't really matter to me yeah i feel like that is the that's the right i feel like that's the right answer and i feel like that's the answer guys have to remind themselves about but i feel like human instinct is to worry yeah you know about or to like i don't know desire a certain outcome and like think about that outcome i don't know do you do like visualization or anything in preparation for games or um i don't know if i would say like you know i do it i think it just come kind of comes naturally and whether i you know i'm always thinking about the game the night before and when you go to bed you think about all the all the things that you're going to be able to do and you think about the plays and what it's going to look like and you just kind of remind yourself of the game plan and obviously i think if you think good things are going to happen they're more likely to happen and i think that's just kind of one of those things that you kind of do naturally growing up and playing and competing and having all these different sports that you play i think it just comes naturally the night before the game were there are there ever instances where you have to battle negative thoughts like maybe it was a that you know the week after a bad game or maybe you didn't have the best week of practice are there ever times where i don't know yeah negative plays or thoughts i think probably the toughest part is probably during the game um i think during the week of preparation you're so busy that you don't really have a whole lot of time to worry about what happened last week is you got to get ready for this next opponent but during the game if you throw an interception you go to the sideline like obviously you feel horrible like i never want to send the defense i never want to send you guys back out on the field yeah i want to i want to go score you know take some time kick a pat kick off then send you guys out um but if you know if you throw an interception or you have to punt and you run off to the sideline it is kind of tough it is you know you have to think about that and you know i think one of the great things about our team is you've got shane day our quarterback coach easton stick chase daniel they're all right there and they're able to kind of take you out and support you and say you know what hey we're fine we're gonna go do it the next drive and football there's a lot of time left as long as you've got downs and time on the clock you're in a position to win yeah but personally do you not get ticked off after a bad play like your inner competitiveness i think i get probably more upset in practice because i want to throw every single pass perfect i want i want practice to be perfect and so if i overthrow a guy like i'll feel horrible and it kind of it is one of those things that i've had to get better at getting over that and just saying you know what like that's not me i'll be better the next time i'll have another rep to make a better throw but i think in college that kind of affected me is if it wasn't perfect i'd it'd kind of get me down for the rest of practice but it's definitely something i've worked on yeah we had a sports psychologist uh dr amber salking at notre dame and she was she called it like power statements like uh she used the example i think it was of the rey's uh center fielder and i'm kevin kearmeyer and he's actually from fort wayne shout out to fort wayne and he he had this technique where he would step in the batter's box and let's say he swung and missed or something he would step out and he had a spot on like the left like up right not the upright baseball i don't know the foul pool line the foul pole there it is the foul pole and he would look down at the foul pole and he would like take a breath and like step back in she said something like that or like you were saying like hey that's not me i'll be better next time yeah like those power statements uh could be huge for sure did you guys do a whole bunch of like uh mindset training like that it was interesting so we we went for an eight my junior year we were like we were bad my freshman year my sophomore year we went to the fiesta bowl got smashed by ohio state yep we had uh we had like jalen smith will fuller uh we had a lot like romeo cora we had a lot of really good players and then my junior year we went four and eight horrible and similar to you guys had like a whole our head coach did basically a whole shift on the staff brought a new strength coach brought in dietitian nutritionist offensive defensive coordinator basically full revamp and part of the new addition to the team was like a sports psych and i don't know if he was working individually with her like prior just like for his own like mental like sharpness but she ended up working with our team the last two years i was there uh and she was she was fantastic some guys are more like turned off to that and they're like i'm good like you know i've got my own like you know mental approach and some guys you know found it useful you know and uh she was great do you guys have anything like that at work yeah our strength and conditioning coach aaron feld um who's now at miami he kind of handled everything like that and i actually really enjoyed it because it did help a lot but like you said you know some guys aren't going to pay attention but some guys are so i feel like for the most part it helped us with a position like quarterback that's just you're taking in so much information and you're calling and you're communicating to so many guys bro i hear you you guys in the huddle bro your calls are so long i struggled i struggled for so long with that um like i would spend like every practice before shane day and i are working the calls and we're just memorizing and he'll test me and like it it spends probably 20 or 30 minutes of our time but like i have to do it because if i don't then i i'm gonna go in there and mess up a play call yeah so when our d chord i can't even imagine when it's loud in the stadium like we maybe have three four five words max to communicate to the huddle but you guys i look on the script and there's it's like a couple sentences long like your rookie year was there ever times you went in the huddle and you're like i didn't get that like there were a couple times early on when the headset would go out and you either have to thankfully the week of practice you get to memorize all the calls and so if you hear the first part if you hear the formation you've heard it already you're like all right i know the ending of this play and so if you get the formation and it cuts out you're like all right uh you got to be quick on your feet and you're like all right this is the play that he wants this is what i'm going to call i'm going to go in there and call it and whatever happens happens and sometimes it just goes and it goes out entirely and so you have to make up a play call and so i've got a few play calls that i know that i can get to if like there's a situation if it's like first and second down it's really easy to just call play and you know minimize the damage if it's third down you have to like really memorize or maybe you have to call timeout find a way to get the play call in because it does go out sometimes yeah getting back to like the sports psych thing like i know at notre dame specifically like they were the quarterbacks kind of had their own gig separate from the team just because like i was saying there's so much information to digest it's a very uh you're just taking in a lot of information was that something that they did with you throughout your process that either oregon or the chargers have have tried to do like get extra mental training not too much individually you know i think in oregon everything was together we were all in the team room going through it together um and so there wasn't too much just on the quarterbacks but uh and i feel like we've we've definitely been given enough opportunities at the chargers um it's not like there's nothing you know they give us opportunities if you want something you can go get it yeah we got dr herb and plenty of art plenty of resources so i think everything's kind of together instead of individual though yeah so what was it like stepping on the scene in l.a do you like that mic yeah it's good sure mike it's a nice mic i like it no ellie's la's been awesome and um i throughout the entire draft process too i i kind of had my hopes and i didn't want to get too invested into the chargers just because you know you don't have a whole lot of say but i'm glad things worked out at the way it did because this is what i wanted the entire time um and obviously it's always tough when you lose a coaching staff and you wish it could have been different but you know the guys that we brought now coach staley this entire staff you know i think they've done an incredible job and i'm super thankful to be playing for them like coming in as such a high draft pick i don't know that i've ever actually asked you this but obviously uh you came and replaced phil who had an incredible career and legacy with the chargers did you guys ever have like any back and forth or have you ever spoken with him um he's an off the map guy type he has no social he's just coaching high school football simple guy i've unfortunately talked to him maybe once or twice um you know i i know how busy he is and you know he's got he's nine kids he's got nine kids he's coaching a high school football team and um you know i've just i've been able to hear so many great phillip rivers stories that he's a legend and you know i grew up watching him and i was a chargers fan and believe it or not but uh you know just to hear these stories and scott questonberry always tells me the greatest ones and and easton stick always has a bunch too so you know it's great to hear from those guys i remember i was a rookie and it was like one of the first otas and you know how like as a rookie you have the locker like in the middle at least i had a locker in the middle of the locker room i didn't even have a real locker i had a portable locker and i remember i was we had just wrapped up workouts and phil comes out of the comes out of the shower man heading back to his locker and he goes out of his way and goes hi i'm phil i just want to introduce i'm so glad you're here and i was like holy smokes man that's phillip rivers he must have been in a year probably 15 or 16 by then it was 15 or 16. another good film memory i had was uh did you ever play a drug dealer like where you get the cards and you wink no but i i heard you guys talking about it though yeah uh phil was a legend at that he would always he would always stay late in the meal room and like play with like the rookies i'm like dude what are you doing here don't you have a wife to go call or kids to talk to he'd be hanging with the boys yeah hanging with the youngsters and playing until the to the wee hours of the night um what uh i feel like you've gotten this question a million times but like going into that game game two having no idea that you were going to start what what was that moment like when coach lin came to you and said like you're up buddy i had absolutely no time to think about it and that's just probably which is great yeah but you weren't going to think about it anyway because that's what you do yeah you know no but uh i remember the entire week pep hamilton uh our our quarterback coach loved working with him and we kind of talked about it the entire time is you don't know when you're gonna go in but it's gonna happen at some point during that year i was expecting to play and it happened to be a little earlier than i was expecting week two i wasn't um you know i wasn't getting any first team reps and so i had to kind of spend all my time after practice before practice walking through with pep all the plays you know all the all the calls and so i was ready you know i felt like i was ready to go in there i knew the game plan and probably 20 seconds before kickoff coach lin comes up to me tells me i'm in and i think that was another moment of like are you sure like you want me to go play and so he's like yeah like you need to go out there so i went out there remember going out to the huddle hunter henry just hit me with the what are you doing out here and i said like hey just here's the call like let's go score like don't even worry about it and uh yeah i remember my first pass actually though was to to keenan and i sailed it over his head i was just so excited to be out there i just ripped it and he came back to the huddle i was like sorry keenan like that was my bad he's like you're good you got it out of your system so the next one i we completed but uh it was definitely funny what is it like in a offensive huddle like for defense it's guys are just gassed out of breath and so it's basically just kind of like phone like you know you're just phone tagging like the call but like you guys are like in the huddle specifically as like a quarterback going in there like even maybe this last game versus the raiders like i don't know like what are you what are you saying to the guys what's that like is there is there typically a guy who's always the it kind of depends when so if it's early in the game and you're focused and like you're you're you're close in a close game people are pretty focused and dialed in and you go in and honestly i think one of the worst parts about the huddle is all the tv timeouts that we have you know and so we go up stand out there for two minutes so i feel like someone needs to talk and so sometimes i'll just talk and i'll just be like i'll be like hey guys like this is what we're gonna do we're gonna go down score like and i'll just fill the fill the huddle with words just because i hate silence um but if you're ever up in a game like winning it's really funny to be a part of like there are a lot of jokes and um you know i think it's a great great huddle that we have the guys that we have in there it's a great team and no one's ever you know talking back to each other everyone's helping each other and if someone doesn't get the call the receivers are always good about communicating with each other and telling each other that you know this is what you have and um you know the running backs as well they're always communicating with the offensive lineman they've done a great job so far yeah i feel like we should get to some of these mailbag questions uh but first you've got a you've got a little golf invitational coming up right the justin herbert invitational i visited the website it looks great yeah i'm sure you had a lot of input into that design i probably could have done a better job naming it but uh you know it is it is for a really good cause um it's for kid sports this youth sports organization in eugene that i grew up playing and so whether it's you know they host camps um sports clinics they they host like leagues whether it's basketball baseball football soccer uh hockey i don't i don't know you know yeah they do everything you guys play hockey and so i grew up and um you know it just gave everyone a chance to go play and compete and so for me to kind of help them you know continue that and whether it's scholarships equipment gear um doesn't matter they do great jobs for everyone so how if we wanted to support that do you just like visit the website and donate or what's the i guess what's the style is it like a like an auction style like is it a scramble tournament like what yeah if there is a a scramble tournament there's an auction um you know and i think it's a non-profit organization that's always um you know always needing some sort of help to whether it's camps or whether they want to help out with clinics things like that but uh you know if your golf game is ready there's always an invitation for you well i appreciate that and uh is there a is there a sports book that is associated that's putting odds on on the winners not yet uh i think uh because my odds will be very low but it could be a good bargain you know you could put probably five bucks and and win a few thousand on me you've got if i happen to be you know on a good team yeah well i don't know i i haven't uh i haven't seen too much of your game but i know that as an athlete you're you're probably better than some of the guys that that went last year and so you know i've got high hopes such as who i don't want to say on here but no dude you gotta say who's who was horrible at the at the outing he wasn't horrible i'm not gonna say he's horrible but jerry tillery he hopes to go to the range i hope he hears this jerry and i always go at it and uh he has gotten a lot better but uh he's he's definitely a great guy to go golfing with just because he's so funny but in terms of actual golf quality um you know we're always getting we're always getting better he needs to go to the range i don't know that there's too many ranges in hawaii where yeah he's got a nice spend most of his off time he loves it out there he loved it out there before he ever got to the nfl too i remember him being at notre dame and he would always talk about hawaii and he really enjoyed it all right uh i'm i'm in here in the mailbag there's uh there's quite a few responses but one of the big ones is the brisket let's talk the brisket where uh i've actually been wanting to ask you this anyway because uh i really want an invite this season of course to one of the brisket boy yeah bang outs i don't care whose house it's at but i want an invite and uh what kind of got you on that is that was that like growing up like pops yeah so it kind of started with my grandfather we were always big traeger grills like we always use traeger to whether it was ribs chicken steaks is that not a newer grill has that just has that been around it's always been around like i i take a look at my grandpa's grill it must have been it's old like it's an old grill that we still have and so we we kind of grew up using that but uh so we were always on the grill and so i lived with gabe my first year and we'd we'd won a game and we had a brisket in our freezer and you know we kind of just started out as a joke saying you know we're gonna cook this brisket it's a it's a victory brisket um and it was after the jacksonville jaguars game and unfortunately we got evacuated from our house because of fires up in the hills that was a crazy time yeah out here and so we lost the brisket like it was just in the grill and we couldn't get back to the house because we had we had to get evacuated and so it was then add to the fire it must have been you know one of the the most flavorful briskets of all time but uh it was unfortunately lost and so traeger sent another one we won another game um soon after and it kind of just we did it again and so it kept going and we had guys over and it was kind of like this you know this ritual after games and so i feel like gabe tries to take uh credit for cooking no you're shaking your head he uh he's i feel like i see him most often in the picture you know with the tools turning the meat i'm the one waking up at 2am putting it on and doing that and stuff so i it was up to me but he did help out a ton so having him be a part of it are you guys smoking like smoking the brisket yeah so there's actually a bunch of recipes on traeger that i kind of just follow and and i've kind of early on i started with that but then as you know the more you make the better you get so i kind of went off on my own here and there but you know there's a ton of recipes that are easy to follow this uh let's see coach chase eight one four says twitter handle set ask what is your favorite brisket rub um that's a good question i actually used like the beef rub from traeger they make their own individual spices and so i just felt it was really easy just to use those just so convenient and everything was already made um but you can start like experimenting with like they've got a coffee rub that you can start adding um you know they've got a whole bunch of different seasonings that you can throw on there bollywood herbert this is one of those accounts probably why you don't have a twitter but uh he's commenting on the the dunking videos so you still got it yeah but uh my basketball's over after that i unfortunately that's one of the things that we talk about like i love going to play basketball i love just going to to hang out with my friends but you know people start recording videos of me playing basketball and i can't be doing that i got to be more responsible than that but that's why why do you say that it's it it's not always it just doesn't look good yeah it's it you know i you know i've got a job here of playing quarterback and i need to be at my best and so if anything bad would ever happen playing basketball it'd be a bad look and so i need to be my best yeah but does that not stink for you you love to play basketball horrible yeah i love basketball i love being able to compete and showing up basketball is the greatest it's awesome yeah that's what i was trying to get to i think a little earlier though maybe to go back is like has being thrown into the stardom affected like your daily life in that way and if so is that like frustrating for you it's affected by wreck basketball for sure unfortunately um those dates are probably behind me but uh i guess it kind of opens doors to to go play like whether it's at my high school sheldon high school like i know i can go play there i can get guys to show up and play basketball there if i really wanted it um but uh i guess i just got to be smarter about going to the oregon wreck dude i have a park right around the corner here outdoor court it's not indoor court yeah but tanager park uh pretty mellow pretty quiet uh other than the dog community there's a lot of owners that take their dogs right in the field right there but we could play some basketball i'm not good but i like to compete there are a few guys on the team that are pretty good keenan i've seen him play what style is he like a steph is he like a a ja like i'd give him a james harden you know i think he's a really good scorer he's a pretty good passer and he's got the beard yeah and you give him the ball something good is going to happen all right uh stefan gillard uh maybe two more questions here before we wrap up at any point during the draft like the past two years have you like been consulted or asked about certain like players or guys you like they always offer the choice of me going up there and talking with them i've always kind of told them like i believe in them i support their decisions no matter what um and i i don't know if i can do the talent evaluation i don't want to go in there and say like you know what i want this guy and i don't know enough unfortunately and so i've always kind of left it to tom tolesco and you know the rest of those guys upstairs because they've you know they're professionals at what they do and they've done an incredible job so if they ever do have a question i'd love to answer it but uh i kind of just let them do their thing all right last one kyle said i know it's only been two seasons but what is your best nfl moment so far or your favorite maybe favorite memories a better way to put it that's a good question did we just play footsies don't kick me okay no there's uh there's been so many like there's been so many close games that that you win especially this year like the kansas city game in week three awesome that was fun that was really fun to be a part of um you know i think the eagles game as well in philadelphia when we drove down and dustin hopkins kicked that game-winning field goal i think even you go back to last year when we beat the falcons another game-winning field goal you know there's just been a bunch of games that you look back and you say that was a lot of fun to be a part of that was an intense game um but uh hopefully there's gonna be many more i even think of washington week one yeah where we get the ball and literally drive the ball for like seven minutes yeah and run up the clock on what many people thought were was going to be one of the best defenses in the nfl and they still they still are like to have those guys up front you know that defensive line that's it's crazy their d line is stacked yeah well the nfl you you play against those guys every week like it's you never really have an off week and that's the tough part about it that's awesome dude i appreciate you doing this it's been cool to hear about your roots in eugene all the way to now bro you've got the you've got the i don't know if i call that oregon green yeah but oregon has so many shades of green that really anything works and even counts anything counts appreciate you thanks rue i appreciate being on here it's an honor glad i could help out yeah thanks chelsea [Music] you

Channel: Drue Tranquill

Views: 27,430

Keywords:

Id: buFnWa5JAkk

Length: 60min 54sec (3654 seconds)

Published: Thu May 19 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Boltzfan1995]

Great listen. Love that Drue focuses on his earlier years and how he grew up to love playing football. Lucky to have these two guys

[u/xshogunx13]

How can you dislike Herbert?

[u/BirdLaw_]

Really sounds like a good part of Herbert's growth from college to the NFL was just confidence that he belonged. Seems like being a last minute offer for his hometown school and getting basically no other offers really made him feel like he wasn't as talented as everyone else. He's said that in other interviews too.

[u/inEffected]

At around the 21 min mark he talks about how his plan all through college was to become a doctor, and he never really planned or worried about playing in the NFL - kind of wild.

When he got to Oregon he was the 6th string QB and was just stoked to be on the roster of his childhood team.

He asked the coach if he was sure when he was told he was going to be the 2nd string QB hahah

edit: when they started giving him 1st team reps after the first month he was there he just thought it was cool that he got to throw to faster guys - our QB is the coolest

[u/Left_Berry_8104]

I see Justin Herbet content, I click to see that beautiful nerd of a man...let me figure out a way to have Herbert and Lamar Jackson as QB1 for the Ravens.

[u/Fishing4Lobs]

Is there anyone outside of the AFC west (excluding Chargers fans) and Dolphins fans who hates Herbert?

He has captivated the hearts of fans everywhere including me

[u/Goddessophiaxo]

If I could hang with one player it would be Herbert

[u/clutterlustrott]

All this pro Herbert content is awesome but it's going to make it hurt more when everyone inevitably starts to hate him for being successful.

[u/Tanis_The_Half_Elf]

Herbert’s smile is so damn cute.