Justin Herbert, Drew Lock and the search for "The Guy" at quarterback

Is it fair to compare Justin Herbert’s progress through five NFL games with that of Drew Lock through his first nine professional starts?

Yes and no.

No, it’s not fair because Herbert has had his top three intended targets at his disposal for all but one of his five starts to date. Wide receiver Keenan Allen and tight end Hunter Henry have played every game since Herbert stepped into the lineup, and wide receiver Mike Williams has missed just one game. Combined, they have 806 yards and five touchdowns on 69 receptions from Herbert. Meanwhile, Lock has played two games without wide receiver Courtland Sutton and one without tight end Noah Fant.

But the reasons why it is fair are far more extensive.

First, while Herbert has his “Big Three,” one of his strengths is similar to that of a great point guard: his ability to distribute and spread the ball around. Seven different Chargers have touchdown catches from Herbert in his five starts — during which Herbert has 12 touchdown passes, four more than Lock has in his nine starts.

And then there is the fact that everyone operated without an offseason this year.

“Unfortunately, this year, young players got cheated on the offseason where you can work on those things and work on all those fundamentals,” offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur explained during a Zoom conference Thursday. “In the former life, we would have OTAs that were dedicated to the first six or seven opponents so you can feel that. You just have to do it. This is a game you have to practice, and there is a lot of coordination on offense. They just have to do it over, over and over.

“I think that’s why you see talented young players get better with time. But we have no time. We have to short-cut that the best we can. You can’t give as much as you might to an older quarterback. You have to refine it. If you had three or four things you’d do in a situation, you maybe do two and take it from there.”

Losing the offseason hurt Lock. But by definition, it should have hurt Herbert more. Unlike Lock, he wasn’t receiving first-team snaps during training camp; the vast majority of those went to Tyrod Taylor. Lock had more time to study than Herbert, since he was able to dive into Shurmur’s offense — at least from a distance — throughout the winter and spring, before Herbert even knew he would be a Charger.

So there is some significance to the fact that Herbert has a better completion percentage, passer rating, average per attempt and touchdown-to-interception ratio in his first five starts than Lock did.

There is also significance in Herbert’s superior work under pressure this season. According to the data compiled by Pro Football Focus, Herbert’s 100.9 rating under pressure — including five touchdowns against two interceptions on 38-of-65 passing — is the third-best in the league among quarterbacks with at least 100 dropbacks. Lock’s 24.3 rating under pressure — with one touchdown and two interceptions on just 6-of-28 passing — is at the bottom of the league.

But the numbers doesn’t tell everything.

Take the passer ratings for both after five career starts. Among the quarterbacks who had lower passer ratings than Herbert’s 108.1 but higher ratings than Lock’s 88.7 in their first five starts as rookies are Robert Griffin III, Mason Rudolph, Cody Kessler, Nick Mullens and Zach Mettenberger. Eventually, those quarterbacks hit bumps just as Lock has this season. The response to those rough patches — and to the adjusting defenses that caused them — subsequently determined those passers’ eventual success or failure.

And hope rests as it often does in Broncos history: in the Tolstoy-epic novel that is John Elway’s story since arriving in Denver in 1983.

As a rookie, Elway’s passer rating through the first six weeks of the 1983 season was 40.2; when adjusted for that year’s league-wide standards, that drops to 33.4. Only one Broncos quarterback since the AFL-NFL merger ever had a lower era-adjusted rating through six games (minimum 50 attempts); that was Matt Robinson’s 33.3 figure in 1980.

What is scary about Lock’s data to this point in the season that his era-adjusted rating through seven weeks is 37.1; it is the third-worst for a Broncos QB through six games (minimum 50 attempts) since the AFL-NFL merger. (Lock’s actual rating is 63.3, but the league-wide passer rating heading into Week 8 — incorporating every pass thrown in a game –was 92.9.)

Robinson didn’t make it to the next season with the Broncos. But Elway did, of course. His No. 1 overall pick status virtually sealed it. But it also helped that by the final three games of his rookie season, his passer rating was 72.0, giving him an era-adjusted figure of 65.2.

The Chargers appear to have “the guy” in Herbert. There is still time for Lock to assume that same status for the Broncos. But Lock will have to become far more efficient than he has been to date.