Matthew Stafford is familiar with playing through pain. As a Los Angeles Ram, he overcame late-season elbow issues to pull the team to its first Super Bowl win since the Greatest Show on Turf days in Saint Louis.
As a Detroit Lion, he made 136 consecutive starts and won the league’s Comeback Player of the Year award despite a litany of lost seasons in between. In the process, he played through minor maladies like the hand injury that tanked his 2016 season and major ones like the broken bones in his spine that ended his 2019.
Stafford knows a little bit about toughness. And he liked what he saw from Justin Herbert after the third-year quarterback suffered fractured rib cartilage late in last Thursday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs but refused to be sidelined for more than a snap.
Matthew Stafford on the toughness Justin Herbert displayed last week: "I was watching that game with my wife and she was like, 'Somebody get him out of there.' And I was like, 'He ain’t coming out.' … Felt for him in the moment, but was really a fan from afar." #Rams #Chargers
— Gilbert Manzano (@GManzano24) September 21, 2022
Herbert didn’t just stay in the game despite taking this massive hit from Mike Danna in the fourth quarter:
Looks like a possible rib injury for Justin Herbert pic.twitter.com/yqJHdusTRl
— Dr. Evan Jeffries, DPT (@GameInjuryDoc) September 16, 2022
He found a way to thrive in it. After throwing a pair of incompletions in obvious pain before a JK Scott punt, Herbert got the ball back with 3:20 to play in a 27-17 game. His win probability sat at a meager 1.6 percent.
Rather than pack it in, Herbert stepped up.
Que bola do Justin Herbert, @chargers na red zone! #NFLBrasil pic.twitter.com/Cf4kluOulB
— NFL Brasil (@NFLBrasil) September 16, 2022
Herbert completed seven of nine passes to lead a 73-yard scoring drive capped by a seven-yard touchdown to Joshua Palmer. He did so with fractured rib cartilage that’s undoubtedly made it awful to sneeze, cough, laugh or even breathe heavily this week.
It was an impressive performance — even more so to a fellow quarterback who’s been through it before.
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