True freshman Justin Herbert has proved himself capable of leading Oregon’s offensive attack.
After five straight losses, the Ducks finally were able to squeak out a win on Saturday, defeating ASU 54-35. During the game, Herbert threw for 489 passing yards, tying Bill Musgrave’s record for the most passing yards in school history.
After practice Monday, quarterbacks coach David Yost discussed Herbert’s performance and how he has improved this season.
Everyone talks about the 489 passing yards and the school record, but what were you most impressed with after you watched the film with his performance?
It was really probably the amount of completions that he put us into. He made a lot of pre-snap decisions of where to go with the football so that he could guarantee a completion on a high percentage of his routes. And then on top of that, we still had some more that could very easily have been completed. He could have thrown a few better balls, but we had more drops in that game than probably all year. Just his ability to get us into completions, which that’s what we needed in that game.
Justin made a couple of great throws on the run in that game, how is he able to throw the ball down the field so well at such a young age?
He’s has a really nice release. It’s pretty compact for being such a tall guy with long arms. He spins it very well. Because he’s more athletic than people give him credit for, he gets his feet in a good position that he can torque and throw the ball. He throws on the run very well. We’ve done kind of our naked game with him quite a bit since he’s become the starter. And then what he’s able to do when he breaks the contain. He hit that one the other day really nice down the field. Most of the other times he’s broke the contain, he’s taken off for positive yards.
Pharaoh Brown and other guys have said that Justin has that “it-factor” to him. Have you seen that and what is that it-factor?
I mean it’s kind of what you look for in every quarterback. It’s kind of that innate ability to make plays and not get rattled. With him, his eyes are always downfield trying to make the big play without putting us in a bad position. He’s shown all those things at this point. If you ask me if he has it, I think he does.
Justin’s been able to improve in leaps and bounds from week to week, is there anything specific that you want him to work on this week?
The biggest negative we had in that last week’s game is we took a few negative plays, sacks, that we didn’t need to. Sacks are going to happen, we understand that, and then what you do is you analyze why they happen. There were two, maybe three, of those the other day that we could have gotten out of.
Follow Hannah Bonnie on Twitter @hbonnie03