Opposing View From Washington: 'Healthy Amount of Respect' for Justin Herbert, Wide Receivers

Sep 10, 2021 at 03:23 PM

Chris Hayre

TEAM REPORTER

CBS Sports' Spero Dedes and the radio voice of the Washington Football Team Bram Weinstein were guests on the latest edition of Chargers Weekly to break down the season opener in D.C.

In addition, the radio voice of the Chargers Matt "Money" Smith will join the podcast as a co-host during the entire 2021 season.

Download and subscribe to the Chargers Podcast Network wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes are available on Chargers.com and the team's official YouTube channel. Dedes joins the podcast at 15:17. Weinstein's interview starts at 33:05.

Highlights from the conversation with Weinstein are below:

What Washington is saying about the Chargers

"Clearly, this is an interesting first test. One, there's a lot of guesswork – I think on both sides – but really for us to try to figure out what the Chargers are going to do. There is a healthy amount of respect for Justin Herbert around here. There's a healthy amount of respect for those receivers and there is some concern here with [a] new-look secondary that the deep passing game could be a problem. So, there's an impetus here on the pass rush, which is the enormous strength of this team, to get to Herbert, to hopefully force him into making quicker throws than he wants to because there is a definitive fear that they can be beat downfield here this weekend."

On wide receiver Terry McLaurin

"I don't think people realize how fast he is. Maybe it's not in the metrics, but game speed you see it, how fast he is. He's also a very precise route runner. What we're expecting to see different, even an improvement of him this year is he's getting off the line better than he did in the past. He catches the ball in traffic. If you catch him in stride, forget it. He's gone.

"They feel like overall their team speed is way higher than it was in the past. Once they get [WR Curtis] Samuel back, McLaurin, him, [WR Dyami] Brown, potentially [RB] J.D. McKissic and Antonio Gibson, who is going to play a dual-threat position this year – not only as their lead running back, but as a wide receiver which is what he was in college – they feel like they can create mismatches. But the biggest one for them is McLaurin, and probably a lot like [Keenan] Allen. I don't believe he's as physical or as big as Allen is, but he's a tactician."