Jeremiyah Love was questionable to play in the season opener today after coming back from a high-ankle sprain. The rookie running back is playing and scored his first touchdown on the 11th play of the season.
Love ran in from 5 yards, giving the Cardinals a 7-0 lead after a 70-yard drive.
He has three carries for 8 yards.
Jacoby Brissett went 3-for-4 for 43 yards on the drive, including a 27-yarder to Trey McBride, and the quarterback also ran for 13 yards on two carries.
The Chargers now get their first shot with the ball.
Chargers Clips
The quarterback whom Jim Harbaugh believes will be remembered as the greatest of all time has a chance to join the all-time greats on Sunday.
With 180 passing yards, Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert will reach 25,000 yards for his career. It would make him the fourth-fastest quarterback in NFL history to get there, via NBC Sports research.
Herbert, if he does it, will have done it in 96 games. Patrick Mahomes got there in 83. Matthew Stafford crossed the 25K boundary in 90 games. And Dan Marino did it in 92.
It’ll take much more than statistical achievements to earn “GOAT” status for Herbert. His first career playoff win, for example, would be a useful starting point.
Before that can happen, the Chargers have to qualify for the playoffs again. In a very competitive division and a conference featuring multiple wild-card contenders, it won’t be easy. Between the Bills, Patriots, Bengals, Ravens, Steelers, Texans, Jaguars, Broncos, Chiefs, and Chargers, at least three will have their seasons end in Week 18.
When it comes to the first game of football season, Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh does indeed attack the day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.
Except for someone named “Potsy.”
Harbaugh has a 6-0 record in Week 1, from his four seasons in San Francisco and two in L.A. With a win on Sunday against the Cardinals, he’ll be 7-0 in Week 1.
And that will put him one more Week 1 win away from tying the all-time record. Via NBC Sports research, George “Potsy” Clark had a record of 8-0-2 in Week 1, from 1931 to 1940.
Clark’s run started with the Portsmouth Spartans, who became the Detroit Lions. In 1937 and 1938, he coached the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1940, his last year as an NFL head coach, Clark returned to the Lions.
It would be a surprise if the Chargers don’t win today. They host the Cardinals (who have lost nine straight Week 1 games), and the home team is a 9.5-point favorite.
Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh believes he has the best quarterback in NFL history on his roster, even if he hasn’t proven it yet.
Harbaugh said on The White House with Michael Irvin that he believes by the time Justin Herbert retires from football, he will be recognized as the best quarterback the game has ever seen.
“Allow me to call my shot, like Babe Ruth pointing his bat over to centerfield: Justin Herbert, when it’s all said and done, when his career comes to an end, I predict he will be known as the greatest, best ever to play the position of quarterback,” Harbaugh said. “When it’s all said and done, and his career is finished, we’re going to look back and say, ‘Yep, that’s the best that ever did it.’”
Herbert is 28 years old and heading into his seventh NFL season, so if he’s going to live up to Harbaugh’s lofty expectations, he’s going to need to get started soon. Herbert is a good quarterback, but not a great one, and his list of career achievements is fairly meager: He’s never won a playoff game, never been a first-team All-Pro or league MVP, and never led the league in any major statistical category.
Herbert has never been the best quarterback in the NFL at any time, and certainly not the best of all time. Harbaugh is seeing something in Herbert’s potential that Herbert hasn’t shown on the field.
Jeremiyah Love wants to play. He isn’t saying if he will play.
“If they want to put me out there, I’m going to go out and play, whether my ankle feels 100 percent, 50 percent, 70 percent,” Love said, via Darren Urban of the team website. “I just want to play football. I’ll fight my hardest to be out there every game this season.”
The rookie running back injured his ankle in an Aug. 13 preseason game against the Raiders. It was diagnosed as a high-ankle sprain, and he only returned to practice this week.
Love was limited again Thursday.
“I have been itching to get back out there ever since I injured my ankle,” Love said.
Coach Mike LaFleur said Wednesday “we feel good” about Love’s availability for Sunday’s season opener.
Love, the No. 3 overall pick, had 14 touches for 72 yards in his only preseason action.
Both of the biggest injury question marks for the Cardinals were limited participants in Thursday’s practice.
Linebacker Josh Sweat (knee, rest) returned to practice after sitting out on Wednesday. Sweat spent most of the summer on the physically unable to perform list before being activated on August 24.
Running back Jeremiyah Love (ankle) has been listed as limited on both of the team’s injury reports this week. Love was injured in the team’s first preseason game and head coach Mike LaFleur said this week that he feels good about the first-round pick’s chances of playing against the Chargers on Sunday.
Right guard Isaiah Adams (knee) and safety Dadrion Taylor-Demerson (ribs) were both out of practice. Adams has been out both days while Taylor-Demerson was downgraded from a limited session on Wednesday.
Cornerback Garrett Williams (Achilles) was also a limited participant while cornerback Will Johnson (ankle) got in a full practice.
With former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick on the brink of releasing a new book, he’s been talking a little more than usual as part of the promotion. That has prompted others to have a few things to say, too.
One voice was somewhat unexpected. Giants coach John Harbaugh has spoken at length to Ian O’Connor of The Athletic regarding the Ravens’ interest in Kaepernick after he became a free agent in 2017.
With Kaepernick’s former 49ers coach, Jim Harbaugh, coaching at Michigan — and believing that a team could win “championships” with Kaepernick, John Harbaugh was very intrigued.
John Harbaugh also vividly remembered what happened in Super Bowl XLVII, when Baltimore barely held off a Kaepernick-led second-half comeback attempt.
“In that Super Bowl, he was really a nightmare to defend,” John Harbaugh told O’Connor.
The biggest complication at the time related to Kaepernick’s weekly protests in 2016, which sparked a broader wave of players taking a stand by not standing during the national anthem. And a significant public backlash from a sizable chunk of NFL fans.
“In all honesty, that wasn’t a factor,” John Harbaugh told O’Connor. “Yeah, there was conversation that there’s going to be a certain percentage of the fanbase that’s not going to appreciate this, but we decided that wasn’t going to be our driving factor.”
For the Ravens, who still had Super Bowl XLVII MVP Joe Flacco under contract, the attraction to Kaepernick was undeniable.
“His talent, and also the fact I had inside information as to who he was from my brother,” John Harbaugh told O’Connor. “We talked a lot about him, and I’d met Kap many times, had numerous conversations with him because of that. We talked about it at length as an organization, and we liked the fit. . . . The bottom line is your quarterback has to make plays for you, and Colin Kaepernick proved he could do that.”
The potential signing of Kaepernick became derailed for reasons that still remain fuzzy. His girlfriend, Nessa Diab, posted an image of franchise legend Ray Lewis and team owner Steve Bisciotti, after reports emerged that Bisciotti resisted the notion of embracing Kaepernick. After that, the visit never happened.
Even if Kaepernick’s visit to Baltimore had happened, there would have been complications. Flacco was the starter. Kaepernick would have been the backup, with a contract reflecting his status. At the time, Kaepernick believed he should still be a starter; would he have accepted a secondary role?
If Kaepernick and the Ravens had joined forces, the ensuing butterfly effect could have resulted in the Ravens not trading back into the bottom of round one to acquire two-time MVP Lamar Jackson in April 2018. On that topic, Harbaugh said “we probably would’ve still drafted Lamar for the opportunity to have two guys like that.”
Still, no one knows what would have happened without knowing how Kaepernick would have performed. In 2017, the Ravens went 9-7 and missed the playoffs; Flacco was so-so. If Kaepernick had gotten a chance to play that year and if he had played well, who knows? He could have been the clear-cut No. 1 entering 2018, perhaps making them less inclined to draft Jackson.
Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur said this week that he feels good about running back Jeremiyah Love being in the lineup against the Chargers in Week 1, but it remains to be seen what kind of role the rookie will play coming off of an ankle injury.
It seems clear that any role for Love will include splitting time with Tyler Allgeier. The Cardinals have Allgeier listed as the No. 1 running back on their first depth chart of the regular season. Bam Knight is listed as the third running back.
That was also the case in the preseason, although Love did not play after injuring his ankle in the team’s first game of the summer.
Depth charts can change and it’s hard not to imagine that Love will wind up taking on more and more of the work if he produces the way he did at Notre Dame, but, for now, the Cardinals are calling Allgeier the starter.
Cardinals running back Jeremiyah Love injured his ankle in an Aug. 13 preseason game against the Raiders. It was diagnosed as a high-ankle sprain, and he has not practiced or played since.
Love is moving closer to a return, though, and coach Mike LaFleur insinuated that the rookie did something on the practice field Monday.
“Progressing,” LaFleur said, via Bo Brack of PHNX Cardinals. “He was out there moving around today. We’ll see on Wednesday. I’ll have a better idea for all those guys [who are injured].”
The Cardinals will have their first injury report of the season on Wednesday, which will be the first indication of where Love is in his rehab. LaFleur was asked about his optimism for the third overall pick to play against the Chargers.
“Yeah, I feel good,” LaFleur said.
Love had 14 touches for 73 yards in the first half of the only preseason game he played.
With 11 captains on the Rams, the Chargers had a chance to one-up them.
In a perfect metaphor for the L.A. rivalry, they came up short to their landlords at SoFi Stadium.
The Chargers have a mere 10 team captains for 2026. They are, based on the order they appear on the graphic the Chargers posted: linebacker Daiyan Henley, linebacker Tuli Tuipulotu, tackle Joe Alt, quarterback Justin Herbert, cornerback Elijah Molden, receiver Ladd McConkey, safety Derwin James Jr., linebacker Khalil Mack, tackle Rashawn Slater, and long snapper Josh Harris.
Unlike the Rams, which seemed to pick a captain from each position group, the Chargers have two tackles and three linebackers. They have five on defense, four on offense, and one on special teams.
It should be three. Offense, defense, special teams. One for each primary component of the team.
But each team has to make its own decision. If it wants to dilute the honor by taking a participation-trophy approach to handing out the “C” patches, so be it.
Still, the first team that goes with three will receive high praise from this tiny corner of the media ecosystem. Which probably means none will.
