Jim Harbaugh: I wish I had approached the game like Justin Herbert when I was playing

Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh was an NFL quarterback for 15 years and had some good moments, but he was never as good a player as the quarterback he coaches now, Justin Herbert. Harbaugh watches Herbert play the game and wishes he had been more like him.

As the Chargers beat the Broncos on Thursday night, Herbert told Harbaugh on the sideline that he was having fun like he was playing pickup basketball. Harbaugh admired that.

“I guess the first thing that hit me was, I wish I would’ve treated those situations like that when I was a player,” Harbaugh said. “That’s the best way to do it. It seems like the weight of the world’s on your shoulders. It’s not. Go out there and enjoy it, and treat it like it’s pickup basketball. That kind of filled it in for me. That’s why he is who he is. I wish I had treated it more like that when I played. Now it’s good to have that example and be able to encourage others to do the same. That, ‘Let it rip’ kind of mentality. Which I love.”

Harbaugh reflected on how he was so much more serious when playing organized football than he was when playing pickup basketball.

“You think about pickup basketball, that’s what it’s like,” Harbaugh said. “In the summer you’d show up at the court, outside basketball court on cement there and the nets were chain nets and you formed your team early in the morning and then you would play until you got beat. So much like the playoffs. And then once you got beat you had to form a new team. And the goal was to play to lunch. If you could get your team together, play all the way to lunchtime, then you could go eat, come back and start the afternoon and see if you could play the rest of the day with your team. It meant a lot, there was so much on the line, you wanted to play your best, but you just played.”

Harbaugh thinks Herbert brings that mentality to the Chargers.

“We play better when we’re free and loose and focused at the same time,” Harbaugh said. “I think everybody plays better when they’re playing with joy.”