Two seasons in a row now, Justin Herbert has incurred a lost-time injury taking on linebackers at the goal line.

The last one occurred on the penultimate play of 44-15 blowout at Arizona last Saturday night. Herbert, a fierce competitor who's not prone to quit or back down, dove headlong into four defenders in a futile attempt to score a meaningless touchdown with less than a minute to play.

He got up shaken and woozy and threw incomplete to Johnny Johnson on 4th and goal from the one and the Ducks were done for the night, losing out on a last opportunity to make the final score cosmetically better.

For the game he threw a season-high 48 passes for a season-low 188 yards.

There's still hope that ill-advised hit might only cost him a couple of days of practice. Herbert was in concussion protocol at midweek, not yet officially announced in or out as of this morning.

While the will to keep fighting and never give up is admirable, Herbert has to be smarter than that. He's got to protect the franchise and live to fight another down and another day. He has to recognize what situations are worth taking risks for and which aren't.

In general, he's done a better job of protecting his body this season. He chooses good opportunities to run, gets the most out of them and then slides or gets out of bounds. And that's exactly what he should do. Taking a shot at the end of an impossibly lost game was foolish.

Of course football is a collision sport, and there's no way to play it wrapped in duct tape and styrofoam. It's the unnecessary, unwarranted and profitless risks Oregon's 38-million-dollar QB has to walk away from. From 40 yards and in, he has the arm strength to heave it out of the back of the end zone if necessary. Leave the taking-on-four-tacklers stuff to C.J. Verdell and Cyrus Habibi-Likio.

There's another way Herbert has to use his intelligence to get more out of his offense and his ability, and it is perhaps even more important.

At PAC-12 Media Day this summer Mario Cristobal raved about Herbert's development and his advanced understanding of the Oregon offense. The first-year head coach told reporters, "I think he was a quarterback last year, now he's becoming a field general. He understands the run game like a coordinator does."

Herbert, Cristobal went on, had ability to recognize favorable and unfavorable situations, the ability to audible and get the Ducks out of a bad play and into one where they had better numbers and an increased chance of success.

In the last two weeks the Oregon offense has been painfully predictable and ineffective. Against WSU they ran for 58 yards, their lowest total in ages, just 2.7 yards a carry. It wasn't much better against Arizona, 84 yards, 3.6 per carry.

That is a lot of bad plays and unfavorable situations with the wrong numbers in the box.

Offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo has taken a lot of heat for unimaginative playcalling and a failure to adjust to the loss of Penei Sewell, Oregon's freshman All-America candidate at left tackle.

But Herbert is the field general. Particularly at home, where an educated crowd gives him the relative quiet to audible before an offensive snap. the third-year starter ought to be picking up the defense's intentions and checking out of some bad plays into better ones.

It'd help a lot if the calls from the sideline came in more decisively, giving him the time he needs to make his reads and calls.

It's time for this staff to put more trust in him and a greater responsibility on him to lead and take charge. To be a great quarterback, Herbert has to show he can process information, take command of the game and make winning decisions. There's a lot more to quarterbacking than throwing a pretty ball into a small window.

The third way Herbert has to use his intelligence to get more out of his ability lies in the passing game. He has to improve his ability to take what the defense gives him and find the soft spots in the coverage, go through his progressions and use all of his targets. He must do a better job of taking those easy completions for positive yards, the outlets and dump offs and crossing routes.

On the play where Dillon Mitchell got rocked hard enough to send him into concussion protocol, Herbert had Breeland wide open over the middle on a crossing route for an easy pitch-and-catch on 4th and 5.

With his arm strength and accuracy he should be carving up defenses and manufacturing first downs. It's been too easy to stop the Oregon offense these last two weeks. Mostly, they stop themselves.