Nothing has changed for Justin Herbert except for bank account and expectations

LOS ANGELES — The contract extension — and all its zeroes, history and possibilities — never came up.

The NFL's biggest deal in history was so close to being reality that the quarter-of-a-billion-dollar beast might as well have been sitting right there with them at the charming eatery in equally charming Florence, a town of 9,500 tucked along the Oregon coast.

Instead, the two longtime friends — Justin Herbert and Jack Johnson — sat with fathers Mark and Lane and soaked up the atmosphere of the 1285 Restobar and one another over laughs and plates of pasta.

"It was like the football game at the local high school just got over and we're sitting there shooting it, talking about normal, everyday life," Jack recalled. "If I had to put a word to it, it was serendipitous."

In just a few days, Herbert would return to Southern California and the Chargers and sign his name to the five-year, $262.5 million deal that made him the league's highest-paid player in average annual salary.

Then he'd keep signing — footballs, posters, those mini helmets, anything the squirming, squealing masses thrust toward him after another training camp practice. Herbert, dripping with sweat and adulation, would work his way down the fence line, giving away his wristbands, his hair ties and, more than once, his cleats.

Giving away himself, that's what he really was doing, a young superstar athlete trying to find comfort in feeding his public without also starving his desire to remain private.

All of this for the Eugene kid who didn't play varsity football in high school until his junior year — then immediately broke his leg — who thought he'd eventually excel more in baseball, who