LA Chargers: Justin Herbert secures first win – game grade

Justin Herbert finally secured his first win with the LA Chargers.

Justin Herbert can now say that he has won a football game as the starting quarterback of an NFL team. The LA Chargers survived what we expected would be another classic collapse and bested the Jacksonville Jaguars, 39-29.

The story of this game, yet again, was Justin Herbert. The young quarterback continued to shine in just his fifth career NFL start, cemented his place as a legitimate franchise quarterback. Herbert completed 27 of 43 passes for 347 yards and three touchdowns. He also rushed for 65 yards and a touchdown.

As we do every week, let’s breakdown Herbert’s game grade with both the pros and the cons.

The pros:

Most of Herbert’s performance fell under the pros. Herbert showed really well pocket awareness throughout the game, was able to extend plays multiple times both by escaping and passing and running and completed yet another deep bomb.

Herbert is seemingly due for one deep bomb per game and in this game, he connected with Jalen Guyton on a 70-yard touchdown pass that tied the game at 29.

One thing that I think got overlooked in this fantastic performance was Herbert’s poise in knowing when to throw the ball away. There were several times when Herbert was pressured and instead of forcing something he would sail it over the sideline or past the endzone in an obvious throwaway.

A young quarterback making those kinds of reads this soon and not making the key mistakes that every young quarterback makes is huge.