LA Chargers: The great, good and ugly vs. Atlanta Falcons

The LA Chargers moved to 4-9 on the season with a win over the Atlanta Falcons.

The LA Chargers emerged victorious over the Atlanta Falcons for the team’s fourth win of the season — so for the fourth time, we get to bring you an edition of “the great, good and ugly”. These are only reserved for wins, while the nine losses received “the good, bad and ugly”.

The Chargers won just their fifth one-score game over the last two seasons, moving the team’s record to 5-16 in that span. Some fans might be frustrated with a win because it hurts the team’s draft stock but at the end of the day, the team is not getting Penei Sewell anyway and the difference between four and seven is not huge.

It was not a perfect win, but it still felt good to get Justin Herbert another win under his belt. Let’s start with the great.

LA Chargers vs. Atlanta Falcons, the great:

Forcing turnovers

This Chargers team is not one that has forced a lot of turnovers this season but when they do it typically leads to a victory.

Melvin Ingram had an interception and Nick Vigil had a fumble recovery in Week 1 that helped lead to the win; the team recovered a fumble on a kickoff to sway the momentum against Jacksonville; Tevaughn Campbell had a pick-six off of Joe Flacco to keep the Jets from getting too much momentum; the team had three interceptions this week against Atlanta.

Rayshawn Jenkins ripped the ball from the air in the endzone, Jahleel Addae made a fantastic route-jumping interception in the fourth quarter and Michael Davis had the game-saving pick that led to the game-winning field goal.

This was the best game the defense played since Week 1.

Justin Herbert’s decision-making

This was not a monster game for Justin Herbert and he was not perfect. He had an interception late in the fourth quarter that very well could have led to the Chargers losing this game.

However, outside of that, Herbert showed a lot of maturity in his decision-making. He did not really force anything that was not there and took everything underneath that the Atlanta Falcons were giving him.

The Falcons’ M-O in this game appeared to be to take away the over-the-top ball and force the Chargers to operate underneath and that is exactly what Herbert did. They challenged the rookie’s decision-making and he passed the test.

Herbert completed 36 of 44 passes (81.8%) for 243 yards and two touchdowns.