Everybody in Broncos Country loves watching the Kansas City Chiefs lose, it's just unfortunate that it had to come at the hands of the Los Angeles Chargers.
The Chargers "hosted" the Chiefs for the NFL's now annual Brazil game, and it was Jim Harbaugh's crew who emerged victorious over the reigning AFC and AFC West champions. But as always, the how is just as important as the what.
The Chargers beat the Chiefs badly through the air, exposing Kansas City's porous pass defense (Justin Reid is now in New Orleans) and spreading the ball around to just about everybody who dressed for the game. The most unlikely candidate of them all ended up having arguably the biggest game of his career so far.
Quentin Johnston just gave the Broncos another weapon to deal with in Chargers win
Quentin Johnston, a former first-round pick of the Chargers out of TCU, has largely been considered an underwhelming pick since he came into the league. Although he had a career-high eight touchdowns last season, Johnston has had a brutal time with dropped passes and mistakes on the field, including seven drops last season alone.
There were even some questions over the course of the offseason about whether or not the Chargers would even keep him around. They brought in Mike Williams, who later retired, before also reuniting with Keenan Allen. The Chargers drafted Ladd McConkey in the second round last year, and used another second-round pick on Tre Harris this year.
It truly felt like they were doing everything they possibly could to move on from a guy like Johnston, or at least give themselves enough of a soft landing in case he stunk again this coming season.
But Johnston, to his credit, absolutely crushed it against the Kansas City Chiefs. He caught five passes for 79 yards with a pair of touchdowns, and he might have had a third touchdown that would have been a tough catch as well.
The Chargers were a run-first team last year and Justin Herbert was a glorified game manager with the potential to pop off at any moment, but this was a game in which Herbert was in command and in control all evening long. Herbert made the Chiefs' defense look like a JV squad, even though the final score doesn't necessarily indicate that.
He was able to complete nearly 74 percent of his throws with 9.4 yards per attempt and a ridiculous 12.7 yards per completion. He had an outrageous TD percentage of 8.8 percent.
The dominance of Herbert and his building trust with a player like Johnston could make the Chargers a much scarier threat in the AFC than originally anticipated, even without left tackle Rashawn Slater.