EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Everyone saw the play. Only those inside the building and on the practice field every day know what went into it.
That was the case Sunday night. The Los Angeles Chargers were playing at the Kansas City Chiefs in prime time. The Chargers faced a third-and-16 on their third offensive snap of the game. Quarterback Justin Herbert set up in shotgun formation, and receiver Quentin Johnston was isolated to the right side, with Chiefs safety Justin Reid aligned in press coverage.
Herbert took the snap. Johnston battled through Reid’s jam before driving vertically inside the numbers. As Johnston reached first-down yardage, he broke inside on a dig route. Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie was on his backside. Linebacker Nick Bolton was patrolling the middle of the field in zone coverage.
Herbert stepped into a seed down the right hash marks. Johnston snatched the throw. Bolton immediately delivered a crushing, high blow. Flags flew all over the field for an illegal hit. Johnston, who has battled drops in his young NFL career, held on. He stood calmly and pointed down the field, signaling a first down.
Johnston was sending a message — to himself, to the Chiefs, to anyone watching.
“That was just clockwork,” Johnston said.
3rd and 16 is no problem for Herbert to Johnston 🎯
📺: #LACvsKC on NBC/Peacock
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/dNGJCTgotP— NFL (@NFL) December 9, 2024
To understand what this play truly meant, you have to go back to Week 12. The Chargers hosted the Baltimore Ravens on “Monday Night Football.” In the fourth quarter, the Chargers trailed by seven points. They faced a third-and-6 from their 36-yard line. Herbert took the shotgun snap. Johnston came wide open on a shallow crossing route. Herbert threw his way. The pass went off Johnston’s hands and fell incomplete.
Johnston might have scored on the play if he made the catch.
The Chargers punted one play later. The Ravens extended their lead to 14 points on the ensuing drive. Wins and losses in the NFL often come down to a few plays. This game flipped on this play. And with the football world tuned in, Johnston failed.
He failed in the same way he had failed at times in his rookie season, most glaringly in a November loss at the Green Bay Packers.
There are two ways to handle failure. It can break a person. Or it can make a person stronger.
Two weeks later, Johnston was back under the bright lights of prime time. And on this contested catch on the first drive of the game, he showed, in no uncertain terms, which path he chose.
“I know what I want as my end goal, and I know what I want from myself,” Johnston said. “I know how much success I want for myself, and obviously that’s not going to be just a straight path. It comes with a lot of ups and downs.”
The growth process started immediately after the drop against Baltimore, and it was not linear.
Chargers receivers coach Sanjay Lal remembers sitting down next to Johnston on the bench at SoFi Stadium right after the drop.
“Hey, this has to go,” Lal says he told Johnston.
“He cares so much,” Lal added. “And if something bad happens, we got to get over it. That’s really what the discussion was on the bench.”
Initially, Johnston did not do a good job of applying the message and compartmentalizing. He had two drops on back-to-back plays later in the fourth quarter. When asked this week if he felt like the drop was still on Johnston’s mind down the stretch of the Ravens game, Lal admitted, “It was.”
“He knows how important that catch would have been to the game, and his conscience was weighing on him,” Lal said. “You have to let it go. So on one hand, you applaud the guy for caring so much. But the business part of it or the football part of it is, it doesn’t matter. Move on and go execute. And once you’ve identified where you failed, fix it and move on. And he did that the next week in practice.”
Lal said Johnston was not his usual “happy-go-lucky self for a while” after the drop.
“But he was locked in,” Lal said.
Over the next two weeks, Lal brought a drill to the practice field. He first learned it more than a decade ago from receiver Santonio Holmes. Lal was the New York Jets’ receivers coach, and Holmes was in his room. The drill honed what Lal calls a “traffic-catch technique.” The coach throws the receiver the ball. The receiver focuses on squeezing the ball with two hands, then bringing it to his chest, locking it and pinning it without taking either hand off the ball.
Lal said Holmes would “wear me out tossing him a ball.”
Lal emphasized the drill to his Chargers receivers after the Baltimore game.
He said it was not a reaction to Johnston’s drop. That was not a contested-catch situation. Johnston was wide open. Rather, Lal had noticed on recent film that his receivers were not squeezing and securing contested catches with two hands. For instance, there was a play in the New Orleans Saints game in Week 8 when Joshua Palmer initially made a catch along the right sideline. But Saints cornerback Kool-Aid McKinstry was able to jar the ball free. Palmer was loose at the catch point, and he was looking at his feet instead of at the ball.
“What would Santonio have done?” Lal said. “He would have squeezed it. See the ball, feel the sideline. Don’t look at your feet.”
Lal saw it as a weakness, so he attacked it with his coaching.
“The more you drill with intentionality, the more you work individual drills and everything in practice with great intention and detail, when it’s on the grand stage, it’ll show up,” Lal said.
Johnston’s opportunity came Sunday night in Kansas City.
He secured the catch with two hands. He brought it to his chest, locked it and pinned it without taking either hand off the ball. The technique allowed Johnston to wear Reid’s hit and make the catch.
“It was textbook,” Lal said.
This is what development looks like.
“Might it be a defining moment? It might,” Lal said. “But as the coach, you just applaud him for using all his techniques … supreme focus, hand strength, concentration. And you say, ‘Hey, you did it on a grand stage, “Sunday Night Football,” against arguably the best team in the league by record, and you did it like it was nothing. That is you. So run with it.’”
The confidence oozed from Johnston for the remainder of the game. The catch was a match that started a roaring flame.
In the second quarter, Johnston beat cornerback Joshua Williams on a slant route. He set up Williams with a sudden release and got the defensive back off-balance, creating separation.
Johnston has been markedly improved off the line of scrimmage this season.
On a third down in the third quarter, Johnston caught a touchdown pass in the red zone, his team-leading seventh of the season. He finished that catch through two big simultaneous hits from Chiefs defensive backs Chamarri Conner and Keith Taylor. Johnston was unfazed by the hits. Conner bounced off Johnston and fell to the turf. Johnston stood over Conner in defiance as Chargers teammates joined him to celebrate.
Herbert to Johnston! The @Chargers take the lead ⚡️
📺: #LACvsKC on NBC/Peacock
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/t49AikamI3— NFL (@NFL) December 9, 2024
In the fourth quarter, Johnston was open on a shallow comeback to the left side. The Chiefs busted the coverage. Johnston turned upfield and gained 16 yards after the catch for a first down, showing off the explosion that made him a first-round pick in 2023.
Johnston has improved “in every phase,” according to Lal. This performance put that on display — the hands, the releases, the route running, the efficiency in his movements.
“He’s come lightyears,” Lal said.
Johnston’s knowledge base is growing, too. That has made him more curious, according to Lal. Johnston is vocal in meetings. He is asking questions. He understands how drills — like the traffic-catch technique — can be applied to game action. Lal said Johnston is “becoming self-aware.”
“You can’t ever grow until you can self-assess,” Lal added.
As a rookie, Johnston averaged 0.89 receiving yards per route run, according to TruMedia. That ranked 96th out of 117 receivers with at least 200 routes run.
This season, Johnston is averaging 1.54 yards per route run. That ranks 55th of 99 receivers with at least 200 routes.
“He’s a young player that’s ascending,” Lal said. “It’s all part of his growth and development. He sees it differently because he just wants to be great now and help the team. But as the coach looking down, you can’t make one (play) bigger than the other. You just got to say, ‘Is the player making progress every day? Is he honing his skill set? Is he understanding the why of everything we’re teaching? And he is, and that’s what I’m really proud of with him for.”
Johnston chose his path after the Ravens drop.
“At the end of the day, no matter what anybody else says, I know I’m a good player,” Johnston said.
The path will not be straight.
It will zig and zag.
But he is determined to reach the end. To reach his goal.
That much has been clear behind the scenes.
“The opportunity came in that Sunday night game on the third play to show how he has grown,” Lal said. “Not to show anyone. We don’t do anything for anyone else. It’s all for Q. It’s all for the team. But he had worked to hone that catch for those two weeks, and it showed up in the game. And that’s really the crux of everything we teach.”
(Top photo: Perry Knotts / Getty Images)
