Los Angeles Chargers’ breakout star is the last player anyone would have guessed originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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The Los Angeles Chargers were the talk of the league after getting out to a 3-0 start to the 2025 season. Did Jim Harbaugh have a Super Bowl contender in the City of Angels?
It seemed a legitimate question, but back-to-back losses to the New York Giants and Washington Commanders have brought things back down to Earth. However, one player for the team is having a career breakout season.
Think back to the start of Chargers training camp. If someone was going to ask you who would be the team’s breakout player this year, which names would you have given? Perhaps a better question is, who would you not have said?
The answer to that second question is almost certainly Quentin Johnston. The third-year wide receiver was dropping passes in practice and dropping passes in preseason games, one of which led to a nasty hit and a concussion.
Johnston wasn’t going to be the team’s breakout star and in fact, you would have had a solid argument if you took the position that he shouldn’t even be on the roster if not for being a first-round pick.
But then the games that counted started and Johnston took off and looked like a player no one had ever seen before. Who was this guy? Where was this guy? For the season, Johnston has 26 receptions for 377 yards and four touchdowns. That led to Brad Gagnon of Bleacher Report naming him as the team’s breakout player of 2025.
Justin Herbert is so freaking good.
Quentin Johnston with the touchdown.pic.twitter.com/dqRfeSSseL
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) September 16, 2025
“Like (Tre) Tucker, only four players have caught more touchdown passes than Johnson. The third-year third-round pick has also yet to drop a pass, after dropping seven in 2024”, wrote Gagnon.
That last line is key. Dropped passes were becoming synonymous with Johnston’s name. You expected him to drop the important pass in the big moment. He is slowly starting to shed that label and become the player fans hoped he would be when the team drafted him in the first round of the 2023 draft.
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