Kirk Cousins threw for 253 yards and three touchdowns Sunday, and the Raiders beat the Chargers 26-14 for their first 2-0 start since 2021.
That is the box score. This site called the quarterback competition fake three weeks ago, and now there is proof.
Klint Kubiak was still calling it an open job while Cousins sat there with a $20 million guarantee that said otherwise. tfdssports wasn’t buying the coach-speak then, and we don’t have to pretend now. Cousins went 19-of-29 for 253 yards, three scores, and a 113.1 rating against a Chargers defense that had two full weeks to figure him out and couldn’t.
Fernando Mendoza is still the guy Vegas drafted to be the future. He is also still on the bench, and after this one, good luck arguing he shouldn’t be.
Matt Gay hit a 59-yard field goal, a career long, just so nobody forgets the kicking game exists. Tre Tucker turned a 40-yard bomb from Cousins into six points and finished with 119 receiving yards, a stat line that earns a bigger route tree in October.
Here is what ESPN posted about an hour after the final whistle:
RAIDERS BEAT CHARGERS TO START SEASON 2-0 🔥
The Chargers are last in the AFC West. pic.twitter.com/QQob67P4ED
— ESPN (@espn) September 20, 2026
Last place. In the AFC West. Through two games. With Justin Herbert at quarterback and Jim Harbaugh on the sideline.
That should scare Chargers fans more than the scoreline does. Armando Salguero pointed out on X that Harbaugh has never started a season 0-2 before — not across two decades coaching at Stanford, Michigan, the 49ers or Baltimore. This Chargers loss just made it official. Herbert went 15-of-27 for 192 yards with two picks, the Chargers fumbled the ball six separate times, and the final margin still felt generous.
This is not a talent problem. LA has Herbert, has Derwin James, has actual pieces on the roster. It is an execution problem, and execution problems are supposed to be the fixable kind. Ask Harbaugh how that is going so far. The Chargers’ six fumbles put them in genuinely bizarre statistical company — the kind of stat line you don’t see outside of a century-old box score.
The Raiders defense had a say in it too. Rookie corner Hezekiah “Zeek” Masses picked off Herbert twice in his first career start, part of a unit that finished with three sacks, four forced fumbles and a safety. “Herbert tried me twice and I was trying to make a play on the ball,” Masses said on X. “It’s mine, it ain’t no 50-50 ball. I’m comfortable out there.”
“I thought the Chargers’ defense made it hard all game long. Our defense kept giving us the ball back,” Cousins said after the game, which is a pretty even-keeled way to describe torching a division rival by two scores.
Cousins is suddenly in company that has nothing to do with a bridge-quarterback discussion. He is the third quarterback 38 or older in NFL history to throw three-plus touchdowns in each of his team’s first two games of a season, joining Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.
The only 38+ year old QBs in NFL history to start a year with 3 Pass TD in each of team's first 2 games of a season
Tom Brady
Peyton Manning
Kirk Cousins pic.twitter.com/yRYSONbmlF— PFF (@PFF) September 21, 2026
The contract will keep getting picked apart and the age jokes aren’t going anywhere. Right now it is Cousins’s team, and Cousins is playing like it.
None of this makes the Raiders a Super Bowl team. Two weeks is two weeks, and the schedule does not stay this friendly. But Kubiak didn’t need a playoff run to be right. He needed his quarterback to look like himself for one Sunday against a division opponent, and Cousins gave him three touchdown throws to spare.
Mendoza can keep waiting. He’s got time.
