These are the moments when those who have been around a while, who have watched years of promise and struggles and getting close but never getting over the top, will remind themselves:
“Well, what do you expect? They’re the Chargers.”
OK, that’s probably a wee bit of overreaction after two discouraging losses. And maybe certain projections at the start of this season, with a hometown Super Bowl on the horizon, were just a bit overblown. (I can’t possibly imagine who could have done that.)
But it is a powerful legacy of struggle, of things going wrong at just the wrong time. The New England Patriots in particular tend to resurrect those ghosts, and Halloween in this case had nothing to do with it. (Don’t tell me that if you followed this team in San Diego you didn’t give a fleeting thought to Marlon McCree, and the interception that wasn’t that doomed the 2006 Chargers, when you saw Bill Belichick on the New England sideline Sunday.)
And so here we are.
These Chargers are 4-3, a game behind the first-place Raiders in the AFC West, and as of the moment they would be the AFC’s No. 7 seed in a playoff system that was expanded by a game this year. And there are still 10 games to play in the NFL’s first 17-game season. But the trend is not good.
The Chargers dispensed an absolute stinker the week before their bye, a 34-6 loss to Baltimore. After a week off, a supposedly dynamic offense looked anything but in a 27-24 loss to New England, on a day when Belichick reminded us that he has been coaching in the NFL eight years longer than the Chargers’ Brandon Staley has been alive.
The old guys do have some tricks up their sleeves, after all. In this case Belichick pulled some cover-two out from under his hoodie, something quarterback Justin Herbert said they hadn’t seen much from the Patriots on film.
Maybe that’s a lesson. Never assume, especially against the wily old guys.
After two touchdowns in their first three possessions Sunday, and after their defense stopped New England on a fourth-and-goal from the L.A. 1, this was the Chargers’ offensive output: Three-and-out, three-and-out, interception, punt (with a Patriots’ penalty for running into the punter wiped out when the Chargers’ Kemon Hall interfered with returner Gunner Olszewski), field goal (after bogging down at the 30), an interception for a Patriots touchdown, and a final last gasp touchdown with 40 seconds to play to reduce the margin to three points.
It wasn’t a fun day for Herbert, who was 18 for 35 for 223 yards, was sacked three times and had to escape pressure on many other occasions. His 66.7 passer rating was the second-lowest of his career. The lowest: 43.7 in that 45-0 waxing by the Patriots in Inglewood last December. The second-lowest before Sunday: 67.8 … two weeks ago in Baltimore.
Trending downward, maybe? Or just an elongated hiccup?
Sunday Herbert looked like a baseball pitcher tasked with figuring out a way to win without his best stuff but not totally sure how to go about it. When the Patriots unveiled their cover two, it seemed to throw him off. When his protection broke down on numerous occasions, he was in fire drill mode. And when he and his receivers weren’t on the same page … well, the pick-six in the fourth quarter occurred because tight end Jared Cook apparently turned the wrong way. Instead the ball right went to Adrian Phillips, who used to be a Charger but now plays safety for the Patriots. No one touched him as he raced down the sideline.
Phillips wasn’t the only ex-Charger to torment his old mates. Hunter Henry was targeted three times and caught one pass for 33 yards, and he was the one who recovered the desperate onside kick at the end of the game after Joshua Palmer’s 24-yard touchdown reception with 47 seconds left.
Predictably, Herbert said in the SoFi interview room afterward that he felt like his line “gave me enough time, and it’s on me to make those throws and get the ball out quicker. But you know, I thought those guys up front did a great job blocking and I feel comfortable behind those guys.”
His coach was more blunt, or should we say honest?.
“We did not protect the passer well at all today,” Staley said. “We had far too many drops. And then, you know, we didn’t play with great timing at times because of both of those things that were happening.”
Staley did have compliments for the Chargers’ run defense, on a day the Patriots gained 141 yards on 39 carries and used the run effectively to counterbalance rookie quarterback Mac Jones’ own cold streak (he was 1-for-12 at one point after starting out 6-for-9 for 109 yards and didn’t regain his mojo until the fourth quarter).
It was an improvement considering that going in they were last in the league in rushing yards allowed per game (162.5) and per carry (5.44). The return of defensive lineman Justin Jones helped, but New England’s Damien Harris ran for 80 yards in 23 carries with a touchdown, providing the grind-it-out kind of game that could mask a young quarterback’s difficulties.
So, again, here we are. The Chargers missed a chance to pull even with the Raiders, who were idle. They play at 3-5 Philadelphia next week, which could be considered a get-right game except that there no longer may be any such thing in the NFL (except for Houston, which the Chargers don’t get until Week 16). Whether it’s an effect of the 17-game schedule, some sort of post-pandemic ennui or a general leveling of the field in honor of the late Pete Rozelle’s dream of absolute parity, there seems to be a larger middle class than usual: 15 teams within two games of .500 through Week 8.
Seven of the 10 teams remaining on the Chargers’ schedule fit that description. But so do the Chargers themselves.
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