Charger Defense Skinned by Washington Aerial Game

The wide receiver who caught the winning pass didn’t know what the play was.

His coach had no idea his team could recover from an 18-point first-half deficit.

The Washington Redskins did not seem to have a full and rational understanding of all that happened to and for them in Sunday’s 30-27 win over the San Diego Chargers.

They were not alone.

After all, they were matched against a pass defense that has been without a clue for years.

In terms of muddled thinking and deficient coverage, it was status quo all the way.

The Charger defensive coordinator called what he later said was the wrong coverage on the game’s critical play, a 55-yard pass from Jay Schroeder to Gary Clark.

A moment later they hit on a 14-yard touchdown that gave Washington its first and only lead, along with a 3-0 record and a nine-game winning streak against the AFC West.

The Chargers slipped to 1-2 with upcoming road games against the Raiders and Seattle.

The San Diego cornerback who was beaten on the critical long throw had the nerve to suggest that luck had a lot to do with Redskin receivers getting deep on him several other times.

This was the same fellow, Wayne Davis, who last year thanked Seattle’s Darryl Turner for making him a better player by catching three touchdowns in one afternoon.

There has been a belated effort to solidify the pass defense this year by pressuring the quarterback, but the early returns are not promising.

The Chargers, who were ranked 28th in pass defense before the game, secured their last-place standing by surrendering 341 passing yards. Most of them were accumulated by Art Monk, who had 7 catches for 174 yards, and Clark, who made 6 receptions for 144 yards.

Meanwhile, the offense has re-entered the earth’s atmosphere after soaring to a 50-28 win over Miami two weeks ago. Quarterback Dan Fouts threw five interceptions last week in New York and served three more against the Redskins. The last time he gave up eight in two games was in 1980-and the Chargers won both of those games.

“We just about closed the coffin, but we couldn’t get the last nail in,” said tight end Kellen Winslow, upset that the Chargers had to settle for two second-half field goals after leading 21-3 in the second quarter and 21-10 at halftime.

“They had our guys in kind of a state of shock in the first half,” Washington Coach Joe Gibbs said. “We really didn’t have a sense we could come back the way we did.

“We kept laying it out there and waiting for something to happen. This team has tremendous guts. It’s really happy for us and sad for the guys down the hall.”

Sad--and confused.

Ron Lynn, the San Diego defensive coordinator, couldn’t seem to fathom why his team hadn’t been in a different coverage when Schroeder lofted the long pass to Clark with less than two minutes to play.

To his credit, Lynn blamed himself for not calling a deep zone on the play which preceded the game-winning touchdown catch by Clark.

But he didn’t limit his criticism to himself.

“The rush could have been better, the corner could have been deeper, the safety could have gotten a better break on the ball and we could have been in a zone defense,” Lynn said.

Of course, if they had Howie Long, Lawrence Taylor and Mike Haynes on defense, the other stuff could have been overlooked.

As it was, Clark was able to get a step on Davis with an out-and-up move with the Chargers in a man-to-man coverage.

“I was running with him,” Davis said, “and I turned my head to see the ball, but I couldn’t see it. Then the ball came down and he was catching it.”

And the crowd of 57,853-second-largest to see a Charger game at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium-was yelling, “Deeeee-fense.”

It was the right call by the crowd. It almost was enough to accomplish what the Charger defense couldn’t--stop Schroeder and Clark.

“I wasn’t even sure what the play was,” Clark said later in recounting his game-winning reception. “I never heard it in the huddle because of the crowd noise. I made an inside fake and was expecting Jay to throw the ball out of bounds.”

Instead, when Clark came out of his move and cut the other way, the ball was waiting.

Charger corner back Donald Brown came to the defense of Davis and himself. “I thought I met the challenge pretty well,” Brown said. “It is not just a Wayne Davis and Donald Brown type of thing. It was the defense as a whole.”

Safety Jeff Dale offered a more realistic view, saying, “It was a tough day. Everybody knew they’d go deep, but we had a lot of breakdowns. Maybe our youth was more (vulnerable) than we thought. We can’t keep letting them throw the ball all over the field.”

The Chargers, who had turned the ball over six times in six series in the second half of last week’s game, scored on two of three possessions in the first quarter Sunday en route to their 11-point halftime lead.

The Chargers amassed 106 yards rushing and limited Washington to 42 in the first half. However, the Redskins altered their defense in the second half and held the Chargers to just 41 ground yards. The adjustment was a simple thing, with free safety Curtis Jordan taking Winslow one-on-one, freeing the Washington linebackers to concentrate on the ground game.

When the Chargers needed to control the ball late in the fourth quarter, they were unable to do so.

With a first down at their 33 and about three minutes remaining, the Chargers gave the ball to Lionel James and Gary Anderson, who were stopped for nothing. On third down, Fouts tried to throw to Trumaine Johnson, but Darrell Green knocked down the pass.

The Redskins got the ball with 2:19 left, and three plays later they won the game.

Anderson utilized a variety of fakes to get into the end zone on a 12-yard swing pass that put San Diego ahead 7-3.

He froze linebacker Rich Milot with a waggle of the shoulders, then cut inside Green to score.

Following a 34-yard punt by Steve Cox, the Chargers had to go only 47 yards to seize a 14-3 lead at the end of the first quarter.

A short run by Buford McGee was set up by a vintage catch by Winslow, who reached up with his left hand to stab a Fouts pass at the Washington one-yard line.

Anderson was the centerpiece of a second-quarter drive that gave the Chargers a 21-3 lead.

On the brink now, the Redskins got back in the game on a two-yard scoring run by George Rogers. A 37-yard kickoff return by Ken Jenkins and a 38-yard pass to Monk accounted for much of the damage.

The Chargers missed a chance to expand their lead after getting to the Washington nine with 11 seconds left in the first half.

Passing up a field goal attempt, the Chargers went for a touchdown, but Fouts’ pass was picked off by Vernon Dean.

Coach Don Coryell explained the decision this way: “Are we going to be timid and go for a field goal, or try for a touchdown and, if we miss, then go for the field goal? The ball was intercepted, but I’d do it the same way again.”

The Redskins threatened twice in the third period, but had to settle for two Mark Moseley field goals after costly dropped passes by Clark and Monk.

After a 50-yard field goal by Rolf Benirschke, his longest in two years, the Redskins got within a point on a 10-yard run by Rogers. Monk’s 58-yard catch burned Brown.

The Chargers moved to a 27-23 lead on a 31-yard Benirschke field goal with 9:06 to play.

A 46-yard pass interference call against Brown gave the Redskins a first down at the Charger 31. But Gill Byrd forced a Clark fumble and Fred Robinson recovered at the 23.

The Chargers then attempted to run out the clock, but failed when Green deflected a third-down pass intended for Johnson.

Following a punt, the Redskins struck quickly, Schroeder to Clark.

Lynn may have made a questionable call on the game’s critical play, but there was no faulting his assessment of the overall play of the San Diego defense.

“We took a giant step backwards today,” he said. “The whole defense had a shaky day.”