Charger Magic Just an Act After Denver, Elway Pass Through
Magic, yes, of course, it was magic. It was two months of game-winning interceptions and last-second field goals and postgame giggles and . . .
Look up. October was five Sundays ago. The Chargers have your magic, all right. They have it caked all over their facemasks.
Destiny’s darlings continued to trip over all those cliches Sunday, when they were whipped by the Denver Broncos, 31-17, in front of a record crowd of 61,880 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.
The Chargers scored on the longest interception return in NFL history--103 yards by Vencie Glenn--and it means nothing. Dan Fouts threw for more than 300 yards (322) for the 50th time in his career despite taking a hard shot to the right shoulder that may slow him this week--and it means nothing.
Just a week ago, Seattle beat these Chargers, 34-3, meaning they are a cumulative 45 points worse than the top two AFC West contenders, yet they are still a first-place team.
Now, that’s magic.
“Nobody said it would be easy,” Fouts said. “But this has proven to be very difficult.”
Even more difficult to watch. Thanks to that 8-1 start, at 8-3 the Chargers will at least remain tied for first place after Seattle’s game tonight against the Raiders. Yet look not at their first nine games, but their last 10 quarters.
During that time their offense has scored one touchdown, and their defense has allowed 10 touchdowns.
Now look at their most recent 60 minutes. For the first time this season, this was not an Al Saunders-style team that faced Denver, unless Saunders shows up at work this morning in jeans and a dirty T-shirt.
“We’ve got to do some soul searching,” Glenn said. “We’ve got to get down to the nitty-gritty. We can’t let all we’ve done slip out the back door.”
Like Sunday, with 2:09 left in the first quarter, after Glenn was surprised by an Elway pass directly in his hands and proceeded to dance all the way down the right sidelines to score.
Four plays later, Elway threw the ball 60 yards, completing a 52-yard pass to Mark Jackson at the Charger 1. He had beaten Elvis Patterson. One play later, it was a tie game. One series later, Patterson was beaten badly again, this time by Ricky Nattiel on a 46-yard touchdown pass.
Or how about the end of the first half, when the Chargers drove 64 yards to the Denver 1? They ran out of time without scoring.
Before several key plays, the loudspeakers would boom the rock tune, “Taking Care of Business.” Every time, the Chargers would fail.
“We are more shocked than anything,” safety Martin Bayless said. “It’s just a shame we can’t take care of our own business.”
“I guess, it doesn’t look very good, does it?” Saunders said.
Led by Elway’s best passing game this season--347 yards--the Broncos outgained the Chargers, 522-378. That follows the 496 yards the Chargers allowed Seattle last week.
Denver held the ball for 41:19, which, added to last week’s 41:35 domination by the Seahawks, means the Charger offense has been on the field a total of about two quarters in two games.
The Broncos needed to punt only once. They connected on an amazing 12 of 15 third-down plays, for an average of 12.5 yards per conversion.
Take the Broncos’ game-clinching third touchdown drive, starting the second half. Three times in nine plays, they were successful on third downs. On one, Elway completed an 18-yard pass to Nattiel. On another, Elway ran up the middle for 16 yards. On the third, Elway threw a five-yard pass to Gene Lang for a touchdown.
“It’s really kind of simple, it’s what defense is all about,” said Ron Lynn, the Chargers’ defensive coordinator. “You stop them on third down, or they keep the ball, and your offense can’t play. You can’t stop them on the big third-down play, then you can’t play defense. And we can’t stop them on third down.”
Said Joe Phillips, defensive end: “We all thought our offense is moving the ball, if only we could stop them. Once. And we couldn’t.”
But the offense did move the ball, and it still didn’t work. Consider the incident at the end of the first half that wouldn’t happen to your fantasy football league team.
Trailing, 17-10, with 1:08 left, the Chargers drove 64 yards in 1:08 to move to the Broncos 1. And they did not score.
On one play, the Chargers may have blown the game, if not at least illustrated the current state of their season.
“Turns out, it would have been a big play,” Saunders said.
On third-and-goal from the Bronco 7-yard-line, with 17 seconds and no Charger timeouts left, here’s what happened: Charger end Kellen Winslow ran to the end zone, Fouts threw a ball into the end zone, and Winslow caught the ball. But not all at the same time.
Running a simple outside pattern, Winslow leaped and caught the ball at the six-point side of the goal line. But Denver defensive backs Mike Harden and Randy Robbins were hanging on his back, and they pushed him, in mid-air, back to the other side of the goal line.
Winslow landed on the 1-yard line and began fighting to get across. Denver defenders Steve Wilson and Jeremiah Castille joined the fray, making it four-on-one, with Winslow going nowhere.
By then, there were just five seconds left and, with no timeouts, the Chargers couldn’t get their field goal unit on the field in time.
“I thought I scored, but what I think doesn’t matter,” Winslow said. “I was in the end zone. The only thing that could have happened was, I might have stepped back to the ball and gone back over the line.”
“We were yelling for a replay, but they were so slow to spot the ball afterward, we had to stop yelling and get our field goal team out there, and by then it was too late,” Saunders said. “We practice that emergency field goal team thing every day. If they had spotted the ball quicker, we might have had a chance.”
Said safety Mike Davis: “We get that and it’s 0-0, a new game. We needed that.”
After the first two Bronco series of the second half, it was no game. Immediately after the second-half kickoff, Elway took his team 55 yards in 9 plays for a touchdown (a five-yard pass to Lang). Then, after the Chargers could do nothing in eight plays, Elway took his team 80 yards in 9 plays for another touchdown (a nine-yard pass to Vance Johnson). That made it 31-10.
“That was the back-breaker, when they held the ball for that long,” Bayless said. “Even after we didn’t score at the end of the first half, we were still in it.”
Elway added 40 yards to his passing totals, giving him 1,086 total yards in his last three games and at least a roomful of most valuable player votes.
“No question he’s the front-runner for the MVP award,” Phillips said. “I remember once, I hit him low and Chuck (nose guard Ehin) hit him high and we wrestled him to the ground. I’m thinking we’ve got a sack, but when I get up, I see the referee downfield waving his hands on a 40-yard completion. Unbelievable.”
Said Elway: “I’ve just got that confidence going. I’m just going up there throwing and not thinking. It’s easier that way.”
His noted “Three Amigos” receivers, incidentally, made the Charger secondary look like a bad Chevy Chase movie. Johnson, Jackson and Nattiel combined to catch 13 passes for 262 yards, 20 yards per catch.
“They made some great catches,” Patterson said. “Sometimes we couldn’t be in any better position. Sometimes we beat them, and sometimes they beat us.”
What happens now? The Chargers aren’t sure.
“We have to start playing again,” Glenn said. “We can’t think about the playoffs. We just have to try to beat somebody.”
If the Seahawks win as expected tonight, the Chargers are no longer alone in first place.
And what if you forget, for a second, the division championship? The Chargers are just one-half game ahead of Denver and two games ahead of the four other 6-5 teams in the race for one of two wild card spots.
The Chargers’ four remaining opponents? All playoff-contending teams, including next week’s trip to Houston and a season-ending trip to Denver.
Remember when all anybody wanted to talk about was home field advantage?
