Chargers Need New Math Miracle to Make Playoffs
Mike Charles has been to the National Football League playoffs before as a member of the Miami Dolphins. He had been hoping to go again, this time with the Chargers.
But as he wearily walked off the field Sunday, the last man to head to the locker room after the Chargers lost their fifth consecutive game, this time to the Indianapolis Colts, 20-7, he sensed that possibility had more than slipped away. It was, for all but the dreamers, gone.
“I’ve been on playoff teams before at Miami and as the season got near the end, the team got hungrier. We’re not playing that way,” Charles said. “This is just a devastating loss. We really needed this game. I can’t understand how we played the way we played when the game means so much.”
Charles, the starting nose tackle acquired on waviers from Tampa Bay during training camp, is one of the recent defensive additions who have helped the Chargers make their first serious playoff run since 1982. Now he is watching those chances crumble in a losing streak that has the Charger players and coaches fumbling for answers, and hanging on calculations.
“Next week, if we beat Denver,” Charles said, “maybe we can still get in through numbers--the mathematics.”
But few Chargers sounded as if that was much of a possibility, starting with Coach Al Saunders. His initial postgame comments were spoken as if his team would finish the regular season Sunday in Denver playing with little more than respect at stake.
“This was a game we had to win to have an opportunity to play next week for a spot in the playoffs,” Saunders said. “We were unable to win, and that was a disappointment to all of us.
“The important thing is to pick up our depressed feelings, regroup and head into the game against Denver with pride and play the best game possible.” Informed later that despite his gloomly outlook, the Chargers still had a mathematical chance of making the playoff as a wild-card team, Saunders managed a weak smile and quiped: “Must be new math.”
Not quite. But it does get quite involved. The simpliest scenario would take a series of events that rest on the Chargers (8-6) beating the Broncos. Denver (9-4-1), which defeated the Chargers, 31-17, three weeks ago in San Diego, already has clinched at least a wild-card berth.
Houston, Miami and Pittsburgh would then all have to finish 8-7.
That would require Pittsburgh to lose to Cleveland Saturday, Houston to lose to Cincinnati Sunday and Miami would have to lose to New England next Monday night.
As for the Colts (8-6), they can clinch the AFC East title and their first playoff appearance since 1977 by beating Tampa Bay Sunday.
There are other possibilities that would involve ties, but because the Chargers lost to Houston and Pittsburgh in their previous two games, that scenario offered San Diego its best chance of reaching the playoffs.
“Strange things have happened in this league,” defensive end Lee Williams said. “You never know. We can’t play like it’s over.”
But all around the Chargers’ locker room there was a realization that the playoffs--which once seemed just one tempting victory away--were lost in a lethargic game against the Colts, a team the Chargers had beaten, 16-13, six weeks ago at Indianapolis. That victory was the seventh in an eight-game streak that led the Chargers to an 8-1 start, which tied San Francisco and Washington for the best record in the NFL.
Those days seem long ago, as are the sellout crowds at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium that cheered the Chargers through that streak. Sunday’s attendance of 46,211, which did not include 8,396 no-shows, was the smallest home crowd of the season.
“This is a definite heartbreaker,” cornerback Gill Byrd said. “The last three we said, ‘This is a must game; this is a must game.’ But due to what was happening to other teams it really wasn’t. But this one was. The first really must game. And we didn’t rise to the occasion.”
What made this loss so frustrating was that the Chargers had plenty of opportunities to turn the game around. Three times the Colts fumbled, but not once did the Chargers recover, despite having good opportunities each time.
The Chargers did score first, taking the opening kickoff and driving 74 yards in 13 plays for a touchdown. Dan Fouts took it over on a quarterback sneak on fourth and goal from the Indianapolis one-yard line.
Indianapolis tied the score, 7-7, five minutes later when Jack Trudeau, starting at quarterback in place of injured Gary Hogeboom (shoulder), completed a 42-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Bill Brooks. It was the Colts’ first touchdown in five quarters.
Cornerback Elvis Patterson was closest to Brooks, but Saunders said the play was the result of a coverage mistake by strong safety Martin Bayless. Neither Bayless nor Paterson would comment after the game, but Indianapolis Coach Ron Meyer agreed with Saunders.
“A fake to Eric (Dickerson) made the safety bite, and that’s what got Billy free,” he said.
The defense could have quickly made up for the mistake when Trudeau was hit by linebacker Chip Banks and lost the ball. But running back George Wonsley recovered and in the scramble for the ball, defensive end Lee Williams grabbed Wonsley’s facemask. Instead of having the Colts facing fourth and long, the penalty gave the Colts a first down at their 49.
“I was indecisive on whether to cover it or try and pick it up and run with it,” Williams said. “In the meantime, one of their guys was coming. I tried to tackle him to keep him from getting the ball, and grabbed his facemask.”
Nine plays later, Dean Biasucci kicked a 36-yard field goal that gave Indianapolis the lead for good at 10-7 with 3:18 left in the second quarter.
Biasucci added his second field goal of the game and his ninth consecutive with one second to play in the half on a 41-yarder that made the score, 13-7.
The Charger defense still had several more opportunities in the second half, but could never quite come up with the ball.
Williams sacked Trudeau, who fumbled. Defensive end Joe Phillips appeared to fall on the ball, but it squirted away and Colt guard Ben Utt recovered.
The last fumble was reminiscent of how the Chargers beat the Colts six weeks ago. In that game, Dickerson fumbled at the San Diego one-yard line. The Chargers recovered and Vince Abbott ultimately kicked his winning 39-yard field goal.
This time, Dickerson was charging toward the left side when he was hit and fumbled. Byrd had a chance to recover but knocked the ball out of bounds at the San Diego 43 with about six minutes to play and the Colts leading, 13-7.
“I was trying to make something happen,” Byrd said. “I wanted to scoop it up and go. Instead I knocked it around.”
Dickerson, who had been held in check for most of the game, broke loose on the next possession for a 53-yard run that set up the Colts’ second touchdown. Dickerson had been held to 62 yards in 22 carries before that gain. Albert Bentley then rushed three yards for the clinching touchdown with 1:53 to play.
“That pretty much did it,” Charles said. “We held him the whole game, but he got away that one time, and that was all it took.”
But while it was Dickerson’s run that might have sealed the Chargers’ defeat, the road that led them there began four weeks ago with a loss at Seattle.
“We had destiny in our own hands when we were 8-1, and to let it get away from us is very disheartening,” Byrd said. “If it would have been a situation where we won one game, lost two, won two, lost one, if it had been a deal like that throughout the season, there might have been a different attitude after this loss, but to lose five straight is a different story.”
Charger Notes
The five-game losing streak ties the fourth longest in Charger history and a loss to Denver would tie the 1962 team for the third longest streak. The only streaks longer are 11 loses in a row in 1975 and the eight in a row last season. . . . The loss was the first to the Colts since 1976 and ended a five-game winning streak against them.