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Chargers Buried by a Blizzard and the Broncos, 24-0

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<i> Times Staff Writer</i>

No sir, the Chargers’ season couldn’t just end.

It had to be whited out. It had to be brushed over and covered up and left wet and shivering.

Playing in a blizzard the size of whatever has been caught in their throats for six weeks, the Chargers lost to the Denver Broncos, 24-0, Sunday and were officially eliminated from the playoffs.

Actually the loss didn’t close the door to the playoffs--the Chargers’ season was over 10 minutes into this game, when the Houston Oilers had completed their 21-17 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals, thus eliminating San Diego. But for a team whose record just six games ago was the best in all of football, that ending was too simple, too easy.

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On as awful an afternoon as anyone had ever seen at Mile High Stadium, the Chargers were not allowed to just slip off to the exits. They were forced to beg for them.

“And you know what I did when I woke up before the game?” said Charger linebacker Billy Ray Smith, shaking his head. “I looked out my window sang, ‘Sleigh bells ring, are you listening . . .’

“They have a barefoot kicker, a quarterback from California and a misdirection offense. This day was perfect for us.”

Ah, but there are chill factors, and then there are chilling factors.

There were 14 inches of snow on the ground at game time. Three more inches fell on the field during the game. While there were several reported sightings of yard lines and hash marks, none could be confirmed.

The temperature at game time was 20 degrees. By the fourth quarter, the wind-chill factor was minus-23 degrees.

Perfect Charger weather? Check the results.

A Denver touchdown on the game’s first punt return.

A Denver touchdown on an interception return.

San Diego kicker Vince Abbott missed a 26-yard field goal, slipping as he tried. Denver kicker Rich Karlis made a 26-yarder, barefooted .

On one Denver punt that was downed at the Charger four-yard line, Charger punt returner Lionel James never once took his hands out of his pockets.

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Charger quarterback Mark Herrmann, starting in place of the injured Dan Fouts, had four passes intercepted.

Rookie quarterback Mark Vlasic, playing for the first time in his pro career, played for just the final 5:29 but still had time to get sacked once and have a pass intercepted.

The Chargers’ once 8-1 record was reduced and finalized at 8-7. This is one team with a six-game losing streak grateful there are no more games left.

And while under all the snow Sunday they could hide, they could not run. Because of the weather, they were forced to spend Sunday night at the scene of the crime in Denver.

It was, no doubt, a long night. It will, no doubt, be followed by lots of other long nights.

“We were sitting on top of the world, we fell off, and now we’ve finally hit bottom. . . . We’ve landed,” Charger safety Vencie Glenn said. “It will be kind of a long offseason.”

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Before going any further, don’t blame Sunday’s result on the fact that the Chargers may have been playing with the knowledge that they were already out of playoff contention.

Because they say they didn’t know.

“We didn’t know the Houston score until halftime, and we didn’t tell the players,’ Charger Coach Al Saunders said. “It was not a concern of ours. This game was the only concern of ours. And we just got beat by a better team, a playoff team. We are not a playoff team.”

Said defensive end Joe Phillips, “By now, we were beyond worrying about anybody but ourselves.”

The Broncos, meanwhile, won the AFC West title with Seattle’s loss to Kansas City, and used this win to clinch home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

“I wasn’t cold at all, I refused to get cold,” said Denver quarterback John Elway, who was just 7 of 20 for 98 yards but managed big completions of 15, 19 and 22 yards. “I wouldn’t even go near a heater because when you walk away from a heater, you are cold.”

Said Karlis: “I don’t know if I was cold. When my foot thaws out, I’ll tell you.”

Charger spunk finally surfaced with 1:36 left when Rod Bernstine completed a frustrating rookie season by slugging Denver cornerback Mark Haynes and getting thrown out of the game. Asked if it was his best hit of the year, the first-round draft pick found a smile.

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“Probably,” Bernstine said.

For the record, Glenn was the last Charger to leave the field and the 1987 season. He paused in the snowstorm to take off his gloves and run to a sideline fence and hand them to a fan who just happened to ask.

What the heck. He will now have, oh, six months to shake everything off.

“Find something positive in this game, I ask you, find something positive,” Phillips said. “It’s hard to find anything positive in what has happened. I’m amazed. It’s so hurtful.”

Amazing was the adjective of the day. In front of an estimated crowd of 25,000 (estimated 51,000 no-shows) the smallest crowd since the stadium expanded to hold 75,000-plus in 1977, the Chargers departed 1987 in a state of disbelief.

“The final score was 24-0, that was it?” asked tight end Kellen Winslow. “They didn’t score again?”

The problems began at midnight Saturday, when the Chargers’ plane finally landed here after several hours of delays because of snow. They missed all the usual meetings the night before a game.

The problems continued when they arrived at the stadium Sunday and had to figure out how to dress.

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Glenn covered his entire frame with a latex body suit and then, deciding that wasn’t enough, wrapped plastic bags around his feet.

Cornerback Danny Walters wore a turtleneck that covered everything below the eyes.

Defensive end Les Miller wore nearly nothing.

“Just a half-shirt and a jock,” he said. “The way I figure it, cold is mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.”

Four plays into the game, the Chargers punted. Denver’s Kevin Clark took the punt at what appeared in the snow to be the Denver 29-yard line.

No big deal. He ran smack into three Chargers at the same time--David Brandon, Billy Ray Smith and and Karl Wilson.

Except, all at once, the three Chargers slipped and missed the tackle. Clark bounced back, turned right, and headed up the other side of the field.

By now, most of the other Chargers had also slipped. Clark ran into Pete Holohan, but then Holohan grabbed him and lost him and the coast was clear.

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Seventy-one yards for a touchdown, just 1:50 into the game. And that was the game.

“That certainly set the tide,” Saunders said.

A word from the guilty:

“I didn’t wrap him up, I just blew it,” Smith said.

“He slipped off me,” Brandon said.

“It was really weird,” Wilson said.

“I was the one who really should have had him,” Holohan said. “I mean, I had my arms around him. A bad, bad play.”

For the rest of the game, the Chargers looked more like 11 old college buddies playing in the backyard during Christmas vacation.

Near the end of the first period, the Broncos drove 38 yards after a Ralf Mojsiejenko end zone punt for a second touchdown. The drive featured seven plays, seven runs, mostly right up middle.

Despite Abbott’s fifth straight missed field goal, which ended the first half ruining the Chargers’ only good drive of the day (71 yards), they still trailed just 14-0. And they were still down by that score with 9:51 left in the game when Herrmann threw a pass directly into the arms of Bronco linebacker Ricky Hunley. He ran 52 yards untouched and scored just ahead of a Dennis McKnight head-first slide.

“When we get down quick, we have to throw, and by then, they were just laying back for us,” said Herrmann, who was 13 for 23 for 123 yards.

“Same old thing,” Winslow said. “Can’t get into the end zone and missed field goals.”

The one Charger bright spot was that they took a big step toward finding another wide receiver for next season. Rookie Jamie Holland caught 3 passes for 64 yards, including a 27-yard diving catch that he turned into a 32-yard gain by sliding five yards through the snow.

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“Tell you one thing,” Holland said. “It was like playground football, fun football, slipping and sliding and everything.”

By the end of the game, fans here had turned the steep aisles into a toboggan runs, sliding down the snow-covered steps on pieces of plastic.

So that is how this team will be remembered, playing out their season like school children in a December storm, slipping and sliding and everything.

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