Defense’s Play Heartening, but Elsewhere . . . : Analysis: Problems with offense, kicking game leave team with same record it had at this point last season.
The owner, Alex Spanos, is absentee. The head coach, Dan Henning, is stubborn almost to a fault.
The quiescent director of football operations, Steve Ortmayer, is in the last year of his contract. And, if you listen to his critics, he is nothing than a man whose career with the Chargers is about to board the boat that crosses the river Styx.
The veteran quarterback, Jim McMahon, is damaged goods. His spirit is still willing, though. Ask him a question he doesn’t like, and he will blow his nose at you. He’ll show you, boy.
And to think that Ortmayer was distressed enough to complain on a radio show several weeks ago that the children of San Diego have no heroes to worship.
Once the toast of Chicago, McMahon is now sadly the sop of San Diego. He is hanging onto his starting job these days by the width of the earring he now wears. He is in the last year of his contract. But if he doesn’t start making things happen soon, this year’s Punky QB may become next season’s Gypsy QB.
San Diego, a city that stills remembers Dan Fouts, a quarterback who was durable mentally and physically, deserves much better. Better might be rookie Billy Joe Tolliver. But off his miserable first start in Seattle last week, even next year might be too early to expect significant contributions from him.
But hey, other than that the Chargers are in top-top shape at midseason.
They’ve lost four in a row and are no better off (2-6) at the halfway mark then they were last year under Al Saunders at the same point.
Remember Saunders? He’s the guy Spanos dumped after Saunders miraculously coaxed the Chargers to four victories in their last eight games and a 6-10 record.
Saunders was a shameless inter-office politicker, Charger insiders said. He was the root of all evil. A cancer. Cut him out, they said, and the wounds would heal.
Sort of reminds you of World War II when Germany said it would cut off Great Britain like the neck of a chicken. “Some chicken,” Churchill said later when Berlin was in flames. “Some neck.”
It’s not that the Chargers are without hope. Their defense, which allowed 74 points in the first two games has given up just 82 in the past six. The Chargers are the only team in the league that has allowed 20 points or fewer in each game since Week 2. And they have climbed all the way to ninth overall in the league rankings for fewest yards allowed.
Defensive end Leslie O’Neal, the best rookie in football in 1986, is his active self again after taking the better part of two years to recover from a knee injury that almost ended his career.
Outside linebacker Billy Ray Smith is also playing healthy consistently for the first time in recent memory. Rookie defensive end Burt Grossman is learning fast. And all inside linebacker Gary Plummer does is lead the team in tackles every week. Free safety Vencie Glenn is a spiritual leader. Strong safety Martin Bayless is improved. And cornerback Gill Byrd is tied for the league lead in interceptions with five. The Chargers have intercepted 13 passes in their past six games.
It was strange when Spanos publicly criticized the defensive scheme of coordinator Ron Lynn after two weeks. It was even stranger when Lynn’s unit showed dramatic improvement before the echo of Spanos’ verbal thunder had stopped reverberating through Mission Valley.
The biggest defensive concern Spanos, Henning and Ortmayer will face after the season is how to keep Lynn from taking a head coaching job elsewhere when the inevitable post-season NFL firings begin.
The Charger offense ranks 26th in the league, 27th in passing. There is little hope for improvement. The personnel is average. Injuries have taken a ghastly toll. And Gary Anderson, the team’s leading rusher and MVP last year, remains unsigned and home in Tampa, Fla.
“When we talked about this team in training camp, I said we had certain deficiencies, and injuries would magnify them,” Henning said of the Charger offense this week. “That’s exactly what has happened.”
Most damaging were knee injuries to H-back Rod Bernstine and left tackle Joel Patten.
Yet somehow Henning has managed to hold his fragile coalition of marginal talent together through a disheartening four-game losing streak that included defeats of six, one, seven and three points. The current combined record of their opponents in those losses is 21-11.
Like Saunders’ 1988 Chargers, this year’s bunch has refused to quit when it would have been easy to do so. Henning deserves full marks in that area. How well he can continue to sell the work ethic through a season that looks like it will bring no more than six victories will go a long way toward determining how Spanos views the futures of both Henning and Ortmayer.
Ortmayer is the easiest target in town. He is a big, bulky and sometimes threatening-looking man who occasionally reminds you of an oversized Peter Lorre. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. And he is uneasy with a hard-nosed local media corps that perpetuates his unfavorable image on a daily basis.
Much of what Ortmayer gets, he deserves. He has traded poorly. And initially, his drafts were erratic. Worst of all, as far as the dwindling number of Charger fans are concerned, Ortmayer once worked for the hated Raiders.
But Ortmayer is one the league’s best personnel trackers. Between him and aide Chet Franklin, very little intraleague intelligence slips through the cracks. Just ask most NFL player agents.
Ortmayer knew Minnesota running back Darrin Nelson would be unhappy with the ticket to Dallas he got in the recent trade that sent Herschel Walker from the Cowboys to Minnesota. Ortmayer also knew he could make Nelson happy by bringing him to San Diego.
Phoenix, a team that needed Nelson twice as bad as the Chargers, later confessed it never realized he was available. Ortmayer knew. And, to his credit, he didn’t waste any time moving on the deal.
Ortmayer made a bad trade on draft day 1987 when he acquired linebacker Chip Banks from Cleveland. But he and Spanos wisely cut their losses last month when they shipped Banks to the Colts. Forget the fact that Banks got a game ball after his first Sunday in an Indianapolis uniform. He is an undisciplined player who didn’t fit Lynn’s scheme. And he has a horrific history of drug abuse and arrests.
“We’re making strides,” Henning says. “But they’re not coming fast enough, and they’re not coming often enough. I don’t think there’s a magic wand to turn anything around.”
The offense and the special teams are the problem. But once again, Henning, Lynn and the defensive players all deserve credit for not turning on the less-productive members of the organization. If there is bitterness on the part of the defense toward the offense’s pathetic lack of production, it has not surfaced publicly yet.
“Each one of us has to find a way to play better,” Plummer says.
Being more specific, Lynn says, “we have to tackle better, we have to be more effective on third downs, and we have to create more fumbles.” The Chargers have allowed the most third-down conversions in the AFC. Only three teams in the league have recovered fewer fumbles.
Ordinarily, this is the time of year failing franchises begin looking to the next draft in hopes of finding what the scouts like to call a “franchise” player.
The news for the Chargers on that front is not good either. The only teams with worse records than the Chargers are Dallas (0-8), Detroit (1-7) and the Jets (1-7). Atlanta, like the Chargers, is 2-6. Dallas forfeited its No. 1 pick last summer when it selected Miami Hurricane quarterback Steve Walsh in the supplemental draft.
That part is good. Barring a miracle turnaround, the Chargers figure to get one of the top five picks in the next draft. With the help of a complete collapse, they could even pick first.
Unfortunately for them, the 1990 draft talent pool is one of the weakest in years.
Most experts rate Penn State running back Blair Thomas as the only “blue chip” prospect available. And even Thomas has a history of knee trouble that includes reconstructive surgery.
West Virginia quarterback Major Harris, Florida running back Emmitt Smith and Tennessee running back Reggie Cobb all have one more year of college eligibility after this season. But all have indicated they may leave school and join the NFL in 1990. None of those three, however, is an automatic first pick in the first round. None is rated as a “franchise” player.
“It’s the worst year to be drafting up high,” says Joel Buchsbaum, the Pro Football Weekly draft expert.
So it is hard to know what the “prudent” thing to do is for the Chargers. Winning the rest of their games is the solution. But that is not realistic.
“Prudent” is one of Henning’s favorite adjectives. He explains many of his decisions by saying this would not be the “prudent” thing to do; or we thought that was the “prudent” thing to do.
Nothing wrong with prudence. It’s just that it’s a word you might expect to hear more often from a Supreme Court justice than an NFL football coach.
Vince Lombardi, Mike Ditka and Don Shula all won a lot of games. They were smart and tough. Henning appears smart, and his players say he can be tough.
But how often can you remember Lombardi or Ditka or Shula using the word “prudent” to explain a decision?
Prudence doesn’t necessarily translate into winning in the physical world of the NFL. There are other adjectives that commonly describe successful franchises.
The Chargers need to find out what they are.
Charger Notes
Charger Coach Dan Henning said Thursday he hopes running back Darrin Nelson will be able to play Sunday against the Eagles at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. But Nelson has a sore leg and was only able to jog in practice. If Nelson, Rod Bernstine (knee) and Dana Brinson (shoulder) can’t play, Henning will be forced to use 6-foot-2, 277-pound tight end Arthur Cox as his third receiver on passing downs. Third receivers are generally smaller and quicker. Bernstine visited the doctor again Thursday but was still questionable on the injury report. “I’d say he’s out,” Henning said.
