Charger Loss Not Suitable for Squeamish : Football: They have their chance to upset the Bengals, but it’s all the same in the end: Cincinnati wins, 21-16.

It’s grisly grist for Geraldo.

Cue the music, and go heavy with the dramatic introduction: “A week-after-week macabre tale of self-humiliation and self-destruction that cries out for explanation.”

That’s right--Charger football.

It’s stimulating, it’s exasperating, it’s provocative. It’s also all too predictable.

Final score at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium before 48,098 Sunday: Cincinnati Bengals 21, Chargers 16.

And for those loyal funeral watchers, that’s 14 consecutive games that have been decided by seven or fewer points--10 of which have ended in familiar defeat.

“It’s like reaching for that stick so you don’t fall off the cliff, and then someone moves the stick away from you,” safety Vencie Glenn said.

A week ago, the Chargers squandered a 14-10 fourth-quarter lead and fell to Dallas, 17-10. Sunday they went up, 16-7, and held on, 16-14, before going belly-up down the stretch.

“It’s like a boxer going into the 15th round and then getting knocked out,” cornerback Gill Byrd said. “Every time. I mean every time.”

The Bengals (2-0), who were known not so long ago as a bungling fourth-quarter outfit in their own right, used Boomer Esiason touchdown passes of 10 yards to James Brooks and 30 and 23 yards to Eddie Brown to stage the come-from-behind victory.

“That’s a good football team. I think they’re going to win; I think they’re going to win a bunch of games,” Cincinnati Coach Sam Wyche said of the Chargers. “This was one of those games where we were gonna find out if we could win.

“We were playing against one of the best defenses. It was a game of big plays, and Eddie Brown is a name that jumps out at you when you think of big plays.”

Brown caught 10 passes for 178 yards, including his disputed 23-yard touchdown reception on third and 20 with 12:08 to play. Brown had slipped past cornerback Donald Frank and appeared to have pushed off the rookie just before falling backward to catch the winning touchdown.

“They called interference on us,” Coach Dan Henning said. “Some of our players came off saying it was the other way around, but that’s the way it goes.”

That’s the way it has been going, all right, for the woebegone Chargers. They were ahead, 13-0, and on the move to the Bengal 25 when their prize receiver, Anthony Miller, fumbled the ball away.

They were up, 16-14, with a chance to end the half with a 44-yard field goal, but then Fuad Reveiz stubbed his toe wide left.

The gods be damned, the Chargers are still ahead, 16-14, had the ball at the Cincinnati eight in the closing moments of the third quarter, and Billy Joe Tolliver threw an interception.

Yikes. Anything but an interception, and Reveiz gets another chance to add three points. But no. Tolliver aimed for Arthur Cox--there aren’t many football players bigger than Arthur Cox--but instead found Bengal cornerback Lewis Billups.

“You’ve got to learn to step on people’s throats when you have them down,” said Tolliver, who was 20 for 38 for 284 yards, including touchdown passes to Ronnie Harmon and Joe Caravello. “You can’t have the turnovers.

“It was a bad throw to Arthur; I didn’t give him a chance to come out of his route. I didn’t give him any opportunity to catch the football. When you do something stupid like that, the coaches loose confidence in the play, and that was a good play.”

After falling behind, 21-16, the Chargers had three more drives for victory in the fourth quarter. The first ended on a dropped pass by Harmon, the second on a two-yard-pass play to Harmon on third and three and the last on Miller’s second fumble at the Charger 49.

“I got hit from behind, and the ball popped loose,” said Miller, who recorded his sixth-career 100-yard game with 137 yards on nine receptions. “Billy Joe is taking the blame because he threw an interception. I might have lost it, because I fumbled twice.”

Let’s not argue, guys.

“It’s my fault,” chimed in Byrd. “I was playing soft out there. I was just flopping around the field like I was in another world.”

Byrd had assignment coverage on Esiason’s 10-yard touchdown pass to Brooks but was nowhere to be seen. He had tight coverage on Brown on Esiason’s 30-yard pass down the middle but was still a fingernail short of flicking the ball away and preventing the touchdown.

“I should have made that play on the ball to Brown; it cost us,” said Byrd, who has been troubled by illness in the family this weekend. “Brooks was my man, too. We went over that adjustment during the week, and mentally, I wasn’t into it.

“I didn’t come over and guard him, and he was wide open in the end zone. I was directly responsible for all 14 points in the first half. I feel like I let everybody down today.”

But the offense deserved strong consideration for let-down honors. For the second consecutive week, it failed to score a second-half point.

As they did a week ago against Dallas, the offense went to the attack in the first half and produced a pair of touchdowns. On their first offensive series, Tolliver fired a dart in the flat to Harmon, and the Plan B acquisition left a trail of fallen Bengals on his way to a 36-yard touchdown.

After the first of three interceptions of Esiason passes, Tolliver went 17 yards to fourth-year H-back Joe Caravello for Caravello’s first NFL touchdown and a 13-0 lead.

But on the extra-point try, defensive lineman George Hinkle was penalized for illegal use of the hands to the face of Barney Bussey. Reveiz was pushed 15 yards back, and his second attempt was blocked by James Francis.

Reveiz’s 19-yard field goal in the second quarter nudged the Chargers ahead, 16-7, but what might have been?

The Chargers had a first and goal from the Bengal seven, then advanced to the six on Marion Butts’ one-yard gain. Butts, who finished with 103 yards on 18 rushes, gained four more yards, prompting a third and goal from the two.

“We were trying to get something quick out into the flat, and he was covered,” Tolliver said. “The films may show that Miller came open then in the back of the end zone, but I made the decision to go to Walter Wilson.”

Tolliver threw a fastball down and away to the double-covered rookie, and it bounced to the turf incomplete.

“You just got to score when you’re in that situation,” Tolliver said. “We have to grow up now and be accountable. We have to learn to win these type of games.”

Amen.