CHARGER REVIEW : NOTEBOOK / T.J. SIMERS : Rolling Charges Raiders With Holding
The way linebacker Henry Rolling viewed Sunday’s game with the Raiders, the Chargers were outmanned.
“Instead of 11 out there for the Raiders, how many refs are out there?” said Rolling. “So it’s maybe 16 or 17 against 11. With two teams out there, I think calls have to go both ways.
“There are two teams out there, and I think our offense got called for four or five holding penalties. And the Raiders didn’t get called for one.”
On running back Bo Jackson’s five-yard touchdown to the left in the second quarter, an angry Burt Grossman protested to the officials that he was held on the play.
“Burt gets held and dragged down,” Rolling said. “If the ref is looking at the line of scrimmage, there’s no way he could miss the call. But he misses the call.
“I’m expecting that play to come back to me. Burt’s supposed to force it inside, but he gets held, so Bo gets around the outside.”
Jackson ran 12 times for 53 yards and scored two touchdowns, but Rolling was unimpressed.
“He’s fast, but I think he’s just like any other back,” Rolling said. “If it was a one-on-one confrontation between me and him head-up, I think I’m gonna win that battle almost a 100% of the time.”
The hometown gladiators appear to have nowhere to go but home come Christmas, but how about a trip to Hawaii and the Pro Bowl for Mr. Marion Butts?
The NFL’s quick update of statistics Sunday night placed the Charger sophomore running back as the league’s leading rusher with 581 yards in 121 attempts.
Butts is averaging 4.8 yards a carry, and has scored three touchdowns this season.
League stats also indicate that Billy Joe Tolliver is ranked 13th in AFC passing stats, ahead of Marc Wilson, who remains 0-8 as starting quarterback for the New England Patriots.
The good news was that it was announced that John Kidd’s punt for the Chargers in the second quarter of Sunday’s game traveled nine yards.
The bad news came a moment later when the public address announcer corrected himself and said the punt actually went eight yards.
“I wish I knew what happened,” Kidd said. “It’s kind of like hitting a home run off a guy, and then you get up and face him again and he throws the exact same pitch and you whiff on it.”
Kidd’s first punt of the day went 46 yards and his third for 59 yards.
Maybe the sun got in his eyes.
“I think I did have a punt that went seven yards while playing in Buffalo,” Kidd said, “but that was into a 16-m.p.h. wind. These conditions were ideal today.”
What’s this world coming to? The Raiders played 60 minutes of football and were penalized twice.
The Raiders’ first infraction was for delay of the game. The second for illegal procedure, and the next thing you know the boys in silver and black will take to curtsying after making a tackle.
Toward the end of the second quarter, flags flew, but it didn’t stop Charger safety Martin Bayless from throwing quarterback Jay Schroeder to the turf.
“Did they not hike the ball?” said Bayless. “So what was wrong?”
The officials had blown the play dead, but Bayless was coming on the blitz and hit Schroeder, thereby drawing a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
“I just thought it was a . . . call,” Bayless said. “The guy was backpedaling and trying to get away from me. They snapped the ball, do you think I’m going to stop and let one of those 280-pound guards knock me out of the way? It was a bad call. Whoever the referee was, you can tell him that, too.”
The Chargers informed the league before the season that they would be wearing their blue jerseys against the Raiders Sunday. But they had the option to change their mind last week and wear white so long as the Raiders agreed.
That was fine for the Raiders, of course, who are bigger and stronger in their black jerseys.
The Chargers wanted to make the change because they were 0-2 in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium in blue, and had walloped the Jets last week wearing white.
Well, now they are 0-3 at home. It’s the first time since 1975 that they have opened the season by dropping their first three home games.
John Carney is now six-for-six in field goal attempts, including a two-for-two mark when hitting the upright.
After Sunday’s defeat, a persistent TV reporter pressed Coach Dan Henning about the predictability of the Charger offense.
“Well, that’s your opinion, and if that’s what you think, then take it with you,” Henning said. “I think we do have imagination. I think when you run the ball for about 50 yards more than the average they are giving up, and we’re dealing with the youth we have and trying to make things happen, imagination is in the eye of the beholder. And obviously maybe your imagination is not that good.
“I think our offensive game plan was pretty good, and they’re a good defense.”