Steady, but Slow Progress : Pro football: Tolliver is improving, but it’s too early to tell if he will be a talent to be reckoned with in the 1990s.

Billy Joe Tolliver looked at the photograph.

There he was, captured in still life, hamming it up with Charger teammate David Richards in the locker room. Great. Just once he’d like a shot of himself throwing a touchdown pass.

“Oh, gee thanks Sam,” he said to Charger photographer Sam Stone. “Don’t you have any better pictures? You’re always taking pictures of me getting sacked. Why don’t you get me one action photo? I’ve got 13 pictures and they’re all sacks.”

It was pointed out to Tolliver that maybe he should put a few of those photos on his wall at home to remind himself of the path a young quarterback takes on the way up the ladder.

“I know where I’ve been,” Tolliver said. “I just wish I knew where I was going.”

That’s a tough one. Things may be going well for the Chargers, who have won four of five games, including a victory over the defending AFC champion Denver Broncos, 19-7, Sunday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. But it’s hard for Tolliver or anyone else to say whether he will be the Dan Fouts of the 1990s or another in a long line of guys who have auditioned at quarterback and been sent home without the part.

Sunday there were boos every time one of Tolliver’s throws sailed passed a receiver. In the second quarter he missed an open Gary Plummer on a short pattern at the goal line and an open Nate Lewis on a streak down the sideline.

So he heard about it. Booooooo. And one time, after hearing those boos, he threw a 28-yard strike to Craig McEwen on third and 27. That set up a field goal at the end of the first half.

Quarterbacks simply have to learn to accept the crowd’s impatience and move on.

“There are a lot of uneducated fans,” Tolliver said. “Not their formal education. I’m talking about their football education. They don’t have any clue when a ball is thrown away. Any time the ball goes over our receiver’s head everyone in this whole city immediately assumes I’ve overthrown the guy. That’s not always the case.

“We’re trying not to turn the ball over and trying not to take sacks. If that means throwing the ball away before I might have a fraction of a second to find a fourth guy, then we’re going to throw it away.”

Tolliver says he doesn’t pay attention to the boos. He doesn’t think other players do either.

“You can’t control anything that (the fans) do other than by your play,” he said. “I just believe that I make the decisions out there, and I don’t second-guess those decisions until it’s Monday and we’re looking at the film. I don’t want to force anything and get an interception, and I don’t want to take a sack so we have to take a longer field goal. So I throw it away. If the fans can’t accept that, there’s nothing I can do about it because that’s smart football. And that’s how you win games.”

It worked Sunday. Tolliver completed a less-than-spectacular 16 of 27 passes for 172 yards, but he didn’t throw an interception. He hasn’t in the past 121 attempts.

Tolliver has completed only 49.8% of his passes in 245 attempts this season. That’s OK with his coaches. They aren’t asking him to destroy the other team just as long as he doesn’t destroy his own team.

The design is to stay out of trouble. That means he won’t be called on to do some of the things that make Denver quarterback John Elway look so spectacular. Of course, it helps prevent him from throwing interceptions in the end zone such as the one Elway threw Sunday that did in the Broncos.

Whether Tolliver will someday be able to do the things Elway does and have the same impact that Fouts did will be determined in weeks and seasons to come.

“We believe that he can do that,” quarterback coach Ted Tollner said. “But nobody gets that kind of credibility and respect until you prove it over time.”

Just ask Elway. His early days in Denver were filled with high expectations, incomplete passes and, yes, even boos. Tolliver got to know Elway during the off-season this past year. He calls Elway every once in a while to ask him for advice.

Sunday he watched as Elway and his team unraveled. “It just goes to show you that nobody’s perfect,” Tolliver said.

So maybe it was his turn to give Elway a little advice?

“There’s nothing I can tell him that he doesn’t already know,” Tolliver said. “And besides that, I’m probably not the first guy he’d call to find out.”

But watching the Broncos struggle and having been a part of the Chargers’ struggle makes it easier for Tolliver to put this winning streak in perspective. The Chargers are hot, but they aren’t exactly the San Francisco 49ers.

“We’ve had some big wins, but I can’t see where you can get excited about being five and five,” Tolliver said. “Sure we’re a half a game out of second place and a game and a half out of first. But we’re also one game out of last.”