Henning Takes Swipes at Chiefs And Officiating

Here’s the list.

What Charger Coach Dan Henning didn’t like about Sunday’s 27-10 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs:

1. The Chargers.

2. The Chiefs. Specifically linebacker Derrick Thomas.

3. The officiating.

Here’s why:

The Chargers (5-6) didn’t look good. They had won four of five games and arrived in Kansas City chock full of optimism, but they dropped at least six passes, gave up big plays (most notably the 90-yard touchdown pass from Steve DeBerg to receiver J.J. Birden), turned the ball over five times and generally took a step backward from the previous week’s victory over the defending AFC champion Denver Broncos.

The Chiefs (6-4) outplayed the Chargers. And Henning acknowledges as much, saying the Chargers turned in a good effort but simply weren’t good enough to come from behind.

But Henning also was critical of both the Chiefs, who he said took their share of cheap shots, and the referees, who he thought threw too many yellow flags in the direction of his team.

“I was disappointed in Derrick Thomas,” Henning said. “There was one (play) on the first drive of the game when he was cleanly blocked, and he got up and punched Arthur Cox. I think he got a little frustrated because he wasn’t up to where he had been the week before, and we made plans to make sure he wouldn’t be there . . . Based on what happened in the film, he should have been thrown out for that. It was clearly a flagrant foul. It wasn’t seen, but then they see some and they don’t see some.”

It should be pointed out that one they did see was on Cox, who was assessed a 15-yard penalty for kicking a Kansas City defender. Henning said Cox’s kick wasn’t nearly as flagrant as Thomas’ punch.

Anyway, on the Chargers’ only touchdown Sunday, tight end Derrick Walker caught a two-yard pass from Billy Joe Tolliver in the middle of the end zone and was hit by Kansas City linebacker Percy Snow. Walker gave him a quick shove in retaliation and spiked the ball. Walker was then penalized 15 yards for “intimidation.”

“The call on Derrick Walker was ludicrous,” Henning said. “The fact of the matter is that after Derrick caught the football he was nailed in the throat, and he stepped back and threw the ball down as is his prerogative to spike it in the end zone. And the officials saw it kind of backwards, I think. That’s typical of what happened in the game. When you look at it on the film it’s ludicrous. If there’s a penalty there, it should have been 15 yards the other way.”

Henning also was perplexed by two plays in which the officials ruled there were offsetting penalties for offsides and illegal motion.

“They make bad judgments, they make good judgments,” Henning said. “Obviously my opinion is that there were some bad judgments made in this game. Certainly, I have never heard of illegal motion and offsides on the same play twice in the same game. I’ve never heard of it once before but twice seemed to me to be kind of unusual.”

By criticizing the officials, Henning flirted with a violation of league rules that was reinforced three weeks ago by NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. In response to what Tagliabue considered an inordinate number of negative comments by NFL coaches regarding officiating, he issued a statement that said criticism in the future was to be directed to the league office on a “private, non-public basis.” Violators, he stated, would be subject to appropriate disciplinary action.

Asked if he sought an explanation from the league, Henning responded: “I don’t have time to seek explanations for everything that happens in the game by the officials that I don’t like.”

Henning did seek an explanation on Walker’s penalty from the sideline. The result?

“I’d rather not discuss that,” he said. “Suffice it to say it was inadequate in my opinion. The call was ludicrous; the explanation was inadequate.”

The play of his team was inadequate, too. The playoffs didn’t seem so unreal after the victory over Denver. Now a trip to the playoffs doesn’t look much more feasible than a trip to the moon. Losing has a way of squashing momentum.

“It takes away some of the optimism just because of the odds facing us,” punter John Kidd said. “Losing (Sunday’s) game puts us in a huge hole. We basically have to win the rest of our games, which isn’t easy.”

Ahead for the Chargers are home games against Seattle and the New York Jets, a bye, the Broncos in Denver, the Chiefs at home and a finale against the Raiders in Los Angeles. The Chargers have beaten Seattle, the Jets and the Broncos and lost to the Chiefs and the Raiders.

If the position they’re in is unenviable, it isn’t as if they aren’t used to it. This team lost four of its first five and five of its first seven and fielded the criticism that accompanies such a start.

“I think we were optimistic when we were 1-4 and everybody was off the bandwagon and talking about how it was going to be a horrible team,” cornerback Gill Byrd said. “We couldn’t get any lower and we fought back. And we’re still in the running.”