Charger Coaches Try to Get Handle on Receiver Woes : Pro football: Dropped passes expose the team’s need for a player to complement Anthony Miller.

OK, so quarterback Billy Joe Tolliver has been a jewel of inconsistency for the Chargers this season. Not even Tolliver will argue that point.

But what about all of Tolliver’s accurate passes that have caromed off his receivers’ hands? There were six Sunday, and the miscues made a large contribution to the Chargers’ damaging 27-10 loss in Kansas City.

Inability to hang onto passes has plagued the Chargers all season, but the defect didn’t become so glaring until last Sunday, when it cost them a chance to climb into second place in the AFC West.

Nate Lewis dropped three passes, Quinn Early two and Anthony Miller one. If those had been caught, the Chargers might be 6-5 instead of 5-6 going into their nationally televised (ESPN) game against the Seattle Seahawks at 5 p.m. Sunday at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Miller is the heart of the Chargers’ passing game. He earned a Pro Bowl trip last season by catching 75 passes, and is on a pace to repeat--44 in 11 games. Considering his credentials, he is entitled to muff one once in a while.

The others present a different story. Their troubles point to the Chargers’ seemingly futile struggle to find a wide receiver to complement Miller. Early has 13 receptions, Walter Lewis six, all but one last Sunday, and Walter Wilson 10, none of them since the first five games.

It might have been different if Wayne Walker hadn’t torn up a knee in training camp. He was Tolliver’s favorite receiver at Texas Tech, and won a starting job a year ago by catching 23 passes when he and Tolliver were NFL rookies.

“Wayne would have been it,” Tolliver said. “He’s even faster than Miller, and he showed last year what he could do.”

Three of the four men directly concerned with conducting the Chargers’ air game--Coach Dan Henning, receivers coach Charlie Joiner and quarterbacks coach Ted Tollner--agree with Tolliver that Walker would have started opposite Miller if he hadn’t been hurt.

The lone dissenter is General Manager Bobby Beathard, who said of Walker: “I don’t know if he would have been the man. He has good speed, but he’s not very consistent catching the ball.”

In all fairness, it should be noted that Beathard is the only one of the four who didn’t see Walker on a regular basis last season. He was working for NBC between jobs in Washington and San Diego.

But with Walker lost for the season, the point is moot, and the problem that he might have avoided has been nagging the Chargers week after week.

Understandably, the Chargers’ decision-makers try their best not to describe their wide-receiver situation as a weakness. They talk about dividing the duty opposite Miller among rookies Lewis and Wilson and the veteran Early. Still, their comments make it clear that things could be better.

* Beathard: “It makes it more difficult, but we think these guys are going to come along. One of these days, they’re going to bust loose, I hope.”

* Henning: “We’re trying to get all three involved. We’re certainly looking for somebody to come to the front, though. We need to catch the ball better, obviously. We’ve had some drops all year. Walker is a good one, and having him hurt was a big loss.”

* Tollner: “We’re trying to work it out among the three. None of them has dominated the scene, so to speak, so we’re using them based on such things as down and distance, what their strengths are and what we need. Miller is the focal point, and we’re trying to take the pressure off him.”

* Joiner: “We want to play all of them because that way, you don’t lose people by having them lose concentration. They all have good points. Early is a solid professional, the kind of guy you like to have on your team. Wilson is quicker, the movement type. Lewis is like Miller, a speed guy with the ability to run with the ball after he catches it. We’re taking those qualities and trying to mold them into a total package.”

What all this boils down to is the Chargers are trying to make the best of an unfavorable situation. One consolation is that things can’t get much worse than they did in Kansas City.

Although Lewis’ five catches looked good on the stat sheet, five out of eight isn’t much of an average for a receiver.

“I felt bad about that,” he said. “One of them would have been a first down, which really hurt the team. One was thrown high, and I took my eyes off the ball for an instant. I thought I had it, but I didn’t.

“Afterward, I told myself to concentrate, and so did Charlie (Joiner). Concentration is the whole answer.”

A few weeks ago, Early appeared to have regained the job he won as a rookie in 1988, with 29 receptions, but lost to Walker last season when he suffered a knee injury. Now he is struggling, and he lost ground against the Chiefs when he dropped the only two passes directed toward him. One was a bomb thrown by Tolliver from the end zone in the closing minutes.

“It was a tough day for me,” he said. “I’ve had an up-and-down season, but it hasn’t gotten to my confidence. I know I can get the job done, and I feel that I should be starting.

“Charlie tells me not to worry about it, just to move on. In college (at Iowa) I was the primary receiver, but here I don’t get that many opportunities, so when I do, I have to make the plays.”

Miller, who by now must be seeing himself double-teamed in his sleep, can only dream of what it must be like to have a serious receiving threat on the other side.

“Everything is focused on me,” Miller said. “If they double me, I might have to work a little harder to get open. If I drop a ball, there’s no time to think about it.”

Miller declined to say how much better off he would be with a partner of comparable ability.

“I don’t want to get into that,” he said. “It’s a ticklish matter.”

Despite having caught 155 passes in less than three pro seasons, Miller isn’t carried away with his own importance.

“I’m not a star,” he said. “Not like Jerry Rice.”

Joiner, however, has no doubt that Miller is headed for greatness.

“Anthony has made constant improvement,” Joiner said. “He’s learning to use his ability to catch balls over the middle. He’s becoming a complete player, not just a deep threat.

“Receivers rarely make it big in their first year. John Jefferson (who teamed with Joiner with the Chargers) was fully mature when he got here. Miller was a raw talent with an awful lot of ability.”

Back on the subject of dropping passes, words of wisdom came from the two most prolific receivers in NFL history, Joiner and the former Seahawk Steve Largent. Joiner set league records of 750 catches and 12,146 yards before Largent topped him with 819 and 13,089 in a career that ended last season. Largent also set a record of 100 touchdowns.

Joiner said, “When a guy drops a pass, I tell him to ease up, not to press. You have to try to stay as loose as you can. If you press, you’ll never get your game together. You’ve got to forget about it and not let it work on your mind.

“It helps if the quarterback goes right back to a guy on the next play. That way, a guy can re-establish confidence in himself.”

Largent was reached at his home in Tulsa, where he looks after several business interests besides doing television and radio work and representing two companies in speaking engagements.

“Sometimes dropping passes can become a mental block,” he said. “You may start losing confidence, and when you lose confidence, things can spiral downhill.

“You have to know you can catch the football. You have to concentrate, and see the ball into your hands. If you’re not catching the football as confidently as you should, you should spend extra time on the practice field. Have people throw passes to you in all different positions. That’s what the practice field is for.

“Confidence is everything. When I practiced, I practiced the way I played,” he said. “I didn’t have to shift gears when I went into a game. That doesn’t mean I knocked people over and got knocked over. I used common sense.”

Largent noted that a quarterback’s confidence in a given receiver is every bit as important as the receiver’s confidence.

“If the quarterback loses confidence in you, you might as well hang it up,” he said.

Largent had the double rap of being too small and too slow. All he could do was get open and catch pass after pass.

“I dropped a few, but I can’t remember one that would have been a touchdown,” he said. “I knew in my own mind that I could catch every ball. This wasn’t necessarily true, but I felt that way.

“Scouts conduct a never-ending quest for the fastest, quickest and tallest receivers they can find. But what good are those qualities if they can’t catch the ball?

“Naturally, you’re going to drop some passes. You may try to pull the ball in too soon, or take your eyes off it, or maybe get intimidated by the defense. I tell the guys, ‘It wasn’t the first one you dropped and it won’t be the last.’ The key is knowing how to deal with it and not letting it be a problem.

“If you drop a pass, though, you don’t want anybody saying anything to you right away. I know I didn’t want anybody to console me,” he said. “I’d just tell myself I could do it the next time.”

Largent caught 28 passes in his final season despite spending six weeks on injured reserve, but was ready for retirement.

“I don’t miss it at all,” he said. “I guess I had reached the saturation point. I enjoyed every season, and I’m happy I was able to go out without an injury that might bother me later in life.”

Besides the rash of dropped passes by receivers last Sunday, the Chargers’ passing game was limited by the inconsistency about which Tolliver’s critics have been moaning. Tolliver overthrew his receivers five times and underthrew them once.

Tollner summed things up by saying, “Combine the drops, the balls not thrown accurately and the pressure by the defense, and they all add up to keeping the offense from functioning.”