Chargers’ Strategy as Simple as 1-2-3
After a bye week of meetings and practice, Coach Dan Henning has revealed the strategy the Chargers will employ to make the playoffs.
“We’re going to try and win three games,” he said. “That’s going to be our approach. . . . That means you have to win the first one, then you have to win the second one, and then you have to win the third one.”
Autographed copies of Henning’s, “Taking One Game At A Time” will be available on the Home Shopping Channel in time for Christmas.
If the Chargers win their final three games and Buffalo, Miami, Houston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Seattle and Los Angeles are overcome by famine, pestilence and the plague, San Diego still might need a tiebreaking edge over Indianapolis for a final wild card berth.
Now you understand why the Chargers distributed 1991 calendars to fans as they entered San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium last Sunday: Wait until next year.
What went wrong? Every other team in the American Football Conference has been to the playoffs since the Chargers last went in 1982, but the fifth-place schedule, a sixth-ranked defense and the arrival of General Manager Bobby Beathard were supposed to end that streak.
“I don’t think this team as a collective group would accept anything less than the playoffs,” Henning said this year when training camp opened. “Our objective is to win the division and have the home-field advantage in the playoffs. . . . If we can avoid catastrophe, we can be in that 12 (teams that make the playoffs).”
Now had there been no catastrophic call for a fake punt against Dallas and had Arthur Cox not done a bellyflop against Seattle. . . .
“No matter what happens people will be looking back at those two games,” Beathard said. “There’s a big swing there between being 8-5 and 6-7, but we didn’t win them, so I can’t say we’re an 8-5 team. Teams that are 8-5 don’t do those things.”
Think about it: Had someone told you in July that Marion Butts would lead the league in rushing, and the Chargers’ offensive line would be second in the NFL in fewest sacks surrendered at this time, would you have made for a January trip to Tampa for Super Bowl XXV?
Think about it: The Chargers’ defense is ranked sixth, just as it was a year ago, but the offense is ranked 12th, as opposed to 21st last season. The special teams have improved dramatically, and for the first time in a decade, the Chargers won a game in Seattle.
But here they sit, out of the race at 6-7.
Should they win their final three games of the season, it would be the first time since 1978 they have done so. The 1990 Chargers have gone 6-7 against teams with a combined record of 61-74. To go 3-0 down the stretch, they will have to beat teams with a combined mark of 19-17.
Three victories in 1978 gave the Chargers a 9-7 mark. It was the first time in nine years that the team had finished with a winning record, and then they went on to win the AFC West Division title the next three years.
If history’s to repeat . . .
“It’s very important to finish strong and play well going into next year,” Beathard said. “I think early in the season, the players and everybody was thinking what are we? Are we ever going to pull together? What’s this season going to be like?
“Once they finally did pull together, I think they were looking at things differently. I know I did. Those negatives quit coming to mind. Those first four or five weeks, you were thinking, ‘How are we going to screw up this one?’ But now I think there’s a feeling that the glass is half full and not half empty.”
The Chargers have gone 5-3 since losing in a blowout at Pittsburgh, and are 6-6 since Billy Joe Tolliver took over as starting quarterback after Mark Vlasic took control in the opener.
Five of Beathard’s draft choices are now in the starting lineup, and the free agent additions of Henry Rolling, John Carney, Ronnie Harmon and John Kidd have paid dividends. James FitzPatrick, Elvis Patterson and Jim McMahon are distant memories.
“There were a lot of things that we had to change going into this year,” Beathard said, “but I don’t think there will be wholesale changes again.”
The ever-changing Chargers have added 24 new players to the roster in 1990. They have three players remaining who are older than 30. Given the turnover rate, a 29-year-old Billy Ray Smith, who has been with the team eight years, appears ancient.
“I wasn’t here in 1986 and 1987, but when I look back at it now and see some of the things that happened here, this was a disaster,” Henning said. “This was simply and unequivocally a disaster. There was an ownership change and it was a team that had stars that were stayed with too long. The rebuilding job here was tremendous.
“I don’t think enough has been brought out: I think Steve Ortmayer did a helluva job here. I really do.”
The Chargers, however, remain back in the pack. Despite the addition of a third wild-card teams, the Chargers already have taken themselves out of the playoffs.
They are 6-7 with a second-year quarterback who is booed every time he plays at home. And on Billy Joe Tolliver hinge the Chargers’ plans for the future.
“I don’t understand it really; I don’t understand the perception of people of what our quarterback should be accomplishing at this point,” Henning said. “Troy Aikman was supposed to be the world beater, and he’s basically playing with the same type of team Tolliver is and Tolliver has numbers that are equivalent or better.
“People think this guy should be perfect. I’ve never seen anything but the words inconsistent and this, that and the other thing used with him. But the game the other day (against the Jets), there isn’t a quarterback in the league that wouldn’t take that week in and week out.”
Tolliver, who completed 14 of 27 passes for 220 yards with two touchdowns and interception against the Jets, has 14 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. He’s been Henning’s quarterback ever since Henning met him at Texas Tech.
Vlasic is 2-1 as an NFL starter but probably won’t be protected under Plan B free agency at season’s end. Rookie John Friesz has caught the fancy of both the front office and the coaching staff, but it’s unlikely he will draw any playing time this season.
“If you show me somebody better than Tolliver . . .” Henning said. “You know what this franchise would have to go through to (develop) someone like John Friesz (as) we did with Tolliver?
“Friesz has got potential, but if you tell me Tolliver isn’t going to be the quarterback here that’s going to win, then I would have to say it’s going to come from outside right now. There is no room in this world for grooming two young quarterbacks. I’ve been down that road before, and it doesn’t work.”
In addition to grooming a quarterback, there will be the continuing development of wide receivers Nate Lewis and Walter Wilson, tackle Leo Goeas, center Frank Cornish, linebacker Junior Seau, tight end Derrick Walker and defensive backs Donald Frank and Anthony Shelton. The Chargers have built a foundation on youth, and for now it’s as strong as the potential they promise.
“We’re closing the gap,” Henning said. “When you take the stance with the young people that we have, it takes time. I think we’ve developed a personality and formula in what it’s going to take for us to get it done.”
Just wait until next year.
