CHARGER REVIEW: NOTEBOOK / T.J. SIMERS : How Do You Spell Postseason? I-D-L-E

News flash: It’s official. Cancel those airplane reservations to Tampa; the Chargers have been eliminated from the playoffs.

Buffalo, Miami, Houston, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and the Raiders all have the necessary victories and tiebreakers to assure themselves of a playoff berth over the Chargers (6-8).

You watch Ronnie Harmon, and you can’t figure out why anyone wanted to run him out of Buffalo.

You put the football in his hands, and you wonder why they don’t do it more often.

In the team’s two previous games, he had two receptions, but Sunday against the Broncos in the Chargers’ 20-10 defeat, he had eight receptions for a career-high 116 yards.

Denver safety Dennis Smith is still looking for Harmon after Harmon put a move on him to run free for 30 yards in the first quarter.

“I got lucky,” Harmon said. “That’s something you don’t plan.”

The Chargers went to Harmon seven times on third down and on five occasions he gained the necessary yardage for a first down. Once, however, the play was wiped out because of penalty.

“It doesn’t matter how I did; it has no effect because we didn’t win,” Harmon said. “We didn’t play well at all; the team didn’t win. I didn’t do enough to help the team.”

Did this past week’s distractions, which included Joe Phillips’ salary dispute and Leslie O’Neal’s comments, have an effect on Sunday’s outcome?

“I went into this game feeling that if we didn’t come out with a win then everybody would throw the blame on me,” O’Neal said. “So, hey, I’ll take it. I still feel the way I do, and I went out and tried to play my best to make up for that.

“I don’t think it did (have any effect). We’re all men, we went out there and played, but I don’t know what’s in everybody’s mind.”

Said Gill Byrd: “I don’t think what happened this week had an effect on us. You don’t take that on the field. You’re playing football, you’re carrying out your assignment, you got a guy in front of you that wants to play smash-mouth with you, you don’t have time to worry about any other thing.”

Tampa Bay running back Gary Anderson went over the 1,000-yard mark Sunday, thereby earning the Chargers a second-round pick in the 1991 NFL draft.

The Chargers would have received a third-round pick, in addition to the third they received last year, had Anderson not reached the 1,000-yard mark.

The Chargers took linebacker Jeff Mills with last year’s third pick. Mills, who was suspended recently for missing a meeting and practice, remains on injured reserve.

Coach Dan Henning declined to be expansive during a series of questions in his postgame press conference.

“Could you talk about the instant replays?”

“No,” Henning said. “I’m not going to talk on that at all.”

“Mathematically, are your playoff hopes over?”

“I’m not going to talk about that either,” Henning said.

“What do you do next week?”

“We play at Kansas City next week,” Henning said, although the schedule indicates the game will be played in San Diego.

“What do you do differently?”

“We attempt to make those plays we didn’t make today,” Henning said.

“Could you talk about (Derrick) Walker’s fumble earlier in the game?”

“I don’t think there’s anything to talk about,” Henning said.

“Was that the biggest play in the game?”

“Hell no,” Henning said. “Do you think it was?”

“I have no idea,” replied the interviewer in Henning fashion.

Good to the last play? It took two hours to play the first three quarters, and 1:09 to play the fourth quarter.

Put on a smiley face and get ready for the Chiefs and the Raiders.

“I think it puts us in a good position,” Henning said after losing to Denver. “You have a chance to test your mettle against the best two teams in the division. The game is played week in and week out regardless of the circumstances as it should be played all the time--as hard as you can and for a win on that day. It will be a good test for us to continue to find out what kind of football we have so we can structure it for the betterment for now and in the future.”

Officials on the field were ordered to stop play six times for the benefit of instant replay. Two of the on-field calls were reversed. One favored the Chargers and gave them a first down; another wiped out Billy Joe Tolliver’s lateral to Derrick Walker.

Replay indicated that Tolliver’s lateral was an illegal pass.

Marion Butts is now the Chargers’ all-time single-season rushing leader after passing Earnest Jackson.

Jackson gained 1,179 yards in 1984, and Butts has 1,225 yards through 14 games.

Butts had 71 yards on 22 rushes, but 63 of those yards came in the first half before the Chargers fell behind, 14-3.

“When they got behind, Butts was out of the game plan because he isn’t a pass blocker or receiver,” Denver linebacker Karl Mecklenburg said. “So we accomplished our goal of taking him out of the game.”