Friesz Says Chargers ‘Just Ran Out of Time’

The education of John Friesz continues--slowly and with frustration. But progress is being reported.

Playing his first full season, the Chargers’ quarterback now is 0-3, but he put the Chargers in a position to send Sunday’s game into overtime, leading a late drive that came up short when the Chargers missed a last-second field-goal try and lost to the Atlanta Falcons, 13-10. He also threw a 15-yard scoring pass to Anthony Miller in the second quarter for the Chargers’ only touchdown.

“We didn’t execute the simple passing game well in the first half. John was off on a few passes,” Chargers Coach Dan Henning said, who added, “he played pretty good today, he made some plays, he did what we asked him to do. He played better than he has . . . he moved us into position. (The missed field goal) is not his fault.”

On the final drive, the Chargers took over on their 40-yard-line with 2:17 to play. Friesz started the drive with an eight-yard pass to Craig McEwen. He followed a 10-yard run by Ronnie Harmon with a nine-yard pass to Shawn Jefferson, putting the Chargers within field-goal range with 1:09 left.

The next three plays leading up to John Carney’s 36-yard field-goal attempt were conservative calls meant to maintain field position--much to the fans’ displeasure. Henning said under the circumstances he’d have done the same even with an experienced quarterback.

“We expect to kick that field goal to tie it,” Henning said. “Take a shot at the end zone? I don’t think so. You’ve got to go for field-goal position, to tie. We knew they were gonna blitz. I didn’t want to put John in that position (to lose yardage).”

Friesz said though he was tempted to try for the end zone, “I feel good I didn’t force the ball like I did last week against the 49ers. There were some plays I thought about it (but) I have learned a valuable lesson. The Falcons were playing a pretty conservative zone defense and took away the big play. I just really wasn’t about to throw down field.”

Friesz said the two-minute offense “is something I’ve always felt I’ve done good. We didn’t draw a situation where we had a realistic chance of the big play. So we just moved the chains, we got down there but we ran out of time.”

Friesz’s favorite target, Miller, missed the final drive because of a strained hamstring. In addition, there was some confusion among the receivers in the final minutes.

“It was too unorganized,” Friesz calmly admitted. “I wanted to get close enough to take a couple shots at the end zone but we ran out of time. We screwed up a couple plays. It’ll be better next time.”

Friesz finished with 136 yards passing, hitting 13 of 22 attempts--his longest a 36-yarder to Harmon that set up a field-goal attempt at the start of the fourth quarter. He has thrown for 507 yards, four touchdowns and four interceptions in the three games this season, connecting on 48% of his passes.

“You don’t come of age as a rookie quarterback,” Henning said. “It’s a long, hard process.”