Chargers Cover Same Old Ground : Football: With emphasis on the rush, they defeat Patriots, 20-10, behind running of Butts.

The Chargers didn’t need another quarterback; they simply had to hand the ball to Marion Butts.

Butts punished the Patriots by running the ball on nine of the Chargers’ first 10 plays, including a one-yard touchdown dive, and carried his team to a 20-10 exhibition victory in front of 18,626 fans in Foxboro Stadium.

The victory, the first for Coach Bobby Ross, evened the Chargers’ exhibition record at 1-1 after a 35-14 loss to Phoenix. The Patriots are 0-2.

“We went through a little adversity when (quarterback John) Friesz went down, so we had to do something in the beginning,” Butts said. “The game plan was to open up running the ball. . . . We did, and we did pretty good.”

Before the game, however, Ross said the Chargers were going to continue to experiment in the passing game. He said teams keep it close by running the ball, but they win by throwing it.

So when the Chargers took possession Friday night, they ran the ball. They ran the ball and continued to run the ball just like the Dan Henning Chargers of old.

“They told us from the beginning that the first play was going to be a run so we were all psyched up,” center Courtney Hall said. “They said we were going to try and run the ball this week, and I guess we did a pretty decent job.”

Butts carried the ball a dozen times for 47 yards and then took the second half off. Eric Bieniemy contributed 47 yards on 11 rushes before leaving with an ankle sprain.

“Butts ran hard and broke a lot of tackles,” Ross said. “We got good field position and that kind of dictated that for us, and we wanted to see that. It was our intention. . . . we still want to try and throw the football, but we also wanted to get some improvement in our running game.

“When it started to work, and it started to work very early so we just kind of hung with it.”

Safety Stanley Richard’s diving catch on New England quarterback Hugh Millen’s overthrow of wide receiver Greg McMurtry in the first quarter gave the Chargers the ball at the Patriots’ 37-yard line.

“I had to lay out for it,” Richard said. “I would give it on a difficulty scale of one to 10 about a seven.”

The Patriots would like to have it back. Butts started the Chargers’ attack with a nine-yard gain and then fell forward for one more yard and a first down.

Quarterback Bob Gagliano completed a five-yard pass to tight end Derrick Walker to remind everyone of his presence, but then it was back to Butts. He ran for gains of five, five, 10, one and finally one more yard for the score. Rookie Carlos Huerta, who took over the kicking duties because of John Carney’s groin injury, added the extra point.

“The first interception hurt us,” said New England Coach Dick MacPherson. “We weren’t able to overcome it. . . . The Chargers were ready to win.”

The Patriots never did make much headway against the Chargers’ No. 1 defense, but they did respond with a 41-yard field goal from Charlie Baumann to trail 7-3 at the close of the first quarter.

The Chargers went back to the battering back on five of their next seven plays, and Butts had them sitting in prime position on the New England 15. A pair of incomplete passes, however, forced Ross to call on Huerta, and he was successful from 33 yards on his initial NFL field-goal attempt for a 10-3 lead.

Butts went to the bench, and Gagliano began throwing the ball. He completed passes of 21, 16, 20 and 26 yards to set up Bieniemy’s one-yard touchdown run, which carried the Chargers to a 17-3 halftime advantage.

“Because of this,” joked General Manager Bobby Beathard, “we cancelled the trade for Stan Humphries at halftime.”

Gagliano completed seven of 11 passes for 123 yards on the three series in which he was employed, and he used some fancy footwork to buy additional time to survey his receivers.

“I think Bob Gagliano did one heck of a job,” Ross said. “He did a good job in the ballgame last week, too, so he’s done well.”

The Chargers, however, felt compelled to trade for Washington Redskins quarterback Stan Humphries, and there has been speculation that Humphries eventually will become the team’s starter.

“I haven’t been told that yet, so I’m just taking it one day at a time,” Gagliano said. “I’m not going to go in thinking I need to throw 10 touchdown passes and be 100%. If you do that you start pressing.”

The Chargers arrived in Rhode Island late Monday night and practiced twice on Tuesday and Wednesday against the Patriots at their Bryant College training camp site. After two more workouts on their own Thursday, they transferred their gear to a downtown hotel in Providence.

“I thought we played well under a lot of adversity,” Ross said. “We have been on the road a lot and we came off a bad loss and we didn’t have our quarterback. I’m really happy to get it with the long plane flight we got back. It’s been a tough week, but we dealt with the elements. I think that shows us something.”

The Patriots attempted to climb back into the contest in the fourth quarter when Scott Zolak threw a nine-yard touchdown pass to tight end Ben Coates.

Charger quarterback Pat O’Hara came on in relief of Jeff Graham, who had completed five of nine for 40 yards, and he put the game away. O’Hara guided the Chargers on a 70-yard march and used 10 plays to run down the clock, setting up Huerta for a 22-yard field goal and 20-10 advantage.

“You could see the team was kind of coming together in practice this week,” Beathard said. “Going into last week I thought we would play a lot better than we did, so you hate to get your hopes up.

“But I think this week did the team a lot of good because of the work we had against the Patriots. Maybe getting away and being all together as a team kind of did it. After last week I think there was some pride there, and that’s a good sign.”