Charger Line, Coaches Trade Blame : Football: Opinions differ on cause of Kansas City’s sacks.

Quarterback Stan Humphries said there is no provision in his contract for hazardous duty pay.

Ouch.

John Friesz lasted less than a half behind the Chargers’ offensive line before being carted off the field. Bob Gagliano didn’t make it to the end of the third quarter in the regular-season opener, in a large part because the guys up front were overmatched.

Bring on Humphries, the shoulder pads, mouthpiece, thigh pads, helmet and flak jacket.

“I’m not concerned,” Humphries said. “Not at all.”

Come on, Clint Eastwood would be nervous.

The Kansas City Chiefs turned the Chargers’ offensive line inside out. They piled up five sacks--the most against the Chargers since 1989--and they had Gagliano dancing like Michael Jackson every time he thought of throwing.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. The same players who started a year ago for Dan Henning were now starting for Bobby Ross. They never played this poorly under Henning.

What happened?

“Coaching,” said starting left tackle Harry Swayne, and he was joking, wasn’t he?

“They caught us by surprise,” said starting tackle Broderick Thompson. “It wasn’t even discussed that they would blitz as much as they did.”

Coaching?

“They got us,” starting guard David Richards said. “They tricked us. Derrick Thomas didn’t line up at ‘will’ linebacker once all day long, and our whole game plan was to slide toward him. He was dropping in pass coverage instead of rushing the quarterback.”

Said Swayne, “A lot of stuff was just a lack of awareness. Who has the linebacker blitzing? Who doesn’t? It was knowing who has who among the tight ends, backs and linemen. We just weren’t all clicking on the same page.”

Coaching?

“They ran a lot of new stunts at us,” said starting center Courtney Hall. “Stuff we hadn’t seen before.”

What did they do in training camp? What were all those meetings about? What was on all those videotapes that were being shown nightly to these guys?

“They changed their scheme a lot more than the Kansas City scheme has been changed in two or three years,” quarterbacks coach Jack Reilly said shortly after the game. “We give them all the credit. They coached well and played well and played hard. It was impressive.”

Were the Chargers coached well? Did they play well? Did they play hard? They were certainly not impressive.

“It wasn’t a lack of playing hard,” said Carl Mauck, the Chargers’ offensive line coach.

That narrows the field.

“A couple of them (sacks) we just got physically beat,” Mauck said. “One was a mental error. One a tight end got beat.”

So the players didn’t play well. But then the players said they were not prepared to handle the Chiefs’ defensive plan of attack. They said they did not expect as much blitzing. They said they were out-coached.

“Who told you that?” said Mauck.

Thompson, Richards, Swayne and Hall. Four of the five starters along the offensive line.

“If they want to say that, that’s fine,” Mauck said. “They were the same people who blocked on the run and they knew how to block on the run.

“I don’t think what Kansas City did had anything to do with two men getting whipped when they were man-on-man. They know who they were blocking and they got beat. That’s up to them.

“There was pressure and there were times when he had time to throw. We also had some drops in the game, too, that would have made first downs and kept the thing going. You had some things happen on routes. . . .”

The Chargers dropped passes and ran poor routes last season, but the offensive line did not fall apart. Against the Chiefs the line appeared confused for much of the game. The Chargers were starting the same five players along the line for the first time since the 1981-1982 season. Expectations did not allow for such a collapse.

“They definitely blitzed more than we anticipated,” said Thompson. “They blitzed us probably no more than five times in the last three years, and this time they pulled out all stops and gambled right.”

Bring on the Broncos. What will they do on defense now that they have witnessed the Chargers’ inability to handle the blitz?

“They blitz like crazy anyway,” Thompson said. “I mean they have to because they don’t have the type of people individually to hold up. So they have to. They’re successful with it and schematically they are well-coached and they execute well.”

The Chiefs caught the Chargers by surprise. Will the Broncos?

“The Chiefs did one thing that we hadn’t seen and that caused us one problem,” Mauck said. “The rest of them we had seen.”

Say again? The Chiefs did one thing differently, and that resulted in a daylong fire drill along the offensive line?

“I don’t think it was anything out of the ordinary except for that one thing,” Mauck said. “You’re going to get schemed once in awhile.”

Tell that to Friesz. Explain it to Gagliano. Warn Humphries.

The Chargers’ line appeared in a shambles after the first exhibition game, and Mauck promised a better performance and delivered in the next three exhibition games. The assignment is the same once again.

“We’ve got to go back to work; that’s the only way I know how to get better,” Mauck said.