Chargers Find Right Lightning : Anthony Miller Blows His Cover, Not to Mention Seattle’s Coverage

Long before Sunday’s game between the Chargers and Seattle Seahawks began, a very confused skunk was scurrying in hopeless search for solitude through the seats beyond the west end zone.

Most fans would have been pleased to allow him to have that particular section to himself, because plenty of empty seats elsewhere were available. However, a relentless few continued to pursue him with various makeshift apparatus, including a trash barrel.

No matter which way he turned, he was covered . . . and eventually captured.

Down on the field, at the opposite end, the Chargers were warming up. Among them was one Anthony Miller. Had he not been occupied, he might have taken note of the skunk’s plight and knowingly nodded his head in understanding.

Anthony Miller knows what it is like to try to find solitude, particularly on a football field. He cannot set foot on the field without defensive backs escorting him as diligently and as closely as the Secret Service escorts the President. The difference is that Miller does not welcome the attention.

His job is to catch the football for the Chargers. He is the one certifiably dangerous deep threat. He should be Mr. Touchdown.

Through the first four games of the 1992 season, all of them losses, Miller had not caught a touchdown pass. He had caught all of 12 passes. The opposition blanketed him and took its chances with the other guys, who may as well have been trying to catch a wet bar of soap.

“It was frustrating,” Miller said, “but I knew eventually I’d get me some balls.”

He had a ball Sunday at the expense of the Seahawks, who must have been lulled into thinking Miller was less than the receiver he was when he went to the 1989 and 1990 Pro Bowls. They forgot the adage about statistics lying.

Anthony Miller caught nine passes for 142 yards, two of the catches going for the game’s only touchdowns. The first was one of those pretty bombs down the sidelines, 67 yards from Stan Humphries, which so rarely seem to work. The second was a gutty, diving catch in the end zone which rarely seems to work for the Chargers. When Humphries threw the ball into the stands at the game’s end, I almost expected Miller to catch that one too.

Miller’s production was all the Chargers needed in a 17-6 victory, their first in the Bobby Ross Era.

When I caught up with Miller in the locker room, he was being heavily covered . . . by the media. He didn’t seem to mind that.

Just give him room on the field and he is happy . . . and successful.

“They’ve been doubling me a lot,” he said. “There’s always somebody high and somebody low. This time, they singled me more. We’d have done something else if they’d tried to double me.”

Miller noticed early-on, during the Chargers’ first possession, that Seattle cornerback Patrick Hunter was playing him tightly. He could not have known for sure what the safety would do in the back, but he suspected he could get past Hunter.

“I told Stan the first time he played me bump,” Miller said. “I thought it might be a good time to go deep. Stan played it conservatively that time. But the second time he played me bump, Stan was ready for it and came up with the big play.”

It was a very big play in so many ways. It was the Chargers’ longest play in almost three years, for one thing, but it was more than that. It was the Chargers’ first touchdown after 10 quarters and their first score after six quarters. And it had to be a major boost for morale and confidence.

The second touchdown catch was tougher, but equally important. With second down at the Seahawk five and timeouts expended, Humphries either had to get a touchdown or an incompletion. Nothing else would work because time would expire. The only place he could throw it was way down and way away from Hunter’s coverage.

“It would either be an overthrow or a great catch,” Humphries said later.

It was a great catch, a diving catch which gave the Chargers a 17-3 advantage at the half. Seattle was not going to overcome that deficit with a backup quarterback and an already sputtering offense. The second half was a yawner of a formality between this team and its first victory of the season.

What was it that caused Seattle to do what it did and Anthony Miller to do what he did?

“Today,” Humphries said, “they took away Ronnie Harmon more than anybody. He was leading our team in catches and up in the AFC in yardage. I think we game-planned it a little bit.”

The Chargers just never dreamed that they would get to make such extensive use of all those Anthony Miller pages in their playbook. They had to be wondering if maybe they should just toss them. Not on this Sunday, when a skunk, of all creatures, was surrounded . . . and Anthony Miller wasn’t.