They’re Trapped in Web of Confusion

The San Diego Chargers have the ball, first and goal at the Ram nine-yard line, angling for the first points of the afternoon, and the San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium scoreboard implores:

QUIET PLEASE

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The Rams have the ball at their 33, Chris Miller bounces a screen pass to Jerome Bettis, big third-down play coming up and a message board offers an advisory:

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A Charger fan, soaking in the atmosphere, wears a customized T-shirt bearing a simple exhortation. Not “Flock The Rams.” Not “Crush Miller’s Spleen.” Just a gentle request, politely proposed:

“Protect Stan.”

It’s a friendly confine, San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. Here, they even refrained from booing Charger receiver Tony Martin Sunday until he dropped his second touchdown pass of the game. It’s a feel-good, G-rated, family-entertainment environment, not counting those occasions when Junior Seau decides to dissect and re-assemble the anatomy of the visiting quarterback.

The Rams were duly impressed. Overwhelmed, in fact. Amid such outpouring of human kindness, the Rams must have felt a little nasty, a little tainted, for taking that 14-6 lead over the Chargers into halftime, because their final 30 minutes on the field were devoted entirely to giving back to the community.

The Rams have played 24 halves of football this season, most of them ugly, but none have been more wretched than Sunday’s second half, when the Rams took an eight-point lead over the AFC West leaders, twisted it, mangled it and walked away 14-point losers.

Say this for the Rams, now 4-8 and bound for their fifth consecutive non-winning season: They’re still losing as often as ever, but they’re getting more creative about it.

First time the Rams touch the ball in the second half, they go three downs and out, punting deep to San Diego’s Darrien Gordon.

Gordon runs it back 75 yards for a touchdown.

Second time the Rams touch the ball in the second half, Todd Kinchen returns a kickoff 99 yards into and beyond the Charger end zone.

On the other side of the field, some 30 yards away from the play, Ram Thomas Homco is flagged for holding and the score in nullified.

Second time the Chargers touch the ball in the second half, they drive to the Ram 10, where, on third down, Ram defensive backs Anthony Newman and Todd Lyght collide, allowing Ronnie Harmon to amble under Stan Humphries’ easy touchdown lob.

Third time the Rams touch the ball in the second half, Chris Miller takes them to the Charger seven. On third and two, Miller rolls right on a bootleg, can keep rolling for the first down if he wants, but instead pulls up and abruptly flings the ball into the end zone--hoping, as he later put it, for “Flipper (Anderson) to make a play.”

Gordon intercepts and runs it out to the Charger 15.

Twenty-two seconds later, the third quarter ends. Ram highlights during the final 15 minutes include a nifty cross-field overhand lateral-and-run, Kinchen to Lyght, that goes for big yards and is wiped out by a holding penalty; two Miller passes into the end zone that sail harmlessly out of the end zone; and the Rams’ last two possessions ending in interceptions, bringing Miller’s afternoon total to four.

“We are not just losing, we are self-destructing,” said an angry Darryl Henley, bobbing and weaving against the partitions of his locker stall.

Around him, no one was arguing.

“The guys are frustrated,” Lyght said. “The guys are upset. You could see it when they walked into the locker room after the game, you could hear it, the things they were saying . . .

“Did you see (the second half)? Unbelievable. How many times this year have we come out with a lead at halftime and not won the game?”

It has occurred only twice before, at Green Bay, at home against Atlanta.

It only seems as if it happens every other week.

Kinchen’s two play-of-the-day moments--his wild ride through the Charger kickoff coverage unit, his long-distance lateral to Lyght (a tight enough spiral to move him to second on the quarterback depth chart)--were obliterated by holding calls, never to see the light of CNN.

“After a while, we just got used to seeing the flags flying,” Kinchen said. “By the end of the game, we were sick of them. That’s why you didn’t see us screaming at the referees. We got used to them, sadly enough.”

The same goes for defeats on Sunday afternoon.

The Rams have gotten used to them, sadly enough.

“You keep asking yourself, ‘Why?’ ” Miller said. “Why do we keep losing? Why do we do the things we do? I hate it.”

Homco, guilty of the holding infraction that killed Kinchen’s touchdown, simply seemed confused. First, he said, “The referee had to make that call. I got tangled up with (the Chargers’ Doug Miller), we’re both falling down and I grabbed him around the shoulders. The ref sees that, he has to call it.”

Then Homco said the ref shouldn’t have called it because “it was away from the play. It had nothing to do with the play.”

Then Homco said, “Without playing any better, we could be 8-4. Without playing any better at all. But we’re 4-8.”

And another Ram season rolls into December down the road to oblivion, just another ball of confusion.