Leaf Does a Little and Defense Does Rest

Ryan Leaf figured out how to get by while he’s boning up on the NFL quarterbacking business. Don’t cough up the ball and mess things up for Junior Seau and his defensive crew.

Leaf struggled again Sunday, passing for only 83 yards, but the rookie didn’t turn the ball over for only the second game in his seven NFL starts. Seau and the Chargers’ defense did the rest in a 13-10 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles.

The victory in a match of two troubled teams also made June Jones a winner in his new job as interim coach. He was the quarterbacks coach before being promoted to replace the fired Kevin Gilbride last Tuesday.

“I’m happy I finally went out there and played mistake-free football,” said Leaf, who completed nine of 19 passes, averaged 1.1 yards per pass and was sacked six times for 55 yards. “When you don’t make turnovers, you win games with a defense like ours.”

Jones agreed.

“If we had turned it over one time, we probably would have lost the game. We’ve got to get better in the passing game and we will. You’ve got to take the first step and we did; we got through without making any major errors.”

Seau, who was in on 10 tackles and sealed the victory with a late fumble recovery, said he felt the victory said something about the character of the team.

“I was more motivated this week,” Seau said. “We knew we had to go out and do our job . . . We had a coach lose his job because of us.”

San Diego (3-4) ended a four-game slide with the victory over the Eagles (1-6), who have won only once in their last 10 games, dating back to last year and haven’t won on the road since 1996 (0-12-1).

John Carney kicked his second field goal, a 26-yarder with 7:18 remaining, to break a 10-10 tie.

The Chargers’ defense made that hold up, with Seau recovering a fumble by the Eagles’ Russell Copeland at the San Diego 38 with 1:53 left. The defense also set up Carney’s go-ahead field goal when tackle Norman Hand grabbed a deflected pass from Rodney Peete to give the Chargers the ball at the Philadelphia 18.

Peete earlier was victimized by Charles Dimry’s interception in the San Diego end zone that snuffed a scoring threat.

“You can’t win in this business with the turnovers we had,” said Philadelphia Coach Ray Rhodes, whose job security may be dwindling with each Eagles loss. “We did not execute. We wasted some big efforts by some guys and it’s a shame.”