They’re Bad and Mad

It was bad enough that the San Diego Chargers’ losing streak reached four games with Sunday’s 28-9 shellacking by the Oakland Raiders, but fighting among themselves? On the field?

“It really embarrassed us as a team,” linebacker Junior Seau said of the fourth-quarter, facemask-to-facemask confrontation between quarterback Jim Harbaugh and safety Michael Dumas. “We don’t like to see any of our players and our family members having a confrontation like that in front of millions of people.

“It doesn’t need to be like that. We don’t need to expose our dirty laundry out there in the street.”

Coach Mike Riley said he hopes the incident has blown over, as Harbaugh and Dumas insisted that it had.

“All the things that happen when you lose creep out from under the rug,” Riley said. “It’s easy to point the finger and lay blame. The hard part is to just go back to work and take care of your own business.”

The Denver Broncos were all but mathematically eliminated from the playoff race after Sunday’s 20-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, but that doesn’t mean they have nothing to play for over the next six weeks.

Or so they say.

“There’s still a lot of stuff on the line,” fullback Howard Griffith said of the 3-7, last-place Broncos. “When you’re losing the way we are, coaches make decisions on personnel for next year. So you’re always playing for a job. Every Sunday is an audition tape. Guys are still going to go out and play as hard as they can.”