Super Chargers

For the San Diego Chargers, the football world was a very different place four months ago.

Quarterback Drew Brees looked to be a complete washout; running back LaDainian Tomlinson was a great player marooned on an awful team; the defense apparently was still suffering from a leadership void with the loss of All-Pros Junior Seau and Rodney Harrison a year earlier; and Coach Marty Schottenheimer’s hot seat was so scorching he could have used asbestos shorts.

That’s why it was almost surreal last Sunday when the 11-3 Chargers walked off the field in snowy Cleveland, having shut out the Browns, won their eighth consecutive game and their first division title since 1994.

“I’ve only been here for four years, but in some ways it feels like eight,” said Tomlinson, whose team plays at Indianapolis today. “To go from where we were to this is awesome. I’ve dreamed of the playoffs for a long time, but it’s only been a dream.”

Now, Brees is a legitimate most-valuable-player candidate and will join Tomlinson in the Pro Bowl. Second-year tight end Antonio Gates is setting the standard at the position. And Schottenheimer could very easily be named the NFL’s coach of the year.

The San Diego defense, which was shut out in terms of sending players to the Pro Bowl, has made significant strides in stopping the run. After giving up an average of 138.6 rushing yards a game last season, the Chargers are giving up only 80.9. Notable is the play of linebacker Donnie Edwards, among the league’s most reliable tacklers, and nose tackle Jamal Williams.

A big reason for the turnaround has been the play of Brees, who was named the starting quarterback only six days before the opener, even though rookie quarterback Philip Rivers was in training camp for only two weeks. Brees’ passer rating of 103.8 is 36.3 points higher than last season’s, which, according to Stats Inc., is the biggest single-season improvement for a quarterback since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger.

Gates has 12 touchdown receptions, twice as many as the next-closest tight end in the league. Tomlinson is the AFC’s fifth-leading rusher with 1,254 yards, despite playing most of the season on a tender ankle. And the San Diego offensive line has played amazingly well, even though it has five new starters this season, two of whom are rookies.

“I sat with Marty and A.J. [Smith, the team’s general manager] at the beginning of the year, and we all looked at the depth charts and the players,” Charger President Dean Spanos said. “I looked at them and said, ‘What do you think?’ And they said, ‘Look, if these things happen -- and there are a lot of ifs -- we’re going to be a good team.’ There were a lot of question marks at a lot of positions, and you go right down our roster and all of them have worked out pretty well, starting with Drew.”

But a concern is in the offing. The Chargers have to decide what to do with Brees, who will become a free agent after the season and probably will be too expensive to keep, seeing as the team signed No. 4 pick Rivers to a deal worth about $40 million.

“We’re going to have to address that issue at the end of the year,” Spanos said. “We’re going to do whatever we have to do to keep this thing going. That’s the way I would answer that.”

The Charger decisions have worked out well so far this season, and their fans are beginning to respond. The last two home games have been sellouts -- a rarity in recent years -- and the finale against Kansas City also is sold out, even though it might be meaningless in the playoff picture.

Not only that, but the franchise actually has a prayer of getting a new stadium, the chances of which appeared to be nil a year ago when the Chargers were suing the city over the right to trigger the escape clause in their Qualcomm Stadium lease. At that point, it seemed obvious that the team was itching to get out of San Diego and was the front-running franchise to wind up in Los Angeles.

This year, the Chargers and San Diego took steps to end the acrimony. The Chargers dropped their lawsuit against the city and the controversial ticket guarantee -- one that required the city to buy any unsold general-admission seats and cost taxpayers $25 million -- in exchange for a new Qualcomm Stadium lease. The Chargers agreed to stay in San Diego through the 2008 season and hope to put a new stadium initiative on the November 2006 ballot.

It helped sway public opinion in favor of the Chargers this month when the club announced it would be moving its training camp back to San Diego after two summers in Carson.

Evidently, the tide of public sentiment is turning. Pollster John Nienstedt, whose firm, Competitive Edge Research, conducted a poll for KPBS radio and television, found that a winning team and the removal of the ticket guarantee “has turned a stadium deal from a non-starter into a real possibility.”

The poll found, for example, that among county residents, 47% approved of a new stadium and 41% opposed. “Such a result was probably unthinkable before the start of the season,” Nienstedt said this month.

Said Spanos: “Winning helps, there’s no doubt about it. It creates an enthusiasm in the community. I don’t know if all the fans are voters, but surely a big portion of them are voters. And winning helps, it just does. Sure cures a lot of ills, I can tell you that.”

There are still plenty of hurdles confronting the Chargers, particularly when it comes to getting a large public investment in a new stadium. San Diego is in the biggest fiscal mess of its history and has a $2-billion pension deficit. The city has been rocked by two federal investigations and a mayoral race being decided in the courts.

Spanos said he’s optimistic the Chargers can find a stadium solution and stay. In the meantime, he’s living in the present.

“I know it’s been a long time around here since we’ve been winning,” he said. “But we had a great run in the early 90s and there’s nothing like it. You always live for that. You always want to be in that position, and you never give up trying to get there. Because if you do, you shouldn’t be in this business.”

Times staff writer Tony Perry contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Reversal of Fortune

San Diego lost Super Bowl XXIX, 49-26, to San Francisco on Jan. 29, 1995. This is the first season the Chargers will be in the playoffs since that game:

*--* YEAR RECORD COACH 2004 11-3-0 Marty Schottenheimer 2003 4-12-0 Marty Schottenheimer 2002 8-8-0 Marty Schottenheimer 2001 5-11-0 Mike Riley 2000 1-15-0 Mike Riley 1999 8-8-0 Mike Riley 1998 5-11-0 Kevin Gilbride/June Jones 1997 4-12-0 Kevin Gilbride 1996 8-8-0 Bobby Ross 1995 9-7-0 Bobby Ross

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