L.T. is the new king of the TD
They were minutes away from completing an ultra-rare sweep of Denver. Their AFC West champion caps were waiting in the locker room. But for the San Diego Chargers, their signature moment -- the one they’d love to preserve under glass -- didn’t come Sunday until their offense took the Qualcomm Stadium field for the last time.
It was then, with countless camera phones raised and at the ready, that LaDainian Tomlinson bounced, juked and darted his way into NFL history with a seven-yard scoring run for his record-breaking 29th touchdown of the season.
With three games to go, he is two points shy of Paul Hornung’s record 176 -- and that Hall of Fame running back doubled as a kicker.
After the 48-20 victory, one that gave his team the inside track on home-field advantage in the playoffs, San Diego Coach Marty Schottenheimer called Tomlinson “the finest running back ever to wear an NFL uniform.”
About that, he’d get no argument from the San Diego players paid to burst open holes for the back whose feet dab at the ground like sewing-machine needles.
Making his accomplishments even more impressive, fullback Lorenzo Neal said, is that defensive schemes are designed almost solely to stop him.
“Everyone in the stadium knows No. 21 is getting the ball,” Neal said. “You know it, they know it, we know it. And, I’ll tell you, he’s electrifying.”
Quarterback Philip Rivers certainly felt that surge near the end of the game, after Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman recovered a fumble at the seven-yard line to set up the final touchdown.
San Diego’s offense gathered one last time, and Rivers called “50 Power,” an up-the-gut play the Chargers had run about 10 times throughout the game. Before the huddle broke, Tomlinson issued a simple directive to his teammates: “After I score, I want everyone to come into the end zone.”
And they did, swarming him and riding him off the field on their yard-wide shoulders. For the quarterback, the entire sequence is frozen in time.
“It was a weird, magical feeling running out there,” Rivers said. “We’re all running around kind of giddy, and he’s just the same old L.T. I had the chills even before the play. Just looking around and there’s 70,000 fans, nobody’s sitting down, and I just had a feeling that we may never be part of something like that again.”
To reach the end zone, Tomlinson took the handoff, cut to the left, broke an attempted tackle by cornerback Darrent Williams and dashed across the goal line near the corner pylon.
Rivers isn’t the type to talk trash, but in recounting the play, he basically said Williams didn’t have a chance.
“You see Darrent Williams and L.T.,” he said, “and you’ve got to think, 99 out of 100 he ain’t going to tackle him.”
The lopsided final score belies the fact that the game was close for a while. The Chargers scored touchdowns on four consecutive drives in the first half and built a 28-3 lead, but Denver made things interesting with 17 unanswered points in the third quarter.
The Chargers, the best fourth-quarter team in the league, responded with two field goals and two Tomlinson touchdowns to put things on ice.
Denver quarterback Jay Cutler, making the second start of his career, threw two touchdown passes despite being harassed all day. He was sacked four times and lost one of his three fumbles.
The defeat was a big setback for the Broncos (7-6) in their bid for a wild-card berth. Cincinnati and Jacksonville are a game ahead, and, among the other 7-6 teams, both the New York Jets and Kansas City have the tiebreaker advantage on Denver.
Meanwhile, it looks like smooth sailing for the Chargers, who play host to Kansas City on Sunday, travel to Seattle for a Christmas Eve game, then finish at home against Arizona. They hadn’t swept a season series against the Denver since 1982, when Dan Fouts was their quarterback and John Elway was at Stanford.
While other Super Bowl contenders have lost some key players to injuries -- Chicago’s Tommie Harris, New England’s Junior Seau, New Orleans’ Joe Horn -- the Chargers are getting ever stronger, with Merriman back from suspension and defensive tackle Luis Castillo recovered from an ankle injury.
The San Diego play-calling, too, has a new-and-improved feel. In scoring their second touchdown of the game, the Chargers ran their version of the “fumblerooskie,” which they called the “Bumblerooskie” in honor of former Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips, father of Chargers defensive coordinator Wade Phillips.
It was a tricky play in which Rivers stepped back about a yard from center, took a soft snap and slipped the ball up between the legs of Neal, who was standing in front of him. Then, Rivers faked a handoff to receiver Vincent Jackson, who was running a decoy end around.
The move fooled the Broncos -- and the TV cameras -- and allowed Neal to barge four yards into the end zone.
It was Martyball meets partyball, and the Chargers don’t hear the music dying down any time soon.
“We can be scary good,” Rivers said. “And I think we’re on our way.”
*
*
Begin text of infobox
Score subject
Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson has had multiple-touchdown games nine times this season in setting an NFL record with 29 scores. A look at his 13-game performance:
*--* Wk Opponent Result Att Yds Avg TD Rec Yds Avg TD 1 Raiders W 27-0 31 131 4.2 1 3 18 6.0 0 2 Titans W 40-7 19 71 3.7 2 7 51 7.3 0 4 Ravens L 16-13 26 98 3.8 0 1 7 7.0 0 5 Steelers W 23-13 13 36 2.8 0 8 34 4.3 0 6 49ers W 48-19 21 71 3.4 4 7 64 9.1 0 7 Chiefs L 30-27 15 66 4.4 0 6 72 12.0 1 8 Rams W 38-24 25 183 7.3 2 3 57 19.0 1 9 Browns W 32-25 18 172 9.6 3 3 20 6.7 0 10 Bengals W 49-41 22 104 4.7 4 6 54 9.0 0 11 Broncos W 35-27 20 105 5.3 3 3 74 24.7 1 12 Raiders W 21-14 19 109 5.7 2 1 5 5.0 0 13 Bills W 24-21 28 178 6.4 2 3 14 4.7 0 14 Broncos W 48-20 28 103 3.7 3 1 9 9.0 0 Totals 285 1,427 5.0 26 52 479 9.2 3
*--*
