Martyball is pushed aside by a dazzling impostor

For more than two decades, Martyball has served as the NFL’s opiate of the massive, a play-it-safe sedative that has caused a series of Super Bowl challengers from Cleveland to Kansas City to San Diego to nod off before any could reach the promised land.

It’s a potent, and predictable, way to put a city’s championship aspirations to sleep, but every so often, the slumbering giant stirs.

This is Martyball?

Marty Schottenheimer’s San Diego Chargers scoring 42 points in the second half against Cincinnati?

San Diego running back LaDainian Tomlinson, after scoring four touchdowns and watching Philip Rivers and Carson Palmer combine to pass for a dizzying 777 yards, saying this game felt like being in a cartoon?

The Chargers and the Bengals combining for 90 points, 975 yards and 54 first downs, prompting Schottenheimer to muse about the action reminding him of the good old American Football League days, where the last team holding the football usually won?

This was Martyball on the 10th Sunday of the 2006 season: Chargers 49, Bengals 41 ... in San Diego’s highest-scoring game since 1986, when Schottenheimer was boring opponents into submission before losing AFC title games in excruciating fashion with the Cleveland Browns.

It was the league’s highest-scoring game in two years.

It marked the first time the Chargers had rallied from a 21-point deficit since 1983, when San Diego came back to beat Seattle, 28-21.

And the 49 points represented the most scored in a game by the Chargers since a 50-28 victory over Miami on Sept. 7, 1986, near the end of the Air Coryell-piloted-by-Dan Fouts era.

Why can’t Martyball be this much fun more often?

Nate Kaeding, and tens of thousands of Chargers fans, would really like to know.

As it was, San Diego’s wild victory set the tone for a head-shaking Sunday, when 10 road teams won.

Call it “Six Degrees of Martyball:”

The Chargers beat the Bengals, who had lost their previous home game to the Atlanta Falcons ...

Who lost to the dregs of the NFL for the second week in a row, this time to the Cleveland Browns, 17-13, after looking awful against the Detroit Lions ...

Who lost at home, 19-13, to the San Francisco 49ers ...

Who the previous week scored three field goals and still beat the Minnesota Vikings ...

Who lost at home, 23-17, to the Green Bay Packers ...

Who received 347 yards passing and two touchdown passes from Brett Favre ...

Who joined the Packers after a 1992 trade by the Falcons and probably could have defeated the 3-6 Browns on a day Michael Vick could not.

Vick’s two-week ride on the “He’s Matured at Last!” express has been officially derailed. Three turnovers against Detroit (pregame record: 1-6) followed by three more against Cleveland (pregame record: 2-6) had Vick’s ears ringing with boos inside the Georgia Dome.

Fortunes change swiftly in the NFL, covered by many media analysts who should be sidelined with knee-jerk tendinitis, yet persist in playing hurt.

After San Diego’s Rivers passed for 337 yards in his ninth professional start, ESPN’s Sean Salisbury was ready to anoint him a top-five NFL quarterback -- behind only Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Donovan McNabb and Palmer, maybe.

What about New Orleans’ Drew Brees, who threw for 398 yards against Pittsburgh?

Or Seattle’s Matt Hasselbeck, who started for the NFC in the most recent Pro Bowl?

Or Carolina’s Jake Delhomme, who also played in the last Pro Bowl?

Well, Brees’ team lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers, 38-31.

And Hasselbeck is out because of a sprained knee.

And Delhomme didn’t play Sunday because his team doesn’t play Tampa Bay until tonight.

Out of sight or out of the victory column -- you’re out of mind.

Remember when Jacksonville quarterback David Garrard was a lock to start the Jaguars’ remaining eight games of 2006? It’s a headline less than a week old.

Garrard had four passes intercepted in a 13-10 loss to Houston -- the Texans sweep the Jaguars! -- and now Byron Leftwich’s ankle is beginning to feel better.

Remember when New England never lost at home, and certainly never lost consecutive games anywhere?

It’s one thing to lose to Peyton Manning, as the Patriots did in Week 9, and quite another to lose to Chad Pennington and the New York Jets, as the Patriots did in Week 10. When former New England defensive coordinator Eric Mangini returned to Foxborough, Mass., to dump a 17-14 defeat on his old team, the Patriots had lost consecutive games for the first time in 57 games, a mark dating to Dec. 22, 2002, when Pennington and the Jets pulled the same trick after New England had lost the previous week to Tennessee.

The Patriots fell just short of the 49ers, who went a record 60 games from 1995 to 1999 without losing consecutive games. In the grand-scheme perspective, that might not seem too long a time. But from the San Francisco view, it was eons ago.

Today it’s news when the 49ers win consecutive games. It has happened again. Since losing by 31 points to Chicago on Oct. 29, San Francisco is 2-0 after a 9-3 victory over Minnesota and a 19-13 triumph over Detroit, victories forged by a single touchdown and seven field goals.

That’s one difference between 49ers eras. In a span of two decades, San Francisco’s big offensive star has gone from being Joe Montana to Joe Nedney.

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mike.penner@latimes.com