Chargers pull it together
SAN DIEGO -- Turns out, the fatal flaw of the San Diego Chargers -- a gambling and gimpy-legged defense -- might not be so fatal after all.
After staggering through the first two weeks of the season, the Chargers’ defense came to life Monday night, harassing Brett Favre into all sorts of mistakes and paving the way for a 48-29 victory over the New York Jets.
It was the first win of the season for San Diego, a popular preseason Super Bowl favorite, and its first game where the eventual outcome was fairly clear. The Chargers lost their two previous games by a combined three points, and their ears were still ringing from a botched officiating call that cost them a victory at Denver.
This time, they left no room for doubt. Philip Rivers threw for three touchdowns, LaDainian Tomlinson ran for two -- his first two scores of the season -- and the defense intercepted three passes, in addition to almost picking off two more.
“We were going to do whatever it took to get this win,” said Tomlinson, who was questionable for the game because of a sore toe. “That was our whole approach throughout the week. We needed this one bad. And we got it.”
It didn’t begin so smoothly, as Jets safety David Barrett intercepted Rivers’ first pass of the game and returned it 25 yards for a touchdown. That muzzled a Qualcomm Stadium crowd looking to see the Chargers break out of their slump before a national TV audience on “Monday Night Football.”
The San Diego defense that had broken down so frequently over the previous two weeks was the same unit that got the Chargers back on track against the Jets. Not that it was a pristine performance -- San Diego surrendered 308 yards and several big plays -- but the Chargers finally started putting some heat on the quarterback.
And when Favre is under serious pressure, especially when he resorts to back-footed, fling-and-a-prayer throws, it isn’t always a pretty sight. He and the receivers often looked as if they were working out of different playbooks.
Favre was sacked three times, and watched helplessly as Antonio Cromartie picked off one of his errant passes and returned it 52 yards for a touchdown.
Favre completed 30 of 42 passes for 271 yards, and somewhat offset his pair of interceptions with three short touchdown passes.
Rivers connected on 19 of 25 for 250 yards and three touchdowns, bringing his total to nine scoring passes in three games. Putting points on the scoreboard certainly hasn’t been a problem for the Chargers, who are second only to Denver in scoring.
Predictably, Favre didn’t look nearly as comfortable with the Jets’ offense as he did for so long in Green Bay, where he built a 5-0 record against San Diego.
San Diego’s defense came into the game with only two sacks, and one of those was Jay Cutler’s uncalled fumble in the Denver game. This time, Jyles Tucker, the linebacker who stepped into the starting lineup in place of the injured Shawne Merriman, got two on his own. Shaun Phillips added a third.
Phillips said he didn’t expect Favre to hold on to the ball so long in the pocket.
“If I compare it to when we played Green Bay last year and he was the quarterback, [the ball] was gone right away,” Phillips said. “This time, he’s a veteran quarterback and he was trying to make some things happen. Fortunately for us, we were able to get after it.”
Cromartie, who led the NFL in interceptions in 2007, picked off his first two of the season -- one coming against Jets backup Kellen Clemens in garbage time -- and would have had three had a sure touchdown not slipped through his grasp early in the game.
Teammate Clinton Hart also had a near miss, dropping a fourth-down pass by Favre in the end zone. In the end, though, Hart said the overall performance allows the defense to exhale.
“We have a standard that we want to upkeep,” he said. “We set a standard years ago here: Don’t run on the Chargers, and last year the secondary, 30 interceptions. So we set a standard there that we wanted to maintain. We may not get 30, but we don’t want to give up big plays.”
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