Reconciling the Loss

You know the saying that goes, “You don’t know that you have a good girlfriend until you’ve been with a bad one?” Well after watching Norv Turner’s coaching performance while the Chargers were getting shellacked by the Patriots yesterday, everyone in my group of friends felt like we just traded Kelly Kapowski for Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction. I was really excited about this game and Norv Turner came by and boiled a proverbial rabbit in my kitchen. The Chargers looked unprepared, were outsmarted, and played like a team that was poorly coached. I’m not a Marty Schottenheimer fan by any means, but in their losses last year, they didn’t get blown out like they did yesterday. How demoralizing.

I’ve heard people say that the Chargers just ran into a buzz saw in the form of a Patriot team motivated by people questioning the credibility of their three Super Bowls. But while there may be some truth to this, the Chargers shouldn’t have gotten blown out the way they did. I saw a team that failed to adjust when the Patriots started the game off with the spread formation. I saw corners playing back when they should have been pressing. I saw no attempts at disguising their coverages or anything other than vanilla blitz packages. I mean what happened to all of those corner and safety blitzes I kept reading about in the preseason? Did someone forget to tell Ted Cotrell that the season started two weeks ago?

On offense Turner showed that he had the balls of a field mouse with some of his play calls. Let me tell you a couple of three things: They should have gone for it on 4th and 1 in the second quarter when they had the ball on their own 39-yard line. When you’re down 17-0 and have Lorenzo Neal -- who was like 20-for-20 in those situations last year, you gotta go for it. I don’t care where the ball was. And if they wanted to play it safe, they should have given Neal the ball the play before when it was 3rd and 1. On the next drive, it was 3rd and 1 again and they still didn’t give it to Neal! Instead they call a pass play that gets picked off and returned for a touchdown which made it 24-0 and marked the beginning of the end for the Chargers. Look, every game has a moment or two where the head coach decides to either “whip it out” or “keep it in their pants”-- let’s just call this the “Whip it Out Moment”. Turner had two chances to whip it out on the road against the best team in the League and both times he kept it in his pants.

The Chargers had a couple of other chances to make it a more competitive game but didn’t. They opened the second half with a touchdown but let the Patriots come right back and score to make it 31-7. And when the Chargers brought it to 31-14 and then recovered the ensuing kickoff at the Patriot 31 a touchdown would have made it a 10-point game. Instead Turner calls two pass plays that both resulted in sacks, they call some halfhearted passing play on 3rd down, punt, and that was that.

So where does this leave the Chargers?

For one thing, they need to get better on offense. The Chargers offense doesn’t exactly look like its being run by an offensive genius. They haven’t scored in the first half yet this year, the line is getting pushed around, and their receivers haven’t done squat. But the biggest problem right now is that Phil Rivers is absolutely killing us. He turned the ball over three times yesterday and the pick he threw to Adalius Thomas that got ran back was brutal. I don’t know what happened to him, but Rivers doesn’t look comfortable in the pocket and is having a really hard time dealing with the blitz up the middle. Come to think of it, this offense doesn’t really have an identity right now. Are we a power running team? Are we a short yardage passing team? Are we a play-action team? Are we going to at least try to throw the ball downfield? Hopefully we’ll figure this out in the next few weeks. They go to Green Bay and play a good defensive team this weekend and if they can handle the Packers they have the Chiefs at home and they’re looking at a 3-1 record in the first quarter of the season. During the second quarter of the season they play at Denver, Oakland, Houston, and at Minnesota so they should be 7-1 or at the very least 6-2 at the midway point which isn’t bad. After that, they have their next gut-check game against the Colts on November 11th so they basically have seven weeks get their crap everything squared away.

And that’s why I’m not worried. Unlike the guy who delivers mail at my office who earlier today bet me a case of beer the Chargers wouldn’t make the playoffs (true story), I’m not going to give up on the season because of one lousy game. I’m I pissed that we lost? Hell yes, I am. But if you look at the big picture it’s Week 3 and we’re 1-1 against two of the top five teams in the League even though we’re going through a coaching change, we haven’t scored an offensive touchdown in the first half, and our running back is averaging less than two yards a carry.

I got emails and comments this morning slamming me for picking the Chargers to win this game 30-14. Do I feel like a moron for thinking the Chargers would blow out the Patriots? Of course I do. In retrospect I was a little too confident in thinking that the transition between Schottenheimer and Turner would be smooth. But you know what? My expectations for this team still haven’t changed. This season isn’t about beating the Patriots in Week 2. This season is about winning a championship. And while they got embarrassed last night there’s still a whole lot of season left to go. Maybe we get another shot at those guys in January. And maybe, by then Norv Turner will have grown some balls and we can stop comparing Marty Schottenheimer to Kelly Kapowski.