SAN DIEGO (AP)—Somewhere, Ed Hochuli must be smiling.
The once-reviled referee can hardly be blamed anymore for derailing the San Diego Chargers’ season with a blown call that cost the Bolts a victory at Denver in their second game.
No, the Chargers have done a mighty fine job of that all by themselves.
With four games left, they’re 4-8 and three games behind the Denver Broncos in the AFC West, the NFL’s most pathetic division. The Chargers were supposed to make it to the Super Bowl. Instead, they’re all but mathematically eliminated with a quarter of the season left.
The Chargers have struggled with the basics, from running the ball to tackling. LaDainian Tomlinson lacks his normal explosiveness and is having the worst season of his brilliant career. The defense can’t get to the quarterback or off the field on third down.
The Chargers’ aspirations of reaching the playoffs are toast, even if the numbers say they aren’t. But in the wake of yet another home loss — this one to a rookie coach with a rookie quarterback — the writing is on the Chargers’ locker room wall.
“You are who you are,” tight end Antonio Gates said. “You are what your record says you are. We’re 4-8. No matter what kind of talent we have, no matter how many Pro Bowls we have, we’re 4-8.”
But this season was supposed to be about the Super Bowl. The Chargers were built to make an extended run in the playoffs.
SAN DIEGO (AP)—The Oakland Raiders are coming to town, which is one of the only things that can put any kind of spark in the San Diego Chargers’ otherwise lost season.
The Chargers (4-8) were all but eliminated from playoff contention on Sunday, when they lost 22-16 at home to the Atlanta Falcons while the Denver Broncos (7-5) were winning their third straight road game, 34-17 against the New York Jets.
That gave the Broncos a three-game lead in the AFC West, with four games to play. The Broncos beat the Chargers 39-38 at Denver in the second game of the season. The teams meet again in the season-finale in San Diego on Dec. 28.
Mathematically, the Chargers are still alive. Realistically, though, it’s all but over for a team that many projected to make it to the Super Bowl.
SAN DIEGO (AP)—Matt Ryan, Michael Turner and the rest of the Atlanta Falcons are very much alive in the playoff picture.
The San Diego Chargers, once thought to be Super Bowl worthy, are on life support.
Ryan, the rookie from Boston College, threw two touchdown passes and Turner, LaDainian Tomlinson’s former understudy, ran for 120 yards against his former team to lead the Falcons to a 22-16 win over the reeling Chargers on Sunday.
The Falcons (8-4), one of the NFL’s most surprising teams behind rookie head coach Mike Smith, remained a game behind Tampa Bay and Carolina in the NFC South.
San Diego (4-8) lost for the fifth time in six games. They came into the day two games behind Denver in the anemic AFC West. Many fans had cleared out by the final gun, and those who remained booed as Ryan took a knee to end the game.
On this special edition podcast, we come to you live from section M4 of the Qualcomm parking lot prior to the Chargers-Colts game for the Bolt Bunker-BoltTalk tailgate extravaganza.
Once again it was Monday, a day the Chargers have come to hate.
For the fourth time this season, they were rebounding from a loss that came in the game’s final 24 seconds. The latest was a 23-20 defeat to the visiting Colts on a last-second field goal.
“We played a very good football team, a playoff-caliber football team, and the game came down to the last play,” coach Norv Turner said.
It represented the Chargers’ fourth loss in five games and sunk their record to 4-7. That said, they remain two games off the AFC West lead, as the Raiders upset the first-place Broncos.
“It’s not tiresome to hear someone say we are still in it,” Turner said of the team’s plight with five games remaining. “But we have to do our part.
SAN DIEGO (AP)—Somewhere, Ed Hochuli must be smiling.
