Chargers | Harbaugh | Playoffs
I hate when Chargers fans talk about winning the Super Bowl.
There. I said it. Does that make me a curmudgeon? A killjoy? A fatalist? A disbeliever? I've seen my team win the turnover margin 5-0 and blow a 27-0 lead—in the same game! Those stats are NOT congruent.
Its the playoffs. The ball is shaped funny. Weird things just happen.
Maybe it is cold water, but indulge me. Take a moment and think about how much luck your team has to catch to win it all. How many strange bounces from a weirdly-shaped ball you have to get. How healthy they have to be at a time when almost no teams are.
Think about David Tyree catching a ball by pinning it to the side of his helmet. Think about Franco Harris scraping a deflected pass off of his shoelaces and turning it into a game-winning touchdown. Think about the officials overturning a fumble in the snow because of some arcane rule called a "tuck." Think about Scott Norwood and few feet to the right.
Fans get ahead of themselves and daydream about hoisting the Lombardi trophy forgetting about how damn hard it is to win a single playoff game because they don't do any of the heavy lifting. We all want to party like they did in "The Ten Commandments" while Moses was up on the mountain talking to God, but we forget that that when Moses found them worshiping a Lombardi trophy of their own idolatry he melted the thing, mixed it with water, and made his people drink it.
Speaking of Moses, I'm not the first person to mention him this season. Coach Jim Harbaugh has already name-dropped the guy who delivered the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt but never set foot in the promised land.
Even though biblical scholars might disagree , I think what Harbaugh was trying to say was: The job is never finished.
Harbaugh is just wired that way.
Anyone who has followed the Chargers for as long as I have just hopes that some of his insatiable appetite to compete rubs off on the franchise. They will be favored to win against the Houston Texans on Saturday afternoon—a fact that should be welcomed by Chargers fans with an antacid; being favored in the postseason is about as useful as the Sony's rights to make films about Spider-Man's rogues gallery.
This franchise has been favored by the sportsbooks plenty of times in the past and disappointed. Everyone remembers Marlon McRee and 27-0, but do you remember the "Stolen Signals Game," or the Paul Bunyonesque feats of Zach Crockett, or Revis Island intercepting a Philip Rivers pass after it hit every part of a Chargers receiver possible about six different times?
If the Chargers fail to advance today in Houston it would be the sixth time they lost their first playoff game since the team played in Super Bowl XXIX. They were favored in all of them.
If you are unfamiliar then don't fret. We have the CliffNotes version for you.
December 29, 1979. The "Air Coryell" Chargers won the AFC West and hosted a team from Houston who did not have Hall of Fame running back Earl Campbell in the lineup. The 79' Chargers whooped the eventual champion Pittsburgh Steelers 35-7 in Week 12 after crushing the eventual NFC champion Los Angeles Rams 40-16 the month prior.
Without Campbell and starting quarterback Dan Pastorini the oddsmakers made the Lighting Bolts 8-point favorites; playing at home and with the advantage of a bye week what could possibly go wrong?
Everything. Dan Fouts threw five interceptions and no touchdowns. The Chargers out gained the Oilers 380 yards to 259, gained ten more first downs, and lost 17-14.
After the game Paul Zimmerman wrote in Sports Illustrated that the Oilers had stolen the Chargers offensive signals. A forgotten controversy that the Chargers players and coaches gave zero credibility to.
January 8, 2005. Marty Schottenheimer took a last place team that had picked first in the NFL draft to a division title and a home playoff game. As a (-6.5) favorite the Chargers were a trendy dark horse pick to make the Super Bowl. But not only were the 2004 Chargers young and untested, they had to wear the postseason hex of Schottenheimer (5-13 playoff record) around their necks.
After a Jets personal foul for hitting Drew Brees in the head on a 4th-and-goal incompletion gave the team a second set of downs, the Chargers sent the game into overtime with a 1-yard touchdown catch by Antonio Gates with 11 seconds left.
Thinking that a ten year postseason drought was about to end, the rain-soaked crowd in Mission Valley rejoiced. In sudden death the Chargers drove to the Jets 22-yard line on the strength of short completions and runs by LaDainian Tomlinson. This set up Marty to lean conservative; calling three straight plunges up the middle by Tomlinson that gained zero yards against a gassed Jets defense that had been on the field for 39 minutes and 75 plays.
Despite his checkered past of first round flame outs, Marty decided to put the game on the shoulders of a rookie out of Iowa named Nate Keating (more on him later) kicking off a rain-soaked surface. Kaeding missed the 40-yard field goal.
This game also included a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Marty for running onto the field to argue the Jets had roughed up his punter giving the Jets better field position. Five plays later, they scored a touchdown.
January 17, 2010. Schottenheimer was fired after another quick playoff exit in 2006, but the next coach's best team went 13-3 in 2009; riding an 11-game winning streak into the postseason. Their first opponent was the Jets, again, but this time they came to town with a bombastic new coach and a rookie quarterback.
The Chargers were (-9) favorites at home and coming off a bye week. The game is most famous for Nate Kaeding's shell-shocked look captured by cameras late in the game.
Kaeding, who had missed only three field goals all season long and was named to the 2009 All Pro Team, missed all three of his field goal attempts in a 17-14 loss. Truthfully, it should never have come to Kaeding's right foot in the first place. Philip Rivers threw interceptions on consecutive passes; one of which caromed off of Vincent Jackson's hands, hips, ankles and toes before Darrelle Revis scooped it inches away from the turf.
The football isn't round. Off course it would bounce nine times off of a Chargers receiver without touching the ground before being intercepted!
The Chargers finished 4th in scoring (27.5 per game) but Jets coach Rex Ryan flustered Norv Turner all afternoon. The Chargers entered the 4th quarter nursing a 7-3 lead but the game was being fought in the mud—figuratively this time because there was no actual mud.
Rookie Mark Sanchez only threw for 100 yards all day, but two of those came on a touchdown pass to tight end Justin Keller to start the 4th quarter. Soon after that Shonne Green (23 carries for 128 yards) ran over Eric Weddle and broke a 53-yard touchdown run aided by Chargers cornerback Antonio Cromartie—who looked like he thought they were playing flag football in a Mission Beach recreational league.
Cromartie wasn't able to pull the flag, nor make the tackle.
The partisan crowd with a music video produced by Nike featuring Tomlinson and a Greatful Dead fan called "LT Style Electric Glide. " The partisan crowd who danced along in the 3rd quarter would boo Tomlinson's final carry in a Charger uniform when it gained 1 yard.
Wave to your mom.
December 31, 1995. The Chargers were the team "that nobody wanted to play" heading into the 1995 playoffs. The problem? That nobody was named Jim Harbaugh.
The 1995 Colts were not Jim Harbaugh's team--at least not at first. The team had signed Craig Erickson in the off season and named him the team's starter. But after relieving the turnover-prone Erickson twice in the first two weeks, Harbaugh retook the starting job and never let go.
The Chargers team survived a hostile trip to the Big Apple in which quarterback Stan Humphries was the first of many Chargers (players and staff) to leave the game early because of snow and ice being thrown at the players the week before. The win marked their fifth in a row and meant they would host the Colts, a team they had beaten two weeks earlier 27-24 in Indianapolis. Oddsmakers make the Chargers a (-5.5) favorite.
The 1995 Chargers were not only a battle-tested squad who had played in the previous Super Bowl, they were getting healthy at the right time and built for January. But would the defending AFC champions get to play in January?
“We felt like we had nothing to lose, but yet, we’re gonna win.”-Jim Harbaugh
The Chargers had spent the week preparing to slow down former San Diego State Aztec Marshall Faulk.
If you believe in the sort of thing as omens, then it doesn't get much worse than losing your most dynamic player on the first offensive play of the game. Faulk, playing for the first time in Jack Murphy Stadium as a professional, left the game after touching the ball once. He had re-injured his left knee on a muddy field that had been destroyed by the Holiday Bowl played two days prior.
Divots were covered in sand and painted green. Faulk exited his homecoming with a stat line of one carry for 16 yards.
With Faulk and starting fullback Roosevelt Potts out with knee injuries, it was up to a rookie named Zach Crockett to carry the rushing load. Crockett's first carry was met by Reuben Davis in the backfield for a two-yard loss. Crockett, who had only one NFL rushing attempt for no gain in the regular season, was going in the wrong direction.
All of the stars seemed to be aligned for a Chargers victory. Well, maybe not all. That Harbaugh guy had come to play.
Early in the second quarter he capped a drive with a touchdown pass to take the lead. Rolling to his right towards the sideline, reminiscent of Joe Montana looking for Dwight Clark, Harbaugh found tight end Ken Dilger running the back line of the end zone. Even then Harbaugh thought the pass lacked something... aesthetically.
"It's a good thing that the end zone slants down because it's a baseball field," said Harbaugh after the game. "I didn't know if I had put enough height under it."
Later the quarter the Colts caught the Chargers defense with the perfect call on the sloppy field. As the defensive linemen rushed up field Harbaugh gave the ball to Crockett on a draw that he ran 33-yards for a touchdown to cap an 80 yard drive. 14-10 Colts.
The Chargers were about to take the lead back before halftime and would get the ball first in the third quarter when more playoff peculiarity happened.
Two weeks earlier Tony Martin had torched the Colts secondary (10 catches for 168 yards and 2 TDs) and Humphries looked to him again with seconds left in the half. As Martin broke open on a corner route Humphries tried to laser the ball into the end zone. The corner, though beaten, got a finger on the pass as it whipped by his ear hole and past him... and hits Martin in the side of the helmet!
The deflection is caught by late-arriving Colts safety Ray McElroy for an interception. Oy vay!
The Chargers vaunted defense was springing leaks too. In the middle segment the of game Harbaugh's team ran off five possessions that went: TD-TD-punt-TD-TD. Crockett broke four arm tackles on a 66-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter (the longest in Colts history) and finished with 147 yards and two touchdowns on 13 carries.
“Once I got past Junior (Seau) after the cutback, I saw daylight and I knew no one was gonna catch me with the speed that I had,” Crockett said.
Spoken like a man whose name still gives Charger fans indigestion.
As for Harbaugh, he finished 16-27 for 175 yards and 2 TDs. Facing 3rd-and goal late in the game he called his own number. Quarterback draw. Though not the most athletic three-yard run you will ever see, he ducked, and he weaved, and he scored.
Being Harbaugh, he gave everyone he could a high five.
The broadcast team said that he even tried to give Seau one. Unsuccessfully.
The Colts went on to win 35-20 for the franchise’s first playoff victory since 1971. It set up a matchup with Super Bowl favorite Kansas City who held the best record in football (13-3) but were coached by a guy name Marty Schottenheimer.
Ask a Chiefs fan how that one went.
Now you know why I hate premature Super Bowl talk. There are no elevators here. You have to take the stairs.
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Unfortunately, those stairs were too steep yesterday.