The Vintage & Handmade Market It's been said before-from August through December you need to be good, but in January, you need to be great. The Chargers got that backward. Fourteen and two, who gives a shit? Zero is what matters now. In January, you lose and you play basketball. And while the Chargers are boning up on their dribbling skills, let's all prepare ourselves for the off-season opining that always comes in the wake of catastrophic sport disappointment. I know what's gonna get talked about, and I don't want to hear most of it.
Here's the first bit of rumination I don't want to hear a single thing about: Marty Schottenheimer's job could be in jeopardy. I don't believe that's true, but if it is, it's preposterous. Marty Schottenheimer is the fifth winningest head coach in NFL history. He has 200 regular-season victories. Ponder exactly what that means for a moment. If you won 10 games a year, it would take you 20 years to reach Schottenheimer's milestone. The fact is, players make plays, or fail to. Schottenheimer didn't throw a single block, or make a single tackle, or run for a single yard this season. His players did those things. All he did was organize the deepest pool of talent in the league and instruct them in a system that led them to 14-2 with 10 consecutive victories, a perfect home record and the best overall record in the team's history. Sez me: Schottenheimer's job is secure, and if it isn't, it damn well should be.
I also don't want to hear anyone say anything about whether the Chargers would have been better off to hang on to Drew Brees and put Philip Rivers on the trading block. People who opine thus are unqualified to even watch professional football, much less speak about it publicly. Drew Brees is a tenacious competitor. Drew Brees is ultra-disciplined and ultra-tough. Drew Brees is extremely bright and makes consistently good decisions. Drew Brees is a strong leader. These things are true, but Drew Brees is also short, a bit on the slow side and has a questionable arm. Period. Quote me. Like Brees, Philip Rivers is also tenacious, competitive, studious, disciplined and a strong leader. Unlike Brees, he's 6-foot-5 and has a phenomenal arm, a cannon actually, and as quick a delivery as any quarterback in the game. Barring anything unforeseen, he should lead the Chargers to a championship eventually, and he should be here until he's 40.
Lastly, I really don't want to hear anything about Sunday's clambake at the Qualliseum that begins with the word “if.” I can already hear some such crap in my head: If Drayton Florence didn't do something stupid; If Marlon McCree didn't try to run with the ball after that interception; If the Chargers hadn't gone for it on fourth and 11-yeah, well, if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass when he hops. All those things happened and many more, and put together they were enough for the Chargers to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory via a deplorable performance in front of a record home crowd. They should be embarrassed if they're honest with themselves.
The one topic I'm willing to entertain some pondering upon is this: Were the 2006 Chargers really all that good in the first place? Now that's an interesting question. On the one hand, I'm inclined to answer, “You bet they were.” After all, numbers don't lie. This is a team that lost only two games during the regular season by a combined six points. It's a team that won five of six games in its own division, a team that had the league's leading offense and its most intimidating defense. It's a team that fielded the league's MVP, LaDainian Tomlinson, whose record-setting season was accomplished behind a starting offensive line whose combined members missed only one game to injury. So they were mighty good all right.
But on the other hand, were they really that good? I'm sort of inclined to answer, “Well, obviously not.” Getting back to the original subject of this little rant, good is sufficient all the way through December. But in January, good don't feed the bulldog. Last Sunday there was a starving, snarling, slobbering, ugly dog running around Mission Valley, and the Chargers didn't toss it a single scrap. Defensive end Luis Castillo said everything that needed to be said right after the debacle. He told some pinhead from KFMB, “We, as players, failed to execute on the field.” That was a refreshing thing to hear from the classy Castillo, and he was absolutely right. They failed to execute, which, by definition, means they weren't that good-at least not good enough, not when they needed to be.
The Chargers are still a young football team. With very few exceptions, their playmakers are all under contract. Whether or not they can be that good this time next year is entirely up to them. They have all the tools to be. They could be. They should be. All they must do is grow up. In football terms, a year is a long time. It's more than long enough for this team to grow up so that next January it doesn't repeat the asinine, inexcusable, immature buffoonery it displayed on Sunday. Humiliation is a powerful motivator, and I certainly hope every single member of the Chargers team is humiliated. I don't know how they couldn't be. They got spanked by a decrepit assemblage of used-to-be's right in their own house. That's humiliating.
So let's wait and see. Let's not talk about the stupid things that do nothing but display one's willingness to talk about anything just to make silly conversation. Let's accept that we have once again sojourned into the long, bleak gap that separates January from August. We just need to wait it out. And while we're waiting, the Chargers need to get themselves back to work. They need to knock some edges off themselves through a hard growing-up process. God, this is going to be a long off-season.
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