The Fantastic Four
January 17, 2007


I suppose it is OK for me to talk about the NFL in the waning days of non-baseball season.  Four teams left and only one will be happy when the season is done. 

After watching the Chargers lose to the Patriots, there are a few things I can say with certainty.  The first is that no team gets away with cheating more than the New England Patriots do, not even those chop-blocking Denver Broncos.  Don't get me wrong, the Patriots are an incredibly good team, led by probably the best coaching staff in the league and arguably the best QB ever.  But watching Matt Lyght wrap his arm around Shawne Merriman's neck on just about every play with nary a holding call... well, it was pretty clear the ref covering that side of the field was watching the crowd.  And he obviously wasn't watching Teddy Bruschi and half the Patriot secondary mug and/or crawl all over Antonio Gates all day. 

But that is not why the bigger, faster and more athletic Chargers lost the game.  Nor was it Tom Brady's heroics.  It was Marty Schottenheimer's coaching.  Pure and simple.

Schottenhimer had this problem in Cleveland and in Kansas City, too.  Remember all the superbly talented teams he had that also failed miserably in the playoffs.  Remember why?  Dumb mistakes and bad decision making, both in the play-calling and by the players. 

Going for a first down on fourth and 11 with a Pro-Bowl kicker on the sidelines is bad enough.  But what was the most frustrating is how many stupid mistakes the Charger players made.  Unsportsmanlike conduct penalties.  Eric Parker trying to pick up his own fumble on a punt and trying to run with it instead of simply falling on the ball to make sure there isn't a turnover.  Those aren't even rookie mistakes; those are errors are supposed to be in the past by the time one reaches high school. 

Another perfect example: on fourth and 15, Marlon McCree intercepted Brady on his own 20 and tried to run the ball back.  Why?  How fundamentally silly is that?  If he simply knocks the ball down, the Chargers get the ball back at the original line of scrimmage, which was around the 40-yard line.  The Chargers didn't have to do anything at that point in the game to win.  They had an 8 point lead and all they had to do was keep the ball and run time off the clock.  McCree clearly had no sense of what was going on in the game and the Chargers paid a heavy price for it. 

The kind of errors the Chargers made are the kind of errors that good coaching doesn't let happen.  And if this were simply an isolated incident, one might argue that this was just a bad day for a good team or just bad luck.  But Marty Schottenmeimer teams are now 5-13 in the playoffs and it is clear that while his tough attitude works to straighten lost teams out, he does not impart enough game smarts on his players to make them legitimate contenders. 

And how about LaDanian Tomlinson only touching the ball 25 times?  He averaged 5.3 yards per rush (7.48 per touch) and broke off several long runs yet the Chargers "braintrust" thought they would fare better by putting the game in Philip Rivers hands 32 times at 7.2 yards per attempt?  Do those guys simply not understand that math can be useful?