Last night on Monday Night Football, the San Diego Chargers beat the surging Indianapolis Colts 19-9. After beating the National Football Conference (NFC) heavyweights, the San Francisco 49ers and the Seattle Seahawks in previous weeks, the Colts looked to pick-up a relatively easy win against the Chargers, who embarrassed themselves the previous week, losing to the Oakland Raiders 27-17. But as ESPN’s Chris Berman says, “That’s why they play the game.”
The Colts have been very impressive since the increasingly puzzling loss to the Miami Dolphins in the second week of the season. Their second year quarterback, Andrew Luck has shown signs of becoming the next come-from-behind specialist. He has 9 late comebacks in his 15 wins so far. In fact, ESPN play-by-play man Mike Tirico seemed to expect another comeback when the Colts took the field late in the 4th quarter down 16-9. But this time the Colts’ Luck ran out. The Chargers’ defense held Luck to only 202 yards passing, which is a very small number in today’s NFL, and no touchdowns, to go along with one interception, which virtually ended the game.
The Chargers are very hard to figure out. They started by blowing a 28-7 lead to the Houston Texans in the first game, and losing 31-28. Although a very strange grazing the center on a field goal penalty, enabled the Texans to continue a drive which had pulled them to within one point, instead it allowed them to take the lead, with the last points of the game. The Chargers lost their 3rd game of the season to the Tennessee Titans 20-17, giving up a 34-yard touchdown pass from Jake Locker to Justin Hunter with 15 seconds remaining. Last week the Chargers committed 5 turnovers to the Raiders. When your turnover margin is -5, you almost never win. However, they beat the Philadelphia Eagles 33-30 in their second game, and defeated the Dallas Cowboys 30-21 in their 4th game.
So the Chargers lost their 1st, 3rd and 5th games, and won their 2nd, 4th and 6th games. Do you see a trend here? I’m sure they won’t continue to lose odd numbered games, and win the even numbered games, but it is ironic. One week they make the Raiders’ Terrelle Pryor look like an elite quarterback, then the next week they don’t allow Luck to even have a touchdown drive. Chargers’ quarterback Phillip Rivers is having a great season considering two of his receivers were out for the entire season very early in this campaign. He is averaging over 300 yards passing per game, and has 14 touchdowns, to go along with 5 interceptions. 3 of those interceptions came against the Raiders.
The Chargers were helped in losing to the Texans by a terrible referee call, gave up a late long pass to the Titans, and had 5 turnovers to lose the Raider game. It seems like this team is very close to making a strong run for the playoffs. But since both of the remaining undefeated teams, the Denver Broncos and the Kansas City Chiefs, are in their division, the Chargers are probably just fighting for a wild card spot. They play each of these teams twice, but it’s pretty unlikely they will win all 4 games.
Yes I know that baseball is currently having their league championship series. The St. Louis Cardinals lead the Los Angeles Dodgers 2 games to one in the National League, and the Detroit Tigers are tied at a game apiece with the Boston Red Sox. But other than the Red Sox David Ortiz’ grand slam to tie the game in the 8th inning of game 2, after the Red Sox went 16 innings scoring only one run, and the fake Dodgers’ bear mascot getting kicked out of the game last night, football has consumed my interest more.
If you would like to have future commentaries sent to you, click on the link below, to take you to my website, then just enter your email address:
Sports With Frank Thomas
