INGLEWOOD – If you are a Charger, or a Charger fan, it only gets more difficult from here.
Read more Chargers sink to 0-2 after lackluster loss to Raiders
And from the outside, given the performances of the past two weeks – and, essentially, the idea that they’ve squandered one-fourth of their home schedule with a pair of games that were ineffective at best and in some ways closer to horrendously inept – this season’s path already seems wobbly.
It is, in fact, trending dangerously toward being a lost season, and nothing the head coach or quarterback has said after these two games engenders any confidence that this is going to turn around soon.
To recap, the Chargers were embarrassed by Arizona in their opener last week. Sunday, against the team that used to be here years ago – and still has a hold on the hearts of thousands of Southern Californians – the Chargers looked clumsy, disjointed and unfocused, again, in a 26-14 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders.
Next week they play at undefeated Buffalo, which is 2-0 and has outscored opponents 77-62 in its first two games. From there, they get the defending Super Bowl champs in Seattle, play Denver at home and play at Kansas City. By the time they play the Rams on Nov. 1, following a bye week, they could be 0-6.
Platitudes (and we’ll get to those) aren’t going to help.
Consider this span of three bizarre plays late in the fourth quarter Sunday, with the Raiders clinging to a 17-14 lead and the Chargers, somehow, still in position to overtake them:
On a third-and-7 play at their own 40 with 4:49 left, Justin Herbert was sacked and fumbled, but teammate Tre’ Harris recovered for a 6-yard gain. Then, going for it on fourth-and-1 at the 46, they caught a break from the opponent’s inattention when the Raiders were penalized for having 12 men on the field.
And then, with a first-and-10 at the Raiders’ 48, Omarion Hampton had the ball stripped from him by Nakobe Dean. Raiders safety Jeremy Chinn scooped it up and returned it 43 yards to the Chargers’ 16, and three plays later, Vegas went in front 24-14 on Kirk Cousins’ third touchdown pass of the game.
But this week was another cavalcade of Chargers’ miscues. There were back-to-back false starts by tackle Joe Alt inside their own 10 early in the second quarter. And a shotgun snap on a third-and-1 play from their own 32 in the third quarter that glanced off Harris as he was going in motion; Herbert recovered that one, but the Chargers had to punt.
Again, just as a week ago, they played as if they were unfocused: Eight penalties for 45 yards, including three false starts (all by Joe Alt), three holding penalties (by Rashawn Slater, Kayode Awosika and Alt, the latter in the end zone and leading to a safety on the Chargers’ final possession), an illegal use of the hands penalty (Cam Hart) and an illegal formation on their next-to-last possession.
There were six fumbles; they recovered five and the lost one led to the Raiders’ touchdown noted above. Herbert was 15 of 27 passing for 192 yards, was intercepted twice, was sacked three times and had a quarterback rating of 59.5. (His opposite number, Cousins, had a 113.1 rating after throwing for 253 yards and three touchdowns).
And this offense that was supposed to be more dynamic under Mike McDaniel? It’s averaging 14 points a game. That’s not going to get it done.
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So, how does a team respond? Publicly, at least, with clichés substituted for solutions.
“If we’re not playing up to our standard, that’s on us to fix that,” Herbert said. “It’s just on us to be better, to know what we’re capable of doing, doing our job and making sure that we’re putting our best product out there.”
I asked him if there was any anger over this inability to meet the standard.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it’s not good enough, and there’s a group full of grown men that can handle their job and they’re gonna do everything they can to correct it and fix it, and we’re gonna stick together and it’s tough. No one wants to lose two games, but there’s nothing we can do about it now, so we gotta get better and fix them.”
At least Herbert this time didn’t use the word “execute” in every other sentence, as he has tended to do at other times. It’s likely that he’d never heard of the quip from decades ago by John McKay, the late USC coach, who, when asked about his team’s execution, deadpanned, “I’m all for it.”
Head coach Jim Harbaugh’s responses to similar questions sounded similarly bland: “We’ll look at the tape, we’ll go back to work. That’s all I know how to do, that’s all we know how to do … find our way, find the way and we’ll move forward. It’s a one-week league, and that’s the only thing I know to do.”
You’re not expecting game plan secrets in these postgame sessions, but something stronger, or at least more substantial, would be nice. Like, for example, this from offensive lineman Slater:
“I mean, I’d be lying if I said we look totally prepared out there. … You look at the plays and it’s not all just the system. It’s technique, technical errors, stuff like getting lined up. It’s all kinds of errors.”
Or this from linebacker Daiyan Henley:
“If this was 0 and 5 or 0 and something, yeah, we can talk a little bit more about it. But I don’t think we’re frustrated at all. I think we’ll just motivated to get to next week. I mean, when you lose a game, you just want to get that feeling out of you where you want to get to the next game.
“… We all understand where we are in the season. And I mean if you go look back at past teams, there’s plenty that have started off slow and got to where they want to go at the end of it. So if that says anything about what we can do right here with these guys and what we have in this locker room, that is what we are right now.”
Given that the chances of an 0-2 team making the postseason seem pretty minuscule, perhaps that is (or at least should be) the theme in the Chargers’ building going forward: Show the so-called experts, and beat the odds.
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(And if they do and it works, why, you’re welcome.)