The agony of defeat

I don't really blog a lot about football during the season out of some retarded belief that if I do, I will jinx things. Kinda like how I do wear my team's shirt on game day anymore. But now that the season is over for the Chargers, I can speak freely.

Did I have some complaints about today's game? Yeah, of course I did. But I'm overall not really disappointed. All of the complaining I did during the season, you'd think I was a fan of a 1-15 team, not a team that won its division and seriously challenged one of the NFL's all time great teams in the AFC Championships. Despite all my whining and moaning, the season was a success.

So here are my complaints:

I wish we would have thrown a couple of jump balls to Vincent Jackson in the end zone when we were in the red zone.

I wish we would have gone for it on 4th down in the 4th quarter on the Patriots 40. You HAD to stop the Pats, it didn't really matter where on the field you stopped them, so why not go for it?

I wish Antonio Cromartie would have just downed the ball in the endzone after picking off Brady. Running it out and getting tackled at the four was not smart. BUT, this is Antonio Cromartie, who has a knack at making big returns, we're talking about, so I'm gonna go ahead and give him the benefit of the doubt.

The timeout situation frustrated me as well. I don't like burning timeouts. But if you are going to use them, couldn't the following play at least be something that justified the time out? Losing yardage on a routine play after a time out is not cool.

And finally, a complaint all year, I wish we were more dynamic. Example: at one point, the Pats lined up three receivers on the right, snapped the ball, and Brady looked to his right for a few seconds, then turned and dumped the screen pass to the left. Simple, yet brilliant, play. It was a great acting job on Brady's part, but it wasn't rocket science. This is stuff we did in sixth grade. It doesn't require a lot of imagination. It does, however, require some imagination. That imagination is what seperates the Pats from the rest of the league.

But on the positive side, the defense, especially the secondary, played great. The run defense faltered in the second half, which was a little unexpected.

I was also impressed with the Chargers discipline. There were no stupid penalties. No stupid false starts. No stupid delay of game penalties. Can't remember the last time a Charger team played this cleanly.

I thought Rivers played a decent game. There were some great passes to the middle of the field, and some horrible ones to the sidelines, as is his wont. But hobbling around like a second coming of Stan Humphries, I gotta say, I was proud of the guy. Rivers has been a grade A asshole for much of the year. His popularity among Chargers fans plunged this year, mainly due to his Ryan Leaf-esque antics at times. Not his play, mind you, but the whining, the dramatics, the yelling at fans, it rubs people, even your own fans, the wrong way. But his performance today went a long way in winning me, for one, back. Now Philip, please don't ruin this by saying something stupid.

Finally, LT. Fuck, man. I feel so bad for the guy. I seriously do. I don't know LT, and maybe he's a rotten dude, but everything, EVERYTHING that I do know about the guy says he's a great person off the field. I mean, seriously, who doesn't like LT? He wore his helmet the whole game, I suspect so no one could see how emotionally hurt he was. It is known that LT is not scared to cry. Yeah, yeah. professional football badass getting emotional, make all the fun you want, but it still sucked to see such a great guy have to sit and watch, knowing there was nothing he could do. That's the only thing I really feel bad about.

So, this probably sounds like a bunch of whining, but I don't mean it to be. I'm proud of the Chargers, and I apologize to Norv Turner for all of the hate I sent his way during the year. We had our chances today, and it just didn't happen. The better team won. Hard to feel bitter about that.

So, uh, when's Spring Training?