A Worrisome Observation

Say what you want about Cam Cameron (I've said plenty myself), but the one thing he did very well was to get consistent positive yardage on first down.

I cannot stress how important this was, and is, for this Charger team. Our great strength is versatility. Cam's first goal was always to get a good four, five, or six yard gain on first down, after which he was free to open up the playbook - and that played right into our strength.

A typical down series for the Charger O under Cameron:

1st down: Run LT, or a short-to-medium quick pass for gain.
2nd down: Anything.
3rd down, if there is one: Run LT, pass to Gates, or QB Sneak/FB Handoff for very short yardage.

With this system, we were usually very close to the top of the league in 3DC, because we only had a few yards to gain for the first.

Over the past few games, we've gone away from this. I don't know if it's the play design, or Philip's overeagerness, but we're shooting for the conversion on every play, it seems. You have Rivers throwing mid-to-long range posts and outs; gone are the quick slants and comebackers for decent first-down yardage that we saw last season. And then, on second and long, you run LT. Of course he's going to get stuffed.

The key to the Charger offense, in my opinion, is second-and-short. In that situation, all the weapons on this offense can be brought to bear, and the defense has to try to defend them all. This is something we haven't done in either of the past two games, and I think that's why our offense is sputtering. Second-and-short enables us to run any play with any player. Second/third-and-long means the defense can blitz with impunity - which is exactly what they've been doing.

I hope this changes for the better.

While the score and turnovers don't show it, I did see more spark at times from the offense tonight than last week.

Rivers' INT that was picked off for a TD by Thomas was during a drive of ours that was really starting to pick up steam. That was shaping up to be another TD for us, but instead turned out be what very well was a 14 point swing.

The offense on our two TD drives looked like vintage 2006 gameplanning that got us an average of 31 ppg last year.

A huge opportunity was missed after recovering Hobbs' kickoff fumble at the Patriots' 30 yard line. The OL breakdowns pushed the team back to midfield and cost the team at least 3 points.

Those two big things turned what could have been an at least more palpable 31-24 loss into a 38-14 blowout.

I think the offense is about 80% where it needs to be and will probably be "healthy" after a hard fought game in Green Bay.

The key is to be more consistent with the playcalling and execution. Execute like we did those two TD drives and everything's good again.

We won last year by not having turnovers. Rivers needs to get his act together and keep possession of the ball above all else.

This game sucked.