Balls: The No-Name Offensive Line: Amazing protection and it looked like these guys have actually heard of downfield blocking. Alexander: 2 TD's, gettin' er done against a good Steeler secondary. Spurlock: Maybe we should have kept this guy all season. Consistently open and knows the concept of getttin' past the sticks. Rivers: No turnovers, 'nuff said. Weddle: Special teams first down, kick coverage, great tackling. D-line and Backers: Kept Rapelisberger uncomfortable all day, supplying pressure. Birds: Norv: You wait until now to get all fuquin' creative. Eff You.
Honestly, why does it take losing 6+ games for the FO to do something about the O-line? Couldn't they tell earlier in the season (or last season, or the year before) that Clary was completely worthless, and that our interior line needed changes? Ball to the players for having heart and talent Bird to the FO and HC for waiting until it's over to fix problems, again.
Balls: The O-Line - For that group, in that town, that may have been the best game played by a scrapped together line ever. DX - Kid can play. Plays very similarly to Floyd. Hope he can stay healthy. Gates - Missed a few somewhat catchable balls early, but made some great catches late. Mathews - Running hard with little room all day. Banging it in there and holding on to the ball. Rivers - No turnovers, got the line in place for protection all day, and made some great throws. Liuget - It will be sad when this guy is overlooked for a pro bowl. One of the best young 3-4 DE's in the league. Got to be closing in on 10 passes blocked down this year, got a sack, and pushed the line all day. Jammer - Pretty solid coverage all day and the smarts to get on that one in the end zone. Weddle - Just all over the place. Possibly the best open field tackler in the league. And a great fake punt. Novack - Just the 5th 50+ yard field goal made at Heinz field. Pagano - Dude has coached this D to ball. I need to find the record for defensive scoring for the Chargers cause this team has got to be getting close to the record. Birds - Norv - Wide receiver screens??? Where have these been? With a bad line these should have been brought out weeks ago. AJ - Its your fault our line was filled with PS players from other teams.
Balls - Rivers Alexander Liuget Cason Weddle Gilchrist John Pagano Pass Blocking Birds - Jammer - Lucky to only have given up 2 TDs....it could have been 4 if not for a bad pass and a drop. Run blocking Gates Norv - It took way to long to break out the 5 yard outs, drags, and screens, you should have done it when we had Eddie Royal idiot.
I want to give a ball to both Hal Hunter and Mike Sullivan. They coached up a bunch of O-line rejects, PS guys, and UDFAs to an excellent game.
I loved what I saw from our D today. The O seemed to be working better. Hell its the Holiday Season, so oop de doop... Give everyone a game ball.
massive Bird to Norv- you waited till December to get creative...........................................
Balls - Pass protection (hats off to Haslam and Wells), Weddle, Front 7 esp when they were a man down on the line and Butler missing, Rivers once he realised he had more than half a second in the pocket, the scared roll outs and throws into the dirt made me wanna puke early on. Novak has made us and the rest of the NFL forget about Nate and his whiffs. Pagano, love his enthusiasm. Alexander and Spurlock, Floyd seems to be an after thought now almost. Birds - Mouton (a street FA gets picked up wed and takes the field in your stead, what a waste of a 2nd round pick again AJ), Taylor (where u at?, a white can't tackler re-tread starts and stays on the field, what the F u doing to not be seeing the field), Norv (the ultimate tease, go GTFO of here), those responsible for deciding Clary and the likes of Green and Gaither were to be our O line. Meachem, for not walking the talk, did not think he was a take the money ala Gaither but seems he is. English for being crap and wearing white sox to his knees.
Balls: GM A.J. Smith – His recent draft picks (Liuget, Reyes, Wright & Gilchrist) free agent acquisitions (Johnson, Alexander, Brown, Spurlock & the replacement O-linemen) really plugged some holes and came through in a big way. HC Norv Turner – Interesting concept: score a touchdown or two in the 2nd half of an NFL game, and the odds of winning it go up dramatically. It was also good to finally see Mathews get 20+ carries in a game for the 1st time in more than a month. DC John Pagano – Our defense is definitely the strong suit on this team, another stellar performance to include our NFL leading (tied with the Bears) 7th defensive touchdown, and a stop of the Steelers on 4th & 1. Whoever our next coach is, Spanos should insist on them retaining Pagano & Bisaccia. Philip Rivers – Another good job with 3 touchdown passes, and no turnovers. Quentin Jammer – 2nd defensive touchdown he’s scored this year, and in his NFL career. Nick Novak - Has been steady & dependable all this season & for most of the last one, his only 2 misses have come from beyond 50 yards this year. Bront Bird – Led the team in tackles, and came up with a timely interception that led to the “put away” touchdown. Danario Alexander – This guy has been a godsend, 2 more touchdowns and a team high 88 receiving yards. Eric Weddle – Another 1st down on a fake punt, aided by a good block by Randy McMichael that allowed us to run another 8 offensive plays and about 5:00 off the clock. Micheal Spurlock – Caught all 7 passes intended for him, solid on kick returns as well. Mike Scifres – 4 of his 7 punts were downed inside the 10 yard line, none of his punts resulted in touchbacks or were returned – if he doesn’t make the Pro Bowl this year, something will really be wrong. Birds: None, it was a decisive win over a quality opponent who is currently fighting for a postseason berth.
A ball for AJ?........ seriously? He's missed more than he's hit the last 6/7 years. No balls for him from me, he's outta here!.
In the last 6 or 7 years, AJ has probably swung & missed more often than he’s hit the sweet spot but in the last 1-2 seasons, he’s made decent selections in the draft and has plugged some holes with effective free agent pickups, as mentioned above. Not mentioned above (only because he didn’t play in this game) was Atari Bigby, and he was also doing pretty good until his season ending injury. Some people "blame" AJ for signing Robert Meachum & Eddie Royal after VJ departed, simply because they have been ineffective. Any NFL GM would’ve signed Meachum this past offseason based on how he had done in New Orleans, and many of them would’ve signed Royal as well. When it became apparent that they were just not working out, AJ effectively replaced them both with Alexander & by bringing back Spurlock, and our offense is much better for him having made those moves. There is talent & dare I say, depth on this team considering the players we’ve had to replace this season, and have still been competitive, especially on defense. If we were completely devoid of talent, we would not be leading at the half of most of our games, or into the 4th Quarter. We have blown alot of leads late because more often than not, our offense (Norv’s supposedly strong suit) just goes to sleep and we can usually only manage a field goal or two in the 2nd half. Other teams are winning more than we are with similar or even lesser talent (the Bucs & Colts are 2 quick examples, and they both have rookie Head Coaches) and Miami has just as many wins as we do, with their rookie Head Coach & QB, and no wide recievers to speak of. Do you honestly think the Dolphins have a similar roster to ours, especially at the skill positions? If we can dominate a team like Pittsburgh at their home, we should’ve been able to beat Cleveland, Tampa or Cincinnati at Qualcomm. If our offense had done anything in the 2nd half at home against the Ravens, it never would’ve even come down to 4th & 29. Better coaching late in games would’ve given us at least 3 or 4 more wins, and with them we’d be right in the hunt for a Wild Card if not having clinched one by now, like the Colts did Sunday with their 9th win. If we play good down the stretch and finish at 8-8 or even 7-9, I would be totally fine with Spanos dismissing Norv, but keeping AJ for at least 1 more season.
I didn't watch the game, (Bal @ Skins was on) but Pittsburgh was playing with a cripple at QB who had no business being on the field. The reason for our epic collapses in these games has been our horrible O-line. Our line is so awful, that street FAs represent an upgrade. That's Smitty's fault.
I did watch the game. Rapelisberger was far from being a cripple. He had a really decent day actually, besides the one bad pass where he didn't seem to see the Birdman. The Steeler defense lost that game for them. They could not get off the field. The other factor was that our front 7 was harassing him all day, though he still managed to elude a handful of what would have been sacks for the majority of qb's by using his sheer size/strength and then running for positive yards. You'll find that no one who actually watched the game, will disagree with this simple assessment.
I’m missing your point – our O-line is good enough for us to score touchdowns in the 1st half of our games, but rarely in the second, and that isn’t a coaching problem? Other teams make effective adjustments during games, especially at halftime but Norv seems completely incapable of doing so. Next season when he has fewer responsibilities because he’s just some other team’s Offensive Coordinator, perhaps he’ll return to leading an offense that that can score in all 4 Quarters of a game if need be.
His point is that AJ Smith has been a terrible GM. Lack of OL depth (and starters) is part of this. Do you really think backup lineman will be able to last a full game like a starter would?
We’ve led at halftime in all but 3 (vs Atlanta, and at Cleveland & Denver) of our games this season. We’ve only scored a 2nd half touchdown in just under ½ (6 out of 13) of our games, and several of those TDs were scored by our defense. AJ’s performance as our General Manager is debatable, and subjective based on one’s own opinion. Even if you think AJ has been a bad GM, it definitely doesn’t excuse Norv’s sustained pathetic performance as our coach. I happen to think that AJ has been a competent, and even a good GM. Just last season, our O-line featured 3 Pro Bowl players so it’s not as if they have all sucked for years on end. I also maintain that if AJ is dismissed this offseason, it is highly likely that some other NFL organization would hire him in the very same role and soon. He’s got about a decade of experience as an NFL GM, and was named Executive of theYear once where as when Norv is fired, he’ll get offers from several teams to coordinate their offense, but he’ll never get another Head Coaching job in the NFL.
I agree AJs performance is debatable. I also agree he'll have no problem getting a GM job somewhere else. But for me it is still time for a change. He's missed and he has hit in the draft. But one of the glaring issues he has is not getting reward for letting go guys we have drafted/found/developed. You can argue about how/when guys were released but the list is long. Brees, Turner, Jackson, Sproles, Chandler... the list goes on. Isn't it interesting to note they are all offensive guys?
I expect the team to lose, and play like ***. If the team surprises me and pulls off a win, it negatively impacts our future opportunities to be better. Why would I want to watch that instead of watching RGIII, who I haven't seen all year, go up against a good defense? Why would the Germans I'm watching football with want to watch the failfest that is Chargers football instead of a game with major playoff implications between two good teams?
Maybe the answer is to not watch it wit ze Germans? For the record, I had the Chargers on my main TV and the Red Zone Channel on my iPad. Yes, I'm a technogeek football junkie.
I suppose I could be antisocial and sit in my bar at home and drink myself into a coma while watching the game, but that runs counter to my fitness goals.
The Ministry of Truth gave us: "WAR IS PEACE" "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY" "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" Now Ikeman adds: "IT TAKES A LOT OF LOSING TO BE A WINNER" (Thinks the team is crap, doesn't watch the games, lives in Germany, yet posts here ceaselessly...and, sadly, is still better than 50% of the teams actual fans)
