Sproles, Scifres prove Chargers are dangerous from all angles
They're not making egregious mistakes. Their defense is attacking opponents, instead of sitting back and waiting for the hammer to come down, and I offer that third-down sack of Manning in the last 2½ minutes of regulation as proof. Plus, Rivers isn't committing the fatal mistakes that handicapped him and the club during a miserable mid-season stretch.
"Is this the team you imagined yourself to be?" I asked Rivers.
"There's no question," he said. "Now, why did it take us so long to get it going? Who knows? It doesn't matter. It's so quick you forget about 8-8. You just head to the divisional round against whomever it is and expect it will be a similar type of game."
And that's why you better be careful of these guys. They haven't lost since a dreadful 22-16 defeat to Atlanta on Nov. 30, their worst performance of the season. Rivers is on a roll, with 11 touchdown passes and two interceptions the past five weeks. And Sproles is the league's best safety net, stepping in for the Chargers as Leon Washington did the Jets -- only with one difference: Sproles is still playing.
"The guy typifies what our guys are all about," Turner said. "[He] fumbles the ball on the [Indy] 2, and when that happened, there wasn't any doubt in my mind that he was going to make a big play that was going to affect this game. It was going to have a major effect on this game. That's what this guy is about and what this team is about."
What Scifres is all about is a lethal weapon that can win the all-important game of field position. For years the Chargers touted him as the best punter in the game, but he keeps finishing behind Oakland's Shane Lechler in the Pro-Bowl voting.
Maybe that changes after Saturday's performance. The Colts could never escape the guy, scoring their only touchdowns after a pair of 86-yard marches. Scifres wasn't just on, he was so electric he may have produced the finest playoff performance by any punter anywhere.
"I couldn't lay down tonight and go to sleep and dream about something like this," he said.
Neither could his teammates. In knocking off Indianapolis for the fourth time in its last five tries -- including the last two playoffs -- San Diego gained something more important than another playoff victory, it found something that was missing for much of the season, and that's cohesion, continuity and, yes, confidence that it can in fact reach the top.
Don't ask the Chargers why. They just know. And they know because they went into Tampa and won a game they weren't supposed to win. Then they obliterated Denver here. Now, Indianapolis.
"When we were 4-8 we were getting asked, 'What's the matter?'" Rivers said. "And it was hard to tell. I don't know. We were just making some mistakes we couldn't overcome. There wasn't just one thing.
"And now there's not just one thing that explains why we've won five in a row. It's just that we're playing well together. We played more complete games in all three phases. Everything has come together, and it's just been unbelievable."
No kidding. The Chargers weren't supposed to be here, but they refuse to go away. So they're 9-8. Big deal. As Rivers said, it doesn't matter. And as Turner's eldest son suggested, the Bolts' playoff run started the moment they lost to Atlanta.
So I guess that makes them 5-0. All I know is they're dangerous, and I wouldn't want to play them -- L.T. or no L.T.
"I think you saw last year how we dealt with injuries," said Rivers, "and we were close. We win the Patriots game, and we're in the Super Bowl with injuries that were probably worse than what we have now.
"Hopefully, Gates is not going to be too, too sore this week, and I don't know about L.T. We know how meaningful they are to our team, but we also know we'll rally. We'll keep going."
The AFC should consider itself warned.
