The Chargers are celebrating their 50th birthday this year, with artistic help from NFL Films. At a cinema near the team's homefield, History of the San Diego Chargers will hit the big screen Wednesday. The film runs 85 minutes, most of them packed in blue-and-gold splendor.
Chargers general manager A.J. Smith likes a good movie as much as the next person. But if there's another script in years ahead, he's as intense as Martin Scorsese about how it should read.
Cut to the Bolts raising the Lombardi Trophy.
"Until you hold it," Smith said, "you're nothing.
|
|
| The Chargers are hoping for a return to superstardom for LaDainian Tomlinson this season. (AP) |
The Vikings and Bills aren't the only franchises to field teams that seemed capable of winning a Super Bowl yet somehow never did.
The Chargers won the American Football League championship in 1965, but as an NFL franchise, they are 0-for-11 in final games of a postseason. They've reached the playoffs in four of the past five years without advancing to the Super Bowl.
San Diegans surf in the winter and get their snow by going to nearby mountains, so outsiders probably have little sympathy for the Chargers, or their flip flop-wearing fans, when winter heartbreak arrives.
Smith is an East Coast guy who grew up in Rhode Island, played semi-pro football in Massachusetts and began his NFL career as a scout for the Giants. In Buffalo, he worked 14 seasons in scouting with the Bills and took over the Chargers in April 2003 after his friend and mentor John Butler died of cancer.
Like those who say brutal winters "build character," he talks of how being "playoff hardened" might someday give the Chargers the extra boost.
"You have to go to the playoffs on a regular basis, experience the torment and pain of the different levels of the postseason," he said. "We've been banging around at all different levels and gaining experience.
"I hope that eventually, if we get in there again, that our guys can be playing better, maturing, growing, getting good, staying healthy, then look around at each other and say, 'Gentlemen, how many times do we have to be in these things? We need to get it done.'"
The AFC West looks like a pillow fight, so the Chargers should win their fourth division title in a row, although their non-conference schedule is daunting. Several of San Diego's key players, notably running back LaDainian Tomlinson and former sackmaster Shawne Merriman (assuming his legal issues are resolved), are far healthier than they were last year. Hired by Smith, who fired Marty Schottenheimer after both of his playoff teams were upset at home in a playoff opener, Norv Turner is 3-2 in his two postseasons as Chargers coach.
"We know we have a very talented football team," Turner said Saturday after cutting the roster to 53. "In all three phases, we have diverse players, so we can attack you in a lot of ways."
Anyone who watched a Chargers pass defense that ranked 31st last year might laugh at talk of San Diego getting past Tom Brady or Ben Roethlisberger if they meet this winter. The not so funny thing was, Chargers defensive backs say they actually were as clueless as they looked. Especially when running "cover 4," which assigns each back to a quarter of the field.
"We weren't disciplined last year and it didn't get us anywhere," said cornerback Quentin Jammer. "We were kind of doing our own thing. A lot of it had to do with how it was being coached to us. There was a lot of gray area. It confused the safeties. It led to busted coverages."
Turner hired Bears secondary coach Steve Wilks after last season, reuniting him with Ron Rivera. A former Bears defensive coordinator, Rivera had taken over San Diego's defense midway through last season after Smith fired Ted Cottrell.
"Ron has done a great job of taking the confusion out of the defenses," said Jammer, who's entering his eighth NFL season. "It should make it a lot better -- because we have the talent. It was just a matter of playing coverages right.
"Most of the time, we weren't."
LonghornsUnite! 
