On fourth down, aren’t you better off batting the ball down?
Yes. That would have worked too and, if memory serves, was one of the things I was screaming at the TV.
Damn skippy you are. Matt McCree is going to get fucking lynched in the locker room, and with damn good reason. Any defensive player with half a brain runs a little pre-snap chant through his head when they’re defending a 4th-down play – Knock it down…knock it down…knock it down. Just smack the ball to the ground, and you’ll very likely have better field position than if you picked it off.
Dumbass.
Woot! I was perfect with my picks!
Perfectly wrong, that is…
Neener-neener-neener to all the Bears’ doubters.
Sorry about that. It was immature. But when a ring-challenged tool like Boomer Esaison refers to your favorite team’s QB as the … PARIS HILTON … of NFL quarterbacks, well, you get a bit punchy.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Yeah, he should have batted it down, but you can’t blame a defensive back for acting on instinct and picking off a gimme pass. Instead pat Troy Brown on the back for getting a hand in there to cause a fumble.
His name is Marlon McCree, and he singlehandely turned the Chargers’ defensive backfield from a joke to a solid cover group.
Prior to this season the Chargers’ D-backs were caught out of position about ten times every game. Quentin Jammer and Drayton Florence are both athletically gifted but neither one could cover a tackling dummy. He is the single biggest reason (along with the improvement in their pass rush) why the Chargers’ pass defense has improved so much (from 27th to 13th).
The Chargers outplayed the (argh I hate them!) Pats on both offense and defense and simply handed over the game with two or three moronic (and/or comic) plays.
On the bright side, at least the Colts finally get to knock the Patriots out of the playoffs.
Yes, you can blame him for not knocking the ball down, or for not simply going to the ground once he caught it. But lucky for him, it was only about the 5th stupidest play by the Chargers, so we can’t be too hard on him.
Honestly, I don’t think I can remember a game where a team was playing so well generally, but making so many idiotic mistakes. You don’t try to run with a muffed punt. You don’t take personal fouls after failed 3rd downs, or on freaking extra points. You don’t intercept on 4th down. For that matter, you don’t lay off Tom Brady at the end of the half. I hear he runs a decent two minute offence in that situation.
Jesus, the Chargers should’ve won that game about 31-6.
Great googly-moogly am I glad I didn’t put any money on those games! Man, 1 and 3.
Well, now I have to cheer for the bears just to make sure they lose next week. 
Yeah, pretty much all my predictions were wrong. I wish there were a way I could make money from being so consistently wrong.
Well, I guessed three out of four results correctly. Ignore what I said about Grossman, Garcia, and a Patriots landslide.
I couldn’t have put it any better than this but the analysts are still blaming Marty. I hope that it doesn’t cost him his job but it seems like a foregone conclusion.
Who do they replace him with? Cameron?
Of course, everyone was just waiting to pounce on Marty should the team lose. And while it may be unfair, I can think of a couple of bonehead things Schottenheimer did that hurt the team – none bigger than that crazy second challenge that cost them a timeout. Having that timeout at the end of the game would have increased their chances of getting a last-second tie by about about a thousand percent.
Heh, I felt like I was watching a Giants game. Not only did the Giants make bonehead mistakes like the ones the Chargers were making, but they made the exact same mistakes all season long. Kiwi fumbled an interception he tried to run back, not to mention his collapse-inducing non-sack of Vince Young on 4th and long. Bob Whitfield got called for headbutting personal fouls on 3rd down stops in two consecutive games. Luckily, Coughlin still has a job so us Giants fans can look forward to another year of the same.
No, it didn’t cost you anything, and it’s annoying me that he’s being crucified for that. Matt Light legally advanced the fumble to the 30. Without the personal foul, the Patriots were looking at a 47 yard field goal attempt. Judging by his other kicks yesterday, Gostkowski would have nailed it easily regardless of the personal foul.
The only things to kill Marty about were throwing away two timeouts. The review one was sheer stupidity, and the one wasted coming out of a commercial break was pure ineptitude.
On a personal note, I rolled my eyes when the announcers were slobbering over Merriman’s size and speed. Yeah guys, isn’t it amazing what steroids can do for you?
Hey, don’t kick me when I’m down
Probably true, but he still deserves what he’s getting for it. That was just an astonishingly stupid move, and he shouldn’t get off just because the Pats didn’t convert it to a TD. At the very least he turned the field goal from a tough one into a chip shot, gave the Pats a shot at the end zone, and kept his D on the field for more plays. And say what you will about some of the other plays (I have :)), like the fumbled punt and the INT/fumble, at least those were during the run of the play.
I’m not sure I get this whole “the Chargers played SOOOOOO amazing, except for the stupid mistakes!” vibe that’s coming from some people in this thread. LT was very, very good… but other than the one screen pass, he didn’t break anything, and he had just as many 2 yard runs as 10 yard runs. More than enough to stop drives. Which the Pats did, repeatedly, with the defense holding firm throughout most of the first half despite ALWAYS being up against a short field. The Pats D gave up zero points off of the three turnovers, while the SD defense gave up 14 off of their turnovers. I tend to think that the Gates play that was reviewed/reversed was pretty clearly a catch, turn towards the goal line (“football move”) as two feet come down with control, then self-inflicted fumble, though I can see how semantically you could call it an incomplete pass… and that would have negated another Chargers TD. The Chargers offense, that one crazy LT screen play aside, just did not play well enough to beat the Pats D. This is largely a result of Vincent Jackson displaying an incompetence in catching the football unworthy of a NFL-quality wide receiver, but the Pats apparently realized that and devoted their energies to Gates when possible, so /shrug.
The Pats offense was in no way clicking on all cylinders. The Brady pass to Reche Caldwell at the end of the game was the first throw downfield that he was remotely accurate on; several times he missed wide-open receivers even when he had the time. And he had the time a lot - the vaunted SD pass rush made the Pats keep in an extra pass protector at times, but it didn’t do much more than that, getting credit for two “sacks” that were more “everyone is covered and Brady is scrambling and losing a couple yards” - the sacks were for losses of 4 and 0 yards. The Chargers D-backs played better than I thought they would, but that was also partially a result of Brady being generally off on his deep throws.
I’m not saying this wasn’t a sloppy game… it was, very much so. I am saying, however, that the Pats were just as sloppy as SD on offense, and that they shut down SD on defense to a spectacular degree, particularly given the average starting field position that the Chargers had. (Aside: Both punters had EXCELLENT days. The SD punter was their MVP outside of LT as far as I’m concerned, with 5 out of 7 downed inside the 20. The NE punter, our third of this season, just kept booming them out farther and farther to keep them starting at least on their own half of the field, if barely.) The Pats capitalized on their opportunities to a greater degree than the Chargers, and did so with a one-dimensional offense against a team that supposedly had an unstoppable pass rush. Not unstoppable enough, apparently.
It will be very interesting to see which Pats team (and which Colts team, for that matter, given how they played against Baltimore) shows up next weekend.
True enough but it did take time off of the clock which we could have used at the end.
Excellent point. Marty really did fuck the dog on the timeouts. They could have used those way more that some extra time on that last drive.
My favorite moment of the day came from this bit of repartee from Troy Aikman to Joe Buck (paraphrased):
“Because of field conditions, the team switched from 1/2-inch cleats to 5/8-inch cleats. Uh, which is longer?”
I was laughing too hard to see if the question was even answered.
ACcording to the game log the ball ended up after the penalty, on the 22, which meant it had been advance to the 37 prior to the penalty. Without the penalty it is a 54-55 yard attempt. Much trickier.
Well, look at the Pats’ first two scores in the second half.
For the field goal, they were trapped deep in their own zone, the Chargers stopped them and forced a punt, but the Chargers gave the ball back with the muff. Then the Chargers stopped them again, but gave them the personal foul. Then the Chargers stopped them again, and they kicked the FG.
For the touchdown, the Patriots had free field position from the penalty on the extra point. They did have a couple good plays here as I recall, but then the Chargers stopped them, but gave the ball back with the INT fumble. As has been said, that’s a great play by Brown to strip the ball, but the Chargers DB should never have allowed him that opportunity.
Now obviously there were good plays from the Pats too. The last FG drive, the drive at the end of the first half, the INT on that floaty pass to LT, etc. But I think it’s fair to say that they scored the 11 points above by repeatedly failing to move the ball but then having a Charger go into brain lock and bail them out.
The Chargers got a bunch of turnovers at the edge of field goal range too… and repeatedly failed to get the FG, particularly due to a number of big sacks that effectively denied them points they should have had. Like I said, it was a sloppy game on both sides… but given more opportunities with excellent field position (especially early in the first half, when they could have put the game out of reach very early)… the Pats D kept coming up big and the Chargers D gave up the three points.
Also, the personal foul wasn’t really as big as some are making it out to be, since that would have been a shorter FG than Gostkowski had already made at that end of the field even without the 15 yards (as I believe Ellis mentioned upthread).
It’s not that I don’t think the Chargers contributed to their own downfall… I just don’t think that they really played up to the juggernaut they were supposed to be outside of those errors, either.