San Diego Chargers Football Team

We're at the point where any San Diego Chargers victory can be summarized in two words. This goes back to Nov. 19, when between updates I saw a 24-7 San Diego deficit against Denver turn into a 35-27 Chargers victory and I text-messaged a friend to ask what happened. My buddy's reply: "LT happened." Flash-forward to Sunday, when the Chargers had to deal with a strong Oakland Raiders defensive effort, a shaky performance by quarterback Philip Rivers and a 14-7 Raiders lead in the fourth quarter.

Sure, he's among the NFL's elite quarterbacks, but San Diego's Philip Rivers in some ways is just another click in the crowd. He's one of the people who have clicked their way to more than 56,000 viewings of a highlight video of former Fresno State running back Ryan Mathews, the Chargers' first-round draft pick. It's clear that Rivers cannot wait for the season to begin. Of all the changes in San Diego this season — and there are many — the change at running back from LaDainian Tomlinson to Mathews will be the most scrutinized.

The picture has been there for the last five years, amid the ever-changing kindergarten art that adorns Kelly Kruse's refrigerator door. Kind of strange, really, as Kruse now admits, but the frozen moment from a postgame reception at the University of Notre Dame features Kelly and her sister Laura with their arms draped over the solid shoulders of football player Rodney Culver.

Four decades after Broadway Joe Namath brashly predicted the New York Jets would beat the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III -- and then came through on that guarantee -- Rex Ryan's Jets have quietly pushed their own pile of chips to the middle of the table. In an itinerary for his players that somehow was obtained by the media, Ryan had set aside Feb. 9, two days after the Super Bowl, for a celebration through the middle of Manhattan. In a divisional playoff game today, under threatening skies, the San Diego Chargers plan to rain on Ryan's premature parade.

Linebacker Junior Seau stalked off the field, removed his helmet and hurled it to the turf. Then he carried his tantrum to the Charger defensive coaches. "We weren't getting a sack," Seau said. "I couldn't believe it. We should have put more pressure on the quarterback. I'm telling them, 'Blow off the scheme we're using and do something else. Do what we've practiced.' "We were losing, I'm frustrated and I'm thinking, 'Do something more, Junior.' " It was an exhibition game.

You've been to the mall and maybe you've seen a young mother toting a crying baby, pushing a stroller with a screaming toddler, and at the same time trying to keep track of a rambunctious youngster. Or, maybe you've seen Chuck Clausen at work on the Chargers' practice field. Clausen has been hired to babysit Leslie O'Neal, Burt Grossman, Joe Phillips and several more big lugs who are employed as defensive linemen by the Chargers. Good luck.

The best player in the NFL is right down Interstate 5, but the view is blocked by a big head 3,000 miles away. The best player in the NFL speaks in a soft voice, but even when you're nearby he's drowned out by the cacophony generated from the other side of the country. Two men were standing a few yards from the BPITN as he practiced the other day, but he wasn't the subject of conversation. "What do you think of T.O.?" one said to the other. "He's an idiot," was the reply.

Picture a boy in the sixth grade. His mom packs his lunch and scoots him off to the first day of school. He is big for his age. He is deaf in one ear, having had tumors removed. He also has a cleft palate--a harelip, someone cruel would call it--that affects his speech. The boy goes to class. Looks around. Suddenly realizes that he has been placed with the children who are partially or severely retarded. Why? Because he talks funny. Blaise Winter, 11, runs home to his mom, crying. Blauvelt, N.Y.

Eugene Klein, the combative and colorful former owner of the San Diego Chargers who never won a major event in sports until he turned to thoroughbred racing, died early Monday, apparently after suffering a heart attack at his Rancho Santa Fe home. Klein, 69, a native New Yorker who made a fortune on the West Coast in diverse business ventures ranging from automobile sales and real estate to movie production and book publishing, was stricken at his home at 3:50 a.m.

With anger at the Chargers and scorn for Los Angeles, city officials here Wednesday vowed an immediate, vigorous and multifaceted legal challenge to a lawsuit filed by the Chargers that appears a precursor to a potential move to Los Angeles. At a City Hall news conference, Mayor Dick Murphy and City Atty. Casey Gwinn said they found the timing of the suit outrageous, the issues meritless and the venue scandalous.

Breaking down the San Diego-New York Jets matchup in the AFC divisional playoffs: No-fly zone This game pits San Diego's outstanding pass offense and New York's smothering pass defense. A matchup to watch is Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis on 6-foot-5 Vincent Jackson , who's six inches taller. But Jackson is quick to say that height differential between receivers and defensive backs is often an exaggerated edge. He says he can count on one hand the number of jump-ball fades the Chargers have thrown in recent years, passes that can take advantage of those size mismatches.

For all of Sunday's surprises -- Oakland stunning Cincinnati, Kansas City shocking Pittsburgh, Detroit and Cleveland in a 75-point shootout -- there was one development NFL fans could see coming a mile away: The slow-motion collapse of the Denver Broncos. Just like last season, the San Diego Chargers delivered the roundhouse that sent Denver to the canvas, this time claiming the outright lead in the AFC West with a 32-3 thumping at Invesco Field. Denver might have looked virtually invincible last month when it got off to a 6-0 start and built a 3 1/2 -game division lead, capped with a win at San Diego.

The temperature is expected to be in the mid-20s for today's divisional playoff game at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field. For the San Diego Chargers, however, the forecast calls for hot, hot, hot. Hot read after hot read, that is. Those are the adjustments a quarterback makes at the line of scrimmage when he gets a look at the defense. He sees an opportunity, designates the "hot" receiver, and hits him with a short pass or screen to neutralize a blitz.

When Marty Schottenheimer walks into a room, you know you're in the presence of a football coach. When Norv Turner walks into a room, you ask him whether he's finished doing your taxes. When Schottenheimer's 2006 San Diego Chargers stormed into the playoffs with a 14-2 record, you wondered how they could possibly be one and done.

The pass is complete -- inexplicably, unbelievably, surrealistically complete. The San Diego Chargers have passed the Denver Broncos for good. Written off weeks ago as an NFL also-ran, the Chargers rewrote a bit of league history Sunday by becoming the first NFL team to make the playoffs by overcoming a three-game deficit in the last three weeks of the season.

SAN DIEGO -- The rematch is here. But is the thrill gone? What looked before the NFL season to be a circle-the-date shootout between 2007 AFC finalists -- the New England Patriots and San Diego Chargers -- now bears a closer resemblance to a showdown of the shoulda-beens. The Patriots, although they've lost only one game, have yet to prove they still belong among the league's elite teams.

Hide the women and children. No, that's not right. Jim McMahon already has a wife, Nancy. And they have three children. Nancy is a saint. She lives with McMahon. Every day. Their kids are the joy of Jim McMahon's life. Golf is his favorite sport. Chicago is still his city of preference. And playing quarterback in the National Football League is his passion. When football is not in season, McMahon can't get back to the privacy and creature comforts of his home fast enough.

The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the only recourse for John Hendy, a San Diego Charger cornerback who suffered a career-ending knee injury, is the injury benefits offered by the state workers' compensation system. Hendy blamed the injury on negligence by a team doctor.

SAN DIEGO -- Their heads still spinning from consecutive fourth-quarter flurries by Carolina and Denver, the San Diego Chargers tonight play host to a quarterback whose comebacks are the stuff of legend. That laser-armed Lazarus is New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre, who has a 5-0 record in his career against the Chargers, with all of those belt notches coming when he was playing for Green Bay. If there's a comeback-minded team in this game, though, it's the Chargers.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- Throughout the NFL season, quarterback Tom Brady carried his New England teammates when they needed him most. Sunday, it was the rest of the Patriots who did the lifting. With a trip to Super Bowl XLII at stake and NFL history hanging in the balance, the Patriots relied on their stout defense and clock-burning running game to beat San Diego, 21-12, turning back an inspired effort by the banged-up Chargers.