<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
It hurts me to write that, but at this point I don’t see any other explanation. <\/span>They’ve been close games, yes, and we haven’t been helped by the refs, true, and there have been serious injuries, horrible injuries, verily—but the Bolts are now 4-8, the same record as my beloved 49ers. <\/span>That’s not the company they were hoping to keep at the beginning of the season. <\/span>I’ll do my best to walk you through one of the stranger days we’ve had in San Diego; as always, this column contains uncredited and unappreciated comments from Ryan “Leaky Pipes” Thies, JJ “Ugh” Fiddler, and Shar “My Wife” Higa.<\/span><\/p>\n 1. On the way into the stadium today—this is not a joke—the man who scanned my ticket looked me right in the eyes, with a middle-aged man’s piercing gravity, and said with no trace of irony or levity, “Good luck.” <\/span>Pipes’ ticket-scanner told him, “Let’s get a win today.” <\/span>The air of half-fear, half-determination draped over Qualcomm is disturbing. <\/span>Let’s bring the swagger back.<\/span><\/p>\n 2. Side note—should the Chargers ever get a new stadium, I hope they don’t fire their concessions buyer. <\/span>They have the best hot dog buns in the world: they never break, and they’re not too absorbent so they don’t get completely saturated with ketchup. <\/span>Sorry. <\/span>Can you tell I don’t really want to talk about this game?<\/span><\/p>\n 3. Crazy Cape Guy is here. <\/span>If you’ve seen him in the ‘Myd or at CIF basketball finals, you know who I’m talking about. <\/span>I try to interpret him as a good omen, and fail.<\/span><\/p>\n 4. Failing pretty miserably at everything we’ve tried to do, and down with 9:17 in the second quarter, the impossible happens. <\/span>Pipes is the ultimate “Yeah, but…” fan—make an argument about how bad a team he likes is and he’ll counter with, “Yeah, but…” <\/span>That doesn’t prevent him from turning to me and saying with utter seriousness, “I just gave up on this season.” <\/span>The next play we get a false start. <\/span>Two plays after that Rivers is flagged for intentional grounding in the end zone, giving the Falcons two points. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 5. The air went out of the crowd after that safety—you could feel things turning ugly. <\/span>Fans were chanting, “Marty! Marty!” and demanding that everyone from Norv to LT to Rivers to the whole defense be replaced.<\/span><\/p>\n 6. Pipes starts to refer to making a big mistake as “Plaxico-ing yourself.” <\/span>I like.<\/span><\/p>\n 7. Here’s a great indication of where these two teams are: in the second, with the game still competitive, there are a total of eight Falcons sitting on the bench; with the 11 on the field, that means that 36 of their players are standing up and watching the game, some of them cheering their team on. <\/span>By contrast, there are a total of eight Chargers watching the game, and literally 36 guys on the bench, heads hung. <\/span>Ugh.<\/span><\/p>\n 8. The Finneran fumble call is the first great call we’ve had break our way this year—that was not even remotely a catch, but it was nice to put the points up on the board.<\/span><\/p>\n 9. Speaking of points—our scoring drives were for a total of 55 yards, none started in our own territory, and all were off turnovers. <\/span>At the beginning of the season the offense looked good and the defense was porous. <\/span>Now the D has shored up a bit (though still no pressure on the QB, and Matt Ryan looked god-like) and the O is anemic, gaining barely 200 yards.<\/span><\/p>\n 10. Norv going for two after that Weddle fumble TD was a horrible call. <\/span>He Plaxico-ed his team pretty hard on that one. <\/span>I don’t know of a high school coach who would’ve put the season on the line right there—I challenge you to find an NFL coach more affected by the fans than Norv. <\/span>He just wants to be liked. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 11. We walked out of the Q after the loss to the sound of Evanescence’s “Wake Me Up,” which they played after the last loss, too. <\/span>“Save me from the nothing I’ve become?” <\/span>Ouch, sound guy.<\/span><\/p>\n 12. When all is said and done—a bitter crowd, hurled beer, screamed profanity, playoff hopes eliminated, 24 rushing yards on 14 carries for LT, a blocked field goal attempt, failure in every phase of the game—here is what this game was about. <\/span>It was about coming to the Q, and sucking the last drops of hope from the marrow of this season. <\/span>For about fifteen minutes of gametime, the playoffs still looked possible. <\/span>Now that they’re not, I’ll savor those moments, the last sweet seconds of hoping for salvation in 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a loss at home to the Falcons drops the Bolts to 4-8, we wonder: are we just bad?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5227"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5227"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}