Rivers had a hell of a game. He's a top-tier quarterback, but unlike Manning and Brees and Rodgers of late, he stepped up and showed it in this game. He made plays when it counted, and it showed on both the stat sheet and the scoreboard.
Gates is a top-tier tight end, and he too showed it today. The matchup against our linebackers all day was something that should have been fixed, wasn't, and killed us the entire game. Gates against a lot of players is a mismatch. Gates against linebackers is a matchup he should win every time, and he did today.
The Chargers game plan really won the game for them. They played an absolutely brilliant game plan, doing exactly what I didn't want them to do almost every play, and they executed well in doing so. Hats off to both their offensive and defensive coordinators.
Pass blocking was atrocious today. No two ways about it. The edges crumbled almost every time Wilson stepped back to pass, and that can't happen for our offense to be successful. Sure, there were some great plays on offense, and three of the drives were pretty amazing (Harvin's stepping out of bounds notwithstanding), but the rest of the time the pocket simply collapsed and our passing game went straight into the toilet as a result. That can't happen if we expect to win games like that, which we clearly should have.
Unlucky bounces were mindboggling today. Four fumbles in the game and they every single one went San Diego's direction. Forcing fumbles is a learned talent; recovering them is the luck of the draw, and that was about as unlucky of a set of bounces as we've seen for a long time. Not saying it was the reason we lost, but it clearly could have gone the other way.
Wasn't terribly happy with the play calling today. As brilliant as Bevell was last week, he was equally infuriating this week. Calling a Lynch run up the gut on third and a mile was stupid; even if they weren't expecting such a play, there's no way even Lynch takes it the distance needed for the first down. And that punt on 4th and two was a gut-wrencher. Absolutely should have gone for it there. I said so at the time. There was about eight minutes left, the offense was hot and cold, but the defense was not only gassed, but they'd already given up a whole lot of points. Turn that drive into points and it's a whole different ballgame. Punt, and you concede the game.
A lot of players had poor outings today. The Legion of Boom was more like the Legion of Fizz. The linebackers missed a lot of tackles. Bruce Irvin made one of the more boneheaded plays I've seen, and could well have affected the outcome of the day with his absolutely horrific and uncalled-for personal foul penalty. Baldwin had a couple good catches, but overall a poor game. Harvin got lucky with that run that was clearly and obviously out of bounds, even on the initial viewing. How the officials missed that one, I don't know. But other than that gift run, he wasn't very Harvin-like. Lynch was practically invisible, in spite of the TD catch.
A few players actually had very solid games. Wilson actually had a pretty stellar day today. It didn't seem like it, but if you looked at the stat line not knowing what had happened in the game, it'd look pretty damned good. 17 for 25 (68% completion rate), 202 yards, 2 TDs and no interceptions. Not bad at all, until you look at the day Philip Rivers had, which was a lot better than that. Kearse had a pretty solid game with some clutch catches. And Walters had a very respectable outing; better than a number of our other receivers, and especially so considering he's one of the fringe wide receivers.
All in all, a terrible game, and one where we let way too many opportunities slip through our fingers, and allowed even more bad plays to happen. No doubt the weather didn't help, but San Diego was out on the field in the same conditions too, so there's nothing really to say about that. Hopefully a learning experience, and one the team will take very personally.
