SAN DIEGO — They had to go all the way to the West Coast and absorb another gruesome beating from the Chargers, but the Chiefs at least came away from their latest meeting with the AFC West leaders having learned a valuable lesson.
The Chiefs, coming in with a two-game winning streak, dared to believe the worst might be behind them. San Diego schooled them in a 43-14 blowout to never make that assumption.
“There’s always that hope, but that’s the trap that comes with winning games,” Chiefs center Rudy Niswanger said. “That’s the trap you have to avoid coming into games like this. You can’t be thinking that games like this are behind you and they can’t happen again. If you don’t prepare right, they can.” Asked whether the Chiefs didn’t prepare properly, Niswanger said, “I don’t know. Anytime you have a loss like this one, there’s way too many factors involved to say one thing cost us. It’s too complicated an issue for that.” Chiefs coach Todd Haley was similarly disappointed. The 3-8 Chiefs had a rare opportunity to build off wins over Oakland and Pittsburgh but were never a factor once they began committing turnovers.
They gave the Chargers the ball four times. Matt Cassel fumbled once and threw an interception, Jamaal Charles lost a fumble and Niswanger had a shotgun snap go awry.
The Chargers scored three touchdowns directly off the turnovers.
“In the NFL, every week there’s another one coming at you,” Haley said. “I just don’t think we handled that. Whatever it was, whether it was coming off Pittsburgh, I can’t say exactly what it was without putting some more time into it.
“From my vantage point, it was an opportunity to see if we could take another little baby step. We didn’t, clearly. If you turn the ball over, it’s going to get out of hand quick. Then it gets ugly.” Cassel had done a nice job of protecting the ball despite playing under the constant pressure of a heavy pass rush. He came into Sunday’s game with eight turnovers, three of them coming in last month’s lopsided loss to the Chargers.
But he threw an interception that ended a drive in the first quarter and fumbled while being sacked in the second quarter. That ball was caught in midair by San Diego’s Paul Oliver and returned for a touchdown.
“I thought we built a lot of momentum over the last two weeks,” Cassel said. “Obviously today didn’t go exactly as we planned.” Charles’ fumble was the crusher. The Chiefs trailed 14-7 in the second quarter but were threatening, having the ball beyond midfield.
But after a 7 -yard gain, Charles had the ball ripped from his hands.
“I was trying to spin out of the tackle,” he said. “The coaches told me never to spin. He just ripped the ball out. It was about to turn into a good game. We were in a groove. That’s one thing I couldn’t do was fumble. It just got away from us then.
“It was just me. I was running the ball nicely. I should have carried the ball with two hands at all times. I was carrying the ball with one arm. Right now, I’m not strong enough to be carrying the ball with one arm.” And the Chiefs clearly aren’t strong enough to stand up to the Chargers. They lost by 30 points to San Diego last month at Arrowhead Stadium.
They won’t get another chance against San Diego until next year.
That fact might gnaw away at them, particularly if they can win some of their remaining five games.
The Chiefs will desperately want evidence of improvement, but that might be overshadowed by their two ugly losses to the Chargers.
“I’ve seen it before where you have a really high, kind of mountaintop feeling about what you’ve accomplished and it’s so easy to relax,” safety Jon McGraw said. “I don’t know if that’s what happened here, but it seems like every time we did something good, they answered right back.
“We came in here expecting to play well. We had a good week of practice. It’s a hard thing to explain what happened here today.” ——— (c) 2009, The Kansas City Star.
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