Whooooooooooo!
That's the sound of relief coming from thousands of Patriots fans who know we are extremely lucky to have at least one more week to our season.
Let's just get it out of the way. The Patriots did not look like the better team yesterday in San Diego. The Chargers were bigger and faster, and they were fired up. The crowd was fired up. I kept waiting for that one play that would bring on the onslaught. It was coming. The dike was about to break.
After five minutes, I was despondent. My phone started ringing with gleeful taunts of impending doom. I threw my hat against the wall and told my wife to leave the room. The dog took cover under the coffee table in the corner.
To recap: Tom Brady went 27-for-51 with 2 touchdowns and 3 interceptions. (That's a 57.6 quarterback rating just in case your head isn't equipped with a calculator that computes the most ridiculous stat in all of sports.) He often seemed confused, and The Brady Face made several unwelcome appearances.
The Patriots rushed for 51 yards on 21 carries, a 2.4 average with their longest rushes a pair of seven-yard jaunts by Kevin Faulk in their keep-the-game-close-and-take-the-momentum TD drive to end the first half.
Oh, and LaDainian Tomlinson was absolutely unstoppable in the first half. He was all-world. He was all-galaxy. He could never play another game in his life and still get my non-existant vote for the Hall of Fame. He was that good. (I'm giving him a pass on the bitching about the Pats' celebration after the game. He's pissed. That's okay. But, for the record, that's what you get for having Shawne Merriman on your team.)
The bottom line is that there is absolutely no way the Patriots should have left Southern California with anything better than a 45-14 pasting by the clearly superior San Diego Chargers.
But the dike never broke. Possessions kept on coming and going, and the Pats were still in it. I couldn't shake the feeling that it was all going to end very badly, and even started entertaining the "well, I'd rather lose to L.T. than Peyton Manning" line of pre-defeat.
But it never happened. And when the clock struck triple-zeroes, I couldn't believe it. I was dancing and smiling. I gave my wife a pat on the ass. Way to go, baby. One more week.
New England 24, San Diego 21.
A day later, I'm still trying to put in perspective.
The first inclination is to just point the finger at Marty Schottenheimer. He has a reputation as a notoriously bad playoff coach, and nothing screams choke more than a 14-2 team going one-and-done in the playoffs.
But I don't think that really fits the bill here. At least not entirely.
Was it Marty's fault his defense dropped a sure pick deep in NE territory that could have blown the game open from the start?
Was it Marty's fault that, after Tomlinson's second touchdown to put the Chargers up eight with under nine to go, Shane Olivea got called for a idiotic personal foul that forced the ensuing kick-off to be kicked from their own 15?
Was it Marty's fault a clinching interception on fourth down was then fumbled and recovered for a Patriots first down?
Was it Marty's fault kicker Nate Kaeding missed the game-tying 54-yarder?
Can you really blame Marty for any of this?
Well, to some degree, yes. Maybe not the fluke plays, but certainly the end result had Marty's ligature marks all over it.
First, Tomlinson was absolutely tearing the Pats up in the first half. He was so much faster than anybody else, he should have been fed the ball like Herman Edwards fed Larry Johnson. No possession should have gone more than two plays in a row without LT getting a touch. He should have had 30 carries and another 12 catches (just like Jimmy Johnson said in the Bears/Saints pre-game, by the way).
Instead, L.T. had only 23 rushes and an abominably low two catches. How does that happen? In six second-half possessions, Tomlinson had only 9 carries. What's worse is they only threw the ball to him once in the second half, and that was intercepted by Rosevelt Colvin. How do you not throw the ball to Tomlinson more than once in the second half of a one-score playoff game? It's completely inexcusable, and a fireable offense in its own right.
There were other coaching mistakes, as well. In the first half, the Chargers went for it on 4th-and-11 from the Pats' 30 instead of going for a 48-yard field goal. Philip Rivers got sacked, and the Pats finally got some decent field position. They had been set back on their own 10 and seven in their first two drives and couldn't do anything. The good field position turned into a 3-0 Pats lead and let them off the hook for a very shaky beginning.
On the pick-fumble play, it was a clear call. There was no reason to challenge and waste the timeout. That came back to haunt them big-time in the end. Horrible challenge.
And the two-minute drive featured poor decision-making in the short pass to Antonio Gates on 1st-and-10 from the SD 39 with 40 seconds left. They didn't spike the ball until there were 24 seconds left. That's 16 seconds for four yards. (You can say that was on Philip Rivers instead of the staff. I obviously don't know what the play-call was. At the same time, why was Gates only four yards from the line of scrimmage? Shouldn't he have been 25 yards down-field? Isn't he the best TE in the game?)
Add it all up, and Marty has once again earned his place in the pantheon of NFL head chokers. He may even be the dean of the club after that performance, with a six-game postseason losing streak and 5-13 overall record. (And quotes like this don't help, "At the end of this situation, we ran out of time, that's what happened. We ran out of time. Now, from a practical standpoint, we turned the ball over four times and you can't do that and expect to win." Really? Is that what happened?)
With all that said, there is another side to the Chargers' loss: the Pats just took it from them.
It doesn't matter how many times a team tries to give you the game if you don't have the balls to step up and take it. The Pats were belted in the mouth in the first half, and still came back with the late TD to bring it back to a four-point deficit. It certainly wasn't pretty, but it showed some serious gonadical fortitude.
As a Pats fan, I know how much people hate hearing about the "Brady mystique" or whatever. I can understand that. But there's got to be something there. When the Chargers were about to go up 21-13, I still felt okay about things because I knew Brady could make the play when the team needed it most. I just knew it. And if I knew it, you know the rest of the offense knew it. The defense knew it. The crowd knew it. Phil Simms knew it. Everybody knew it. AND IT STILL HAPPENED. How many athletes ever reach that peak of performance?
But it wasn't just Brady. The staff did a hell of a job adjusting to the Chargers' pressure, effectively making Merriman a non-factor in the second half. Think about that. The guy had 17 sacks in 12 games and he was basically a non-entity at the end. Brady drove for the winning score from the safety of the pocket, and that's thanks to a great job by the offensive coaches, o-line, backs, and tight ends.
And Jabar Gaffney, who joined the team over the Week 6 bye and caught a combined 11 passes over the final 11 games of the regular season, now has 18 in the postseason, with 10 for 103 and a TD against the Chargers.
And how about The Kid, Stephen Gostkowski? As we head into a week of hearing about Adam Vinatieri potentially putting Peyton Manning over the top against Belichick and Brady, I at least feel a little bit better about Gostkowski. He kicked a long field goal (from 50) and he kicked the game-winner. It's not quite Snow Bowl material, but it's a start.
So yes, Marty choked. In yet another chance to conquer his demons, he failed. And my guess is that GM A.J. Smith runs him out of town, never to return to the NFL sidelines.
But don't put it all on poor Marty, who seems to be a generally stand-up guy who cares about his players and going about things in a respectable and professional way. His staff (OC Cam Cameron called the plays) and players fell flat in the moment, losing their composure and squandering chance after chance to make the big play to put the Pats down. As they say, the coach can only do so much. It's the players who have to make the plays.
And that seems to be the lesson from New England 24, San Diego 21. And it's something I expect we can talk about again next Sunday night, as well.
Paging Mr. Manning...
Seth Doria is a writer and communications specialist in St. Louis, MO. He has not written a book. He does, however, write a daily blog at The Left Calf.
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