Football teams can be defined by their strengths or their weaknesses, and at least for the first week of the NFL season, the Chargers will be defined by their weaknesses. It's a long season, and things should get much better, but who wasn't wearing white jerseys made a massive impact in Monday night's 21-14 loss to the Jets.
-- RB LaDainian Tomlinson played fairly well for the Jets, and Ryan Mathews did nothing to make us forget him, and he didn't come in again after knocking the ball out of QB Philip Rivers hands in the fourth quarter -- and it looked like he might have hurt his fingers on the play.
-- WR Vincent Jackson would have caught the key fourth quarter pass dropped by Legedu Naanee, don't you think? It stopped a drive on fourth down, and came after he ridiculously showboated on a TD catch.
-- How about a fine performance by LT Brandyn Dombrowski, subbing for Marcus McNeill? Just as you're thinking, wow, he's doing a fine job, he lets a defender leak through and blow up a play. That's the NFL for you.
-- For all the talk about the holdouts, the Chargers also let special teams monster Kassim Osgood get away during the off-season, and paid for it by Dexter McCluster's 94-yard punt return for the winning TD.
Reality is that a team that probably shouldn't be any good until late this season defeated a squad that should run away with the AFC West.
The check on the Chargers: they held the ball for more than 37 minutes and scored just twice, they had a 1st & goal at the KC four at the end and couldn't punch it in, they nearly doubled the Chiefs yardage total and lost, they allowed the Chiefs 5.2 yards per carry.
Once again, the Chargers start a season slowly.
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Meanwhile, Tomlinson ran for 62 yards on 11 carries and also caught a couple passes for the Jets in their 10-9 loss to the Ravens. The big news was the Jets inability to convert third downs, but Tomlinson only handled the ball on one of those failures.
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