Saints, Chargers Take Another Step Backward
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The San Diego Chargers finished the 2006 regular season at 14–2, while the New Orleans Saints were 10–6. Since they are a combined 9–11 this season — after being picked by many to play each other in the Super Bowl — it’s fair to call them the NFL’s biggest disappointments of 2007. After yesterday, when San Diego lost to Jacksonville 24–17 and Houston stuffed New Orleans by 23–10, it’s a long shot that either will even make the playoffs.
The belly flops of both teams have been more closely analyzed than Angelina Jolie on the red carpet, but so far, the failures of the Chargers and Saints remain baffling. The Chargers let Drew Brees, one of the AFC’s best passers, go to the Saints last year because they assumed that Philip Rivers was ready to take his place. Rivers certainly looked as if he was ready to do that, averaging 7.4 yards a pass and throwing for 22 touchdowns with just nine interceptions. Meanwhile, Brees became one of the NFC’s best quarterbacks — maybe the best — averaging eight yards a throw with 26 TD passes and 11 interceptions. Many analysts, myself included, thought he was the NFL’s offensive player of the year last year— an honor that instead went to the Chargers’ LaDainian Tomlinson, who was spectacular, rushing for 1,815 yards with 5.2 yards per try and an NFL record 28 TDs.
That Tomlinson has been only mediocre this year — just 733 yards in 10 games and a 4.2-yard average — is one of the reasons the Chargers have already lost three more games than they did all last season. The biggest reason, though, has been Rivers’s performance, whose yards per pass average has dropped to 6.8 and who has thrown just 10 TDs with 10 interceptions. But that’s not entirely fair: Far and away the biggest reason for San Diego’s regression is their coach, Norv Turner, who was an outstanding offensive coordinator with the Cowboys in the 1990s, but whose employment as an NFL head coach (63–87–1) is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
Turner, known for his inability to either communicate with or motivate his players, has taken the most talented team in the league — many regard Tomlinson and tight end Antonio Gates as the two best players in the game — and coached it from 14–2 to 5–5.
Last year the Chargers were no. 1 in the league in points scored; this year, with basically the same personnel, they’re 10th. How does a guy with Turner’s credentials miss getting a job with FEMA?
The New Orleans Saints’ failure is easier to pinpoint, if only a little. Basically, they drafted Reggie Bush instead of defensive tackle Mario Williams. That decision came home to roost in a big way yesterday as Williams sacked Brees, hurried him twice, forced a fumble, made six tackles, and in general helped give Bush his worst game as a professional. Bush is currently 28th in the league with just 451 yards, and has somehow escaped being recognized for the colossal pro flop he is. With seven minutes to go in the fourth quarter, his team down by 13 points, and the Houston defense downfield in a prevent, Bush rumbled for his biggest gain of the day, 11 yards. It put him over 1,000 yards rushing for his entire career, and it’s taken him 26 games to do it.
Last year, in the wake of Katrina, there was a lot of facile nonsense written about how the success of the Saints reflected the spirit of the ravaged city to not only endure but prevail. I think that the Saints may have inadvertently hurt their town by enabling many around the country to have an unearned good feeling about New Orleans: To see so many Louisianans cheering for their football team made it easy for many to feel they were supporting the relief efforts by simply watching a football game. It would be comforting to think that the Saints’ nosedive this year would at least lead to some people seeing the awful state of Louisiana’s Delta region in a realistic light. But no, that’s not going to happen. It’s just football, and when the Saints’ games are boring, you can simply switch to another channel.
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I want to make one point about the November 11 game between the Chargers and the Indianapolis Colts, a 23–21 victory for San Diego. Commenting on sports in general, a character in J.M. Coetzee’s upcoming novel, “Diary of A Bad Year,” says, “In a game like cricket, the understanding used to be that when the umpire said that something had happened — the ball had touched the bat, for example — then for the purposes of the game it had indeed happened. … What ‘really’ happens in sport does not really matter; what matters instead is what we agree has happened.”
The handover of the power of decisions to machines, the character argues, reflects a fundamental change in the idea of sport: What used to be play has now become work, and thus “decisions about who wins and who loses have become potentially too important — that is to say, too costly — to be left to the infallible human eye.” Coetzee’s character is right. But I would remind him that it’s still humans who decide when machines decide.
Recaps of the game emphasized that the Colts lost because Adam Vinatieri missed a chip shot field goal with less than a minute and a half to play. What few of them told you was that he probably wouldn’t have gotten a chance to miss had San Diego not challenged and won on the previous play. The Colts’ Joseph Addai was given a first down just past the Chargers six-yard line. But the decision was overturned on a challenge, leaving the Colts with a fourth-and-inches down instead of first and goal. Allowing a challenge on the spot of the ball violates the basic principle on which instant replay was instituted. The main reason why challenges in the NFL came about in the first place was because millions of viewers could see what the referee could not — i.e., whether a player had stepped out of bounds or out of the end zone or fumbled just before his knee hit the ground. These are rare occurrences in a game, and referees were happy to be able to look at the replay on camera before making their decision. But to allow a challenge on the placement of the ball is absurd. Everyone knows that where the ball is spotted on every play is always a judgment call — what really happened does not matter. In boxing, no one really believes that a referee’s KO count is exactly 10 seconds, and in football, no one really believes that the referee’s spotting of the ball from one play to the next is exactly 10 yards or 12 yards.
The reality has always been that where the referees agree the play stopped is where it stopped. Since probably 40 or 50 of these decisions are made in a game, it’s ridiculous to single out one for examination near the end. And on that one challenge, the Colts’ entire season could hinge.
Mr. Barra is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”