Dance Hall Crashers

The most inexplicable, confusing, baffling, confounding and dumbfounding of Charger seasons presses forward, whether you like it or not.

The Chargers who had spent the majority of the season skipping class, loitering in the parking lot, smoking in gym class and lobbing spit balls when they did bother showing up for class, greased their hair back and showed up to the dance anyway, punching honor student and homecoming king, Peyton Manning, in the face, taking his lunch money and stealing his girl.

In this most improbable 23-16 overtime victory over the Indianapolis Colts, the two best players out on the field last night were the 5’-6” and proverbial little brother, Darren Spoles and…… the punter Mike Scifres.

Sproles, filling-in for the the ailing LaDanian Tomlinson accounted for 328 all-purpose yards including 105 on the ground and the game-winning 22 yard scamper that was very LT-like in its bounce-off-of-the-left-end directional and game-clinching nature.

Scifres averaged 51.7 yards/punt and guaranteed the Colts would have to work on every single possession by forcing a long field (the Colts average possession started at their own 16 yard line). How this man has not yet been named to a Pro-Bowl is one of the NFL’s greatest unsolved mysteries. Scifres finest moment was his last kick, where he knocked down a 52-yard punt at the Colts’ one-yard line. This disadvantageous field position allowed the Chargers a short field after they forced a 3 and out and which resulted in Nate Keading’s game-tying 26-yard field goal on the Chargers' ensuing possession with about 30 seconds left on the clock.

And yet, despite these two all-time Charger performances, the Chargers squandered opportunity after opportunity with two turnovers (one being a fumble by Sproles in the fourth quarter as he was stretching towards the goal line) and, by our count, 3 dropped interceptions.

No matter. This team plays oblivious (clueless?) to all that… including giving up a cheapie in the 3rd quarter where the Colts quick-snapped a play while the Charger defenders were all looking to the sidelines for the defensive call which allowed Reggie Wayne to get behind the secondary for an easy 72 yard pass and run touchdown… and now find themselves in their Bel-Air, cigarette pack rolled-up in their sleave, Link Wray blasting out of the speakers and hauling down I-8 East to either Pittsburgh or Tennessee to see what sort of trouble they can get into there.