INGLEWOOD — The Chargers are not a good team. They’re just not.
They looked like it for a spell.
Cosplayed as one for a few games.
Led with the best version of themselves and got you to bite, admit it.
You started to think Jim Harbaugh was going to do it again, turn another team into a perennial winner when these guys bolted out of the gate with three consecutive victories, starting with a 27-21 triumph in Brazil against the Kansas City Chiefs, the team that’s had a Super Bowl residency for four of the past five years.
’Fess up, you got your hopes up when the Chargers – who made the playoffs and finished 11-6 last season – followed up in Week 2 by beating the Las Vegas Raiders 20-9 and then the Denver Broncos, 23-20.
The Chargers were 3-0, so fresh, so clean, penalized only 15 times total. Living was easy.
Until it wasn’t.
Because what we’ve learned in the past two games about this season’s Chargers is how small their margin of error is between winning and completely combusting.
On Sept. 28, they tripped over themselves and handed the New York Giants and their rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart their first victory of the season, 21-18, in a game that the Chargers were flagged for 14 penalties for 107 yards.
And then, in Sunday’s dispiriting 27-10 loss to Washington, the Chargers bloodied themselves with more self-inflicted wounds. This time there was an interception at the goal line, a momentum-swinging fumble, five sacks and 10 penalties for 85 yards – many of them coming at especially “inopportune” times, as Harbaugh said.
He could have been thinking of Marlowe Wax’s penalty for roughing Commanders kicker Tress Way, wiping out Ladd McConkey’s brilliant 57-yard punt return for a touchdown and turning it instead into an automatic first down for the Commanders, who marched down and kicked a field goal that tied it up 10-10 before halftime.
Or he could have been thinking about Herbert’s third-quarter pass to Quentin Johnston for 24 yards that was called back when the Chargers were called for illegal formation. Or even about the next play, when what would have been a 31-yard completion to Keenan Allen was voided because of holding.
“We’re good enough to overcome some (penalties), but just need to minimize them,” Harbaugh said. “That’s an area we need to get better at.”
That, or they’re going to lose many more games this season.
Because the moment they encountered a taste of turbulence Sunday, the spiral began.
And there wasn’t much a healthy and available Khalil Mack or Joe Alt could have done to prevent the mess the Chargers (3-2) made against Washington (3-2) – which looked Sunday to have the makings of an actual good team, with the gumption of a team that reached the NFC Championship Game last season with then-rookie QB Jayden Daniels.
(In his first NFL game in Southern California, Daniels – the pride of San Bernardino – completed 15 of 26 pass attempts for 231 yards and a touchdown in addition to running for 39 yards.)
But the Chargers’ crash-out was so bad Sunday, you couldn’t even credit mostly the Commanders’ competence or blame it so much on the Chargers having to continually shuffle their offensive line.
The problem was that good teams can find a way to overcome the sort of adversity the Chargers faced – life being 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it – but that they, alternatively, let it trigger their worst impulses, let it distract them, let it infect them.
“The game is tough enough already,” Herbert said. “And we’re just making it tougher on ourselves when we do that.”
“Everything is contagious momentum is contagious,” star safety Derwin James Jr. said. “Whether you’re playing good or playing bad, you get one flag; it was contagious today, every phase.”
And so when Johnston lost a fumble after a big catch in the second quarter, the Chargers couldn’t shake it off, and they didn’t dig in their heels – even though, until that point, they’d had all the momentum.
Instead, the Commanders pounced. They went down the field and scored on Jacory Croskey-Merritt’s 15-yard rushing touchdown. It wasn’t a play that should have won Washington the game, what with 4:35 to play in the second quarter and the Chargers leading 10-7 still.
But it did.
Because after that, the Chargers wilted. Their focus was disrupted and their fight-back extinguished in a way that you won’t see happen to the good teams.