Fans of the Chargers are waking up from a six game win streak hangover today. Most are probably wondering where that hot chick that they crashed with last night is and who snuck this ugly lady into their bed.Oh yeah.Sunday felt that bad. The Chargers laid an egg against the Broncos on Sunday. What really stings here is not just that they lost Brandon Mebane Color Rush Jersey , but how they lost. The dreams of home field advantage for the playoffs are out the freaking window.The hopes of winning the AFC West are smashed to pieces.It will be a difficult road to the Super Bowl for the Chargers. Here is why they will not make it:Lack of disciplineThis has been a mark of the Chargers for the last decade.They have had plenty of talent but they never seem to get out of their own way. Sunday was no different as the Chargers committed 14 penalties for a total of 120 yards. The most harmful ones came in the first quarter when penalties single-handedly stalled two drives and the Chargers had to settle for field goals.Then there was the end-of-game meltdown. Melvin Gordon ran the wrong way on second and three. If he hadn’t, the Chargers would have run the ball on third down. Even if they didn’t get a first down, they would have run 40 more seconds off the clock.However, one mistake led to another.On third and seven the Broncos sniffed out the screen, and Rivers chucked it into the dirt instead of scrambling or taking a sack, which gave the Broncos 40 seconds of much needed time.You need to focus when it matters most, and the Chargers have lacked this discipline for a long time.Poor special teams playThe season started with a Tyreek Hill punt return for a touchdown.Later that game, the Chargers fumbled a punt that the Chiefs turned into a touchdown.Then Caleb Sturgis took center stage.The Chargers, in what could be considered one of the most bizarre football moves in the last decade, fired their punter. It comes as no big surprise that this didn’t solve the problem. One of the Chargers’ top goals at the end of last season was to fix their kicker problem, but now they have regressed and need to fix their punter problem and their kicker problem.The Chargers did catch a bit of luck on special teams when they moved Desmond King into the punt returner role.However, in true Charger fashion they have mysteriously replaced him with Travis Benjamin who has historically made poor decisions in returning punts. Special teams has been a problem for the Chargers for too long of a time.I know George Stewart is a good friend of Anthony Lynn, but I’d rather Lynn have a friendly beer with him on the weekend than ask him to run the special teams unit.Strange personnel decisionsIf you thought getting rid of Caleb Sturgis would have removed the elephant from the room, you were wrong. Jahleel Addae is the new elephant. You only need to look at two big plays from the Chargers game to see why. On Phillip Lindsay’s 41-yard touchdown scamper, Addae was playing 15+ yards deep and yet he failed to see Lindsay come straight up the middle of the field.He was one-on-one with him with a 15-yard head start and he failed to get within 5 yards of Lindsay. The other play is Keenum’s pass to Sanders on the final drive. After the completion, Addae totally whiffed the tackle, which allowed Sanders to pick up an additional 25 yards. This play was similar to the whiff that Addae made in the Titans game on their last drive of the game which allowed Lewis to run for 36 yards.The knock on Addae is he takes bad angles, he misses tackles, he has poor tackling fundamentals, he is always lunging instead of keeping his feet and wrapping someone up, he is poor in coverage and he does not have good speed.Yet for some reason, he still plays 100% of the defensive snaps. I do not see how Adrian Phillips could be any worse.My only guess is that someone is trying to save face because they gave Addae a fat contract.You can also put Travis Benjamin on this list.The team was better when he was inactive.He has been back the last two weeks taking offensive snaps from Mike Williams and punt returning duties from Desmond King.A downgrade at both positions.Poor play callingI am not sure how the wide receiver screen is even on the table when you are facing third down and seven yards.The wide receiver screen is one of those all-or-nothing plays.It’s a gadget. You use it on first down to catch a team off guard.When you need seven yards, you put the ball in the hands of one of your best players Michael Schofield Color Rush Jersey , Philip Rivers.You give him protection and time to make a good decision.With Allen, Williams, Williams, Ekeler and Gordon as possible threats it seems that odds would be in the Chargers’ favor to get one of them open and make a completion.The problem with Whisenhunt is that sometimes he tries to trick the other team instead of just lining up and saying, “We are better than you. Here it comes. Try to stop us.”The Chargers were the better team on Sunday but they tricked themselves into a loss. During their six-game winning streak the Chargers might have been able to hide their blemishes, but they showed them on Sunday.The Chargers’ road to the Super Bowl will go through Pittsburgh, Kansas City and New England.It will be a tough task for the Chargers to hide their blemishes under the bright lights of those stadiums. CARSON, Calif. (AP) — The Los Angeles Chargers had every reason to be susceptible to a trap game against Cincinnati.The Chargers were coming off an emotional, come-from-behind victory against Pittsburgh last Sunday and a key AFC West showdown at Kansas City was fast approaching.Sunday’s 26-21 victory over the Bengals was not one of Los Angeles’ best-played games of the season, but it does improve the record to 10-3 going into Thursday night’s game against the 11-2 Chiefs for the division lead.“Everyone wanted to talk about Pittsburgh and if it wasn’t Pittsburgh then it was Kansas City. This team was dangerous and we got out of there with a win,” Chargers coach Anthony Lynn said.The Chargers scored touchdowns on their first two drives and then got four field goals from Michael Badgley — including a team-record 59-yarder — to deal the Bengals (5-8) their fifth straight loss.“We did enough to win. Shoot, they all count the same. We found a way to win, in a different way,” said Philip Rivers, who was 19 of 29 for 220 yards and a touchdown.The Chargers had 160 yards of offense on their first two drives — which ended in a Keenan Allen 14-yard TD catch and 5-yard score by Austin Ekeler — but had 128 the remainder of the game. Three of the last eight drives started at or inside the Chargers 7.Ekeler rushed for 66 yards on 15 carries with Melvin Gordon missing his second straight game due to a knee injury. Allen had five receptions for 78 yards and has a touchdown in five straight games.“Sometimes you just have to play complementary football. Defensively we stopped them when we needed to,” Lynn said. “Offensively we started out, but then slowed down and kicked field goals the rest of the day.”Cincinnati had good field position for most of the day with an average drive start of its 35. Joe Mixon had 111 yards on 26 carries and a touchdown. Jeff Driskel, who was making his second straight start since Andy Dalton’s season-ending thumb injury, was 18 of 27 for 170 yards and a touchdown.“The decisions I made today didn’t work out. We didn’t get to make the break. This or that decision put us in situations, whether it’s fourth down and we’ve got to make the stop, the 2-point (conversion) and so forth, those things today, we didn’t get to make the breaks Tyrell Williams Color Rush Jersey ,” Bengals coach Marvin Lewis said.Cincinnati got within two points at 14-12 late in the first half on a pair of field goal by Bullock — one came after an apparent TD run by Driskel was overturned by replay — and Driskel’s 5-yard TD pass to John Ross (the 2-point attempt was no good). The Chargers, though, would take a 17-12 lead when Badgley made his 59-yard field goal on the final play of the first half.The Chargers led 23-15 late in the fourth quarter when Mixon scored from a yard out. The 2-point attempt, which would have tied the game, failed when Driskel was sacked by Darius Philon.BIG OVERTURNDriskel appeared to score a touchdown with about five minutes remaining in the second quarter on a 1-yard scramble that would have brought the Bengals within four, but replay overturned it saying he was short of the goal line.In the past, quarterbacks were safe to go head-first and not be considered to be giving himself up, but that was changed this season.“He dove forward to the goal line and as soon as his knee hit the ground, he was ruled to have given himself up. The ball was short of the goal line,” referee John Hussey said after the game.The overturn meant the ball was spotted inches short of the goal line and brought up fourth-and-goal. Bengals guard Alex Redmond was then called for a false start and Cincinnati had to settle for a Bullock 23-yard field goal that cut the Chargers’ margin to 14-6.BIG LEG BADGLEYBadgley, who had the winning field goal last Sunday at Pittsburgh, now has the longest field goal in Chargers history.The Chargers attempted a Hail Mary with a second remaining, which resulted in Rivers being sacked, but Bengals defensive end Jordan Willis was called for a false start, which brought out Badgley, who said he was very confident about making it.“You got to go out there with that kind of confidence. If you’re going out there thinking you’re going to miss it you probably shouldn’t be kicking it,” said Badgley, who is 14 of 15 on field goals since joining the Chargers last month. “But going out there, it was a way for us to steal momentum from them at the end of the half, go into the second half with more points. It was definitely good for us to get those points at the end of the half.”The former team record was a 57-yarder by Nate Kaeding at Tampa Bay on Dec. 21, 2008.UP NEXTBengals: Host Oakland next Sunday before concluding the season with two straight road games.Chargers: Travel to Kansas City on Thursday night in a matchup of two of the top teams in the AFC.
