I'm not really seeing anyone there out of their minds...Your team had earned it's due respect but why would you expect them to lay down and let you get all geeked up?
THE GAME COMES DOWN TO ONE PLAYER - RIVERS
If he collapses Pat's roll. If he manages the game, Chargers defense will prevent Brady from putting game out of reach. Then it's anyone's game but most probably LT's.
I beg to differ.
For the San Diego Chargers, the world revolves around Tomlinson. Everything else is ancillary.
And now for the bad news.
LT is a great runner, yes, but you have to look closely at what he's done this year.
LT is a classic home run hitter. That is, he is always a threat to knock one out of the park, or in football lingo, he's constantly a threat to rip one off where he simply runs out of the stadium.
If you look carefully at his efforts this year, he's played almost all his games against teams that were approximately .500 or worse. (This is through no fault of his own; you play whoever the schedule maker puts in front of you.) By "approximately .500" I mean teams that are 7-9, 8-8, 9-7. He faced 11 of those teams this year (5 were 9-7). He faced 4 stink teams (Oakland twice, Cleveland and Arizona). Only one (the 13-3 Baltimore Ravens) had double-digit wins.
There's more.
In every game he played, there was a long "ripper" that had it's inevitable impact on the game. If you take away that ripper, in 10 of the 16 games he played his average becomes very, very mortal. I'm talking about a 3.00 average.
(Now I must amend this. Not "every" game featured a long ripper. Six games had his longest run at 17 yards or less. But for the purposes of this exercise, these games and these runs were included, so the basic premise stands. On the other hand, you can successfully argue that he doesn't do this kind of thing every game. Indeed, one game had as it's longest run 9 yards, another was at 11, two more at 12. You get the idea. I just can't say "every game", though.)
He averaged over 4.0 in the 6 other games, with 4 of those opponents having winning records. (1 of those 4 was Denver, the team that collapsed like a house of cards over the last half of the season.)
Now, home run hitters are exciting. They're good for the game. Fans love 'em. But if they don't hit that home run, the team that has come to depend on them for it find themselves in trouble.
It's not like he gained 5.6 yards each and every time he touched the ball. The Chargers' strategy is to keep him pounding the line, until he can get sprung. That is the essence of LeDanian Tomlinson circa 2006.
If the actual springing does not happen, the pressure begins to mount on the young QB Rivers, who, with the exception of Baltimore, has yet to face a truly devouring defense.
He will get that education on Sunday, and we will see what he does with it.
