Chargers Lose; Details to Follow : Pro football: Chiefs get the best of the Chargers, 24-10, in a sloppy season opener.
SAN DIEGO — The Chargers hired Boss Ross to instill discipline, and with that in mind the players marched onto the field Sunday under a banner with the message: “Attention Detail.”
Details, details. Maybe the message should have been “Attention To Detail,” but take another look: It was a botched sign of what was to come in the Chargers’ 24-10 opening-day loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.
New coach, new philosophy and same old Chargers: They still can’t get it right, although they have solved the Dan Henning problem of losing games by seven or fewer points.
“They didn’t beat us, we beat ourselves,” said Charger tackle Broderick Thompson. “That’s where the frustration is.”
The Chargers have opened the past six seasons with a defeat. History buffs take note: They have begun the past four years with back-to-back losses.
“We are not about to die,” Coach Bobby Ross said. “We’re going to come back, and we’ll be back for next week.”
In deciding to play on, the Chargers will have to ignore a disturbing NFL trend. Of the 182 teams who have lost on opening day, only 19 have gone on to win a division title.
“We should have won,” said Charger running back Rod Bernstine, who scored his team’s only touchdown. “There were just too many mistakes.”
In front of 45,024, the Chargers’ 1992 attention to detail lasted no longer than the opening kickoff. Running back Ronnie Harmon tried to field Nick Lowery’s bouncing kick with one hand, but the ball bounded off his hand and out of bounds at the two.
“Did it look like I touched it?” Harmon said. “It did? No.”
The officials, however, saw it the same way as Ross: “I thought he touched it,” Ross said.
The Charger offense gained six yards on three plays and then called on punter John Kidd.
Kidd booted the ball 38 yards to defensive back Dale Carter, who was getting the ball for the first time in his professional career. Carter broke free, evaded the lunging reaches of Sam Anno and Steve Hendrickson and then sidestepped the diving Kidd before moving on for a 46-yard touchdown.
“We lost our people in the middle, I don’t know what happened to them,” said special teams coach Chuck Priefer. “We knew he was good. That’s why he’s a first-rounder. We’ve just got to do a better job.”
As Charger defensive lineman Burt Grossman said later, “we’re not a good enough team . . . to come back from a seven-point deficit right after the National Anthem.”
The Chiefs took a 7-0 lead 1:39 into the new season and were never caught. The Chargers mounted a whole series of comebacks, but continued to be tripped up by their own mistakes:
* Defensive tackle Blaise Winter jumped offside on fourth and two at the Chargers’ 40 after the Chargers had called timeout and warned their players not to jump offside. The Chiefs gained the first down on the penalty, and Lowery went on to kick a 21-yard field goal a few minutes later.
“For me, it’s something that happened and I don’t want to harp on it,” Winter said.
* Missed blocks by Sean Vanhorse and Delton Hall on an Eric Bieniemy punt return resulted in Bieniemy getting leveled by Carter. A few minutes later the same thing happened, and this time a distracted Bieniemy mishandled the punt before recovering his fumble.
* Missed assignments and poor coaching adjustments allowed the Chiefs to sack Charger quarterback Bob Gagliano five times.
* Poor offensive execution kept the Chargers from taking advantage of prime field position in the third quarter. The Chargers took possession at the 50, the Chiefs’ 29 and the Chiefs’ 36 and failed to score.
* A heavy rush, which contributed to an off-target throw to Harmon, resulted in a tipped pass and Kevin Ross’ 99-yard interception return for a touchdown to give Kansas City a 17-3 advantage with 1:53 remaining in the third quarter.
* Nate Lewis, Walter Stanley, Harmon and Derrick Walker each dropped a pass. Anthony Miller dropped two.
“Offensively our passing game just stunk,” Ross said. “There wasn’t anything very pretty about it. We didn’t catch the ball very well, either.”
The Chargers, however, rallied into position to tie the game after Ross jerked Gagliano from the game late in the third quarter. While going nowhere on his initial drive, Stan Humphries was five for five on the team’s next possession and drove the Chargers to the Chiefs’ two before handing the ball to Bernstine for the touchdown.
“I wasn’t trying to prove anything,” said Humphries, who completed seven of 10 passes for 62 yards with an interception. “I was just trying to get us back into the game. We seemed dead on the sidelines and I was just trying to fire us up.”
With 10:24 to play, the Chargers trailed the Chiefs 17-10.
“The more I have been in this game the more I realize it’s the last two to four minutes of the ballgame that it boils down to,” said Charger cornerback Gill Byrd. “They out-executed us when they needed to. When it came time to strap down and not make the mistakes, they did it. We didn’t.”
The knock on former defensive coordinator Ron Lynn’s defense was that it played well most of the day until the game was on the line. The defense now belongs to Bill Arnsparger, but the results remain the same.
The Chiefs had gained 113 yards up until the 10:24 mark of the fourth quarter, but with the Chargers needing the ball for the chance to tie, they went 76 yards in 9:01 to slap the enthusiasm right out of the home team.
Once again there was no attention to detail. After pinning the Chiefs back to their 32 with a second-and-29, Chargers’ linebacker Henry Rolling took a firm grip on Todd McNair’s face mask. Four different officials took exception, and the Chiefs were awarded a first down.
They continued to hog the ball, and went on to score with Barry Word plowing in from the one with 1:23 to play.
The Chargers’ last-gasp offense went nowhere and ended with Carter adding his first interception to his memorable punt return.
“Mental errors,” said Charger linebacker Junior Seau, who also had his first NFL career interception. “A lot of people are going to look back at our track record and say that’s the Chargers. We’ll have to live with that until we turn it around.”
The Chargers have dropped five games in a row to the Chiefs, who have been picked by many to win the AFC West Division.
“It was a very characteristic Chiefs-Chargers game,” Kansas City Coach Marty Schottenheimer said. “We’ve seen the blueprint. It never changes.
“But as I told Coach Ross after the game, there is no doubt in my mind that his football team, though they didn’t win, made a big step today. I think they’re a much better football team right now than any we’ve seen in the last couple of years. We’re not looking forward to playing them again.”
