For four straight seasons, the San Diego Chargers have gotten off to a relatively slow start.
But by the end of each year, the Chargers had bounced back to win the AFC West crown.
“I know they don’t plan it out that way, but for some reason, they play their best football in November and December,” Champ Bailey said.
The Chargers currently sit third in the AFC West standings at 4-5, with an 0-2 record within the division. But the Broncos know they can’t take that record for granted.
“We’re well aware that they haven’t lost a divisional game in November or December since 2005 and there’s a reason for that,” Head Coach Josh McDaniels said. “We’re going to have to play really good football in a lot of phases and we really don’t care what the statistics say, we just know that we’re going to get a great performance from them, too.”
The head coach said he looked at a number of factors to pinpoint why the Chargers have been able to turn their season around so often in recent history.
He said it may come down to penalties, turnovers or special teams not going San Diego’s way in the first half, but the team finding a way to adjust for the second part of the season.
“This team, historically has reversed that and made something that wasn’t necessarily a strength a big positive going down the stretch,” McDaniels said.
But Brian Dawkins, for one, isn’t concerned with what San Diego has done in the past. He is focused on what the Broncos can control on the field, starting this Sunday.
“They are always going to be a good team to me, they are always going to be the team to beat because they won this division for so many years,” he said. “But as far as I am concerned, we are 1-0 in the second half of the season and this is the next game in line. So, it is about what we are going to do as a team.”
Below are some photos from Saturday’s practice.
-Gray Caldwell, DenverBroncos.com
Tags: San Diego Chargers, Week 11
Breaking news, Brad Childress got the axe.
No surprise there strandoftds.
Never did like him. A jerk for a coach.
marshisboss….I hope your wrong,if we lose tonight,I hope we play Tebow the rest of the year,we have nothing to lose,unless McD wants Orton to finish in the top 2 or 3 QBs in the league,so he can get more trade value,to me Tebow getting real gametime play is more important than getting more value outta Orton.But if McD is planning on keeping Orton next year,all my opinions don’t even matter.
Yeah Childress is a arse anyway.The players hate him,no chemistry.
McD will do whatever it takes to win as many games as we can,even if we lose tonight,his job depends on it.
Ya BFE, If we keep losing, we`ll have a top Draft pick. Wierd to look at both sides of the coin. Lets win out the rest of our games huh?
Yeah it would be a nice Christmas gift for the fans huh?
Childress was never even a good Offensive Coordinator. The Eagles seem to have gotten much better on offense every year since he left. I don’t know why he got a head coaching job in the first place.
Hey so I want some opinions, should I start Royal or Thomas as my receiver today? and did anyone see the prototype Nike jersey they have for the broncos? AWESOME!!!
GO BRONCOS!!!!
Yovi21, theres a chance that Royal might not play.
Everyone talking about Rivers but their D is highly ranked as well
Ya BFE, McD may also be stiff necked, but some of the players do like him and can relate to him. McD does enjoy himself from time to time. There`s a little kid that comes out sometimes and that is good I think. Gotta have fun at times. It`s a game ya know?
There`s a time to be serious and there`s a time to laugh and have fun. Lifes to short to be serious all the time.
Six hours and counting.
Next big news for the Vikings will be Frazier starting Tavaris over Favre, if not this week, after the next loss for sure.
Frazier is a coach. If they win some games, he could be a main stay as HC.
If anyone has noticed, the two teams who fired their HC this year had the perfect set up to do that with capable coaches taking over the interim job, Garrett for the Cowboys and Frazier for the Vikings, if nothing else, no matter if we lose all remaining games, Bowlen won’t have that luxury, we have absolutely no one worthy of taking over the HC job, so either way McD’s job is safe for this year is how I see it, necessary evil type of thing. But of course we are all hoping we finish 7-0.
oooops. is a good coach.
Bay, that would be a miracle.
Win or lose I hope the Broncos play well. I believe we are making progress and if we should lose tonight (we won’t) we should not throw in the towell and start all the rookies. Most of the remaining games are winnable. Go TEAM Broncos.
Every year I hope we win them all even if that’s totally unrealistic, but come guessing scores time I have picked us to lose plenty. If I was to be realistic about it, of the games remaining I’d say we can win the Rams game, the one at Arizona, the one against Houston and I’ll have to wait for that last game against SD to see how much it will mean to SD playoff wise, if it does I don’t count us winning that one either. Bottom line I see us realistically win 3, maybe 4 and end up 6-10 or 7-9.
Funny thing is we would then have a sole grand season record prediction champion because Vabroncoguy is the only one who predicted 6-10 and 1nOnlyTRB the only one who predicted 7-9.
I guess the 6-10 predictor’s name is the reason my comment is awaiting moderation, kind of sad for the guy.
But there comes a time when it is important to have someone in charge who can make the decision of whether we should still play for 2010 or start playing for 2011, if I were making decisions I would start playing for 2011 if we lose this one for the simple facts that the only way to get to the dance this year is to win the division outright as either the Jets or N-E will take one wildcard in the East and either Pittsburgh or the Ravens will take the other one in the North, and the problem with winning the division is there are three teams being highly competitive on and off fighting for it with the Raiders, KC and the Chargers. So the odds of all three faltering all the way to the end are wishful thinking. Of course that’s just my opinion, but if we lose, I say start playing Tebow and SydQuan and Vaughn and Mays and Decker and, well you get the idea, play for 2011.
Like Favre said today when asked if he thought they could still make the playoffs at 3-7, he said mathematically yes, but…come on (he also brought up the Mora playoff rant). At one point you have to become realitic for the betterment of the team long term. At 3-7 we would be done, just like the Vikings.
Hence this is the must win game of the season, mathematically or not.
Gates will try to play. Floyd is back. Matthews and legade or whatever are out!
if Gates plays, I wonder how effective he will be? We`ll have to wait and see huh.?
Lot’s of inter-divison games left. We can beat up on each other and 8-8 may still win the division. So I would not give up until it is mathmatically impossible to win at least 8. That’s just me. I’m an optomist and always play to win. I don’t think we are as bad as people like to think. We have some pretty good talent and great potential. We can still go 10-6, 9-7, 8-8. I know this game is important but it is not the end of the season if we don’t happen to pull it out. I didn’t drink the kool aid but drank the beer and think we are on the right track.
If we went 10-6, that would be a neat trick. Besides the raider game we were in it until the 4th qaurter. If we are in this game in the 4th qaurter, we need to finish the job. Finish strong.
I live 50 miles north of San Diego – it’s been cool (60deg) and partly cloudy here all day … we had about an inch of rain over the weekend – in fact, SDSU played on the same field as tonights game on Saturday night, with a light rain all game … didn’t stop the deluge in points – 72 total … the field should be damp, but probably not muddy … i.e., no excuses … it will be interesting to see if the KC game carries over in our confidence and execution … we’d better be extremely focused … I don’t worry about the offence – only the defense … and – late game 3rd and/or 4th and short, we’d better be creative … a number of teams have tried to punch it on the ground in these situations against the Chargers this year, and they’ve been stuffed … plays they made earlier in the game they could no longer make … there are some young studs upfront on D for the Chargers, and they seem to get better as the game goes on … wish we could say the same … anyway – I’m nervous like I always am … as they say – DON’T LET ME DOWN!!!!
lets see if we can play consistent for once and have the same team that showed up last wk step on the field again tonight. Plus i’m really tired of hearing Mc Daniels say “its gonna be a close hard fought game, come down to a few plays, be decided in 4th quarter” …for the life of me cant see why ud wanna go out with that dumb mentallity! How bout lets try and dominate these guys and play HARD and execute for 60 minutes and try and win the game before the final minute. in short lets kick their butt. if it goes down to the wire than thats fine but stop lowering the expectations with disempowering word choices.
By the way – out here, the Chargers coach, Norv Turner, isn’t highly respected by the local populace, but he doesn’t get a whole lot of heat … well – they’ve had success the past 4 years, so why should he?? … but – the GM REALLY takes a lot of heat … whereas on this blog, McD gets roasted a lot, that kind of treatment is what Smith the GM gets out here … some times on the talk shows it’s unmerciful … if he were to get axed, there would be a lot of happy people … I notice in Denver, Mr X hardly gets mentioned … makes you wonder, just whose team is it in both cases????