My dad and I huddled around my sister's pink Disney princess TV on a chilly December afternoon. I don't quite remember how we got there and why we were watching history unfold on a 13-inch princess TV, but I will never forget what happened next for the San Diego Chargers.
LaDainian Tomlinson takes the handoff, bolts to the outside, and beats the Denver Broncos defense to the left pylon. LT breaks Shaun Alexander's one-year record of 28 touchdowns in a single season. The entire Chargers offense lifts Tomlinson on their shoulders, painting a heroic picture that is the definition of an era of Chargers football.
As Tomlinson sits atop his throne, eight-year-old Jason Reed rides high o his own, squarely on his father's shoulders, while chanting in unison... "L-T, L-T, L-T, L-T!!!"
It was the birth of my fandom. The first time I remember feeling the pride of fanhood coursing through my veins. A special moment with my die-hard father, who survived years of hardship with his hometown heroes. The 2006 Chargers showed me the beauty of sports and started a love affair that lasts to this very day.
They also taught me what heartbreak feels like.
The 2006 Chargers made me fall in love with football... only to break my heart
Twenty years ago the Chargers put together the best regular season in franchise history. Backed by Tomlinson's historic season in Philip Rivers' first season as a starter, the Chargers waltzed through the regular season to finish with a 14-2 record.
Marty Schottenheimer's team scored 492 points, the most in the league. It allowed 303, the seventh-fewest in the league. The Chargers' 189 point differential was 17 points higher than second place and 37 points better than the next-best AFC team. It was the Chargers' Super Bowl to lose.
They didn't even win a playoff game.
San Diego played host to the New England Patriots in the AFC Divisional Round after a first-round bye. The Chargers did everything they could to lose that game — losing four fumbles, muffing a punt, turning the ball over in field-goal range, gifting the Patriots free points with penalties — yet still had Tom Brady and the Pats on the ropes in the fourth quarter.
Tomlinson scored a near-identical touchdown to his record-setting score to give the Chargers an eight-point lead in the fourth quarter. With 6:26 on the clock, Brady stepped back on fourth-and-five and threw an uncharacteristic floater into coverage. Safety Marlon McCree read the throw, jumped the route, and picked off the pass.
With the NFL MVP in the backfield and an eight-point lead, all the Chargers had to do was waste just over six minutes of game time to advance to the AFC Championship. But there was one catch...
McCree fumbled. New England recovered the fumble and capitalized, tying the game less than two minutes later. The Chargers went three-and-out, setting the Patriots up to kick a field goal and take the lead with 70 seconds remaining. But that wasn't the end of the misfortune.
Rivers led what could have been a career-defining drive to set Nate Kaeding up for a 54-yard game-tying field goal. Kaeding, a Pro Bowler, missed only three kicks all year. The snap was clean, the blocking unit held up, and the kick... wide right.
Chargers lose.
As the TV broadcast showed Tomlinson getting fired up at the Patriots for taunting with Shawne Merriman's lights-out dance, I look over to my dad. To this day, I've never seen my jovial father look so defeated. He got up, didn't say a word, and stepped outside.
A loud F-bomb penetrated the walls into the living room as I sat motionless in disbelief. My superheroes lost. They were human after all. Years later, I learned my dad threw our house phone across the street into an empty lot. McCree wasn't there to catch and fumble it. I always wondered where that phone went.
For better or worse, the 2006 Chargers ARE the Chargers
This wasn't the last heartbreak. The Chargers remained competitive after firing Schottenheimer but could never get over the hump. The team made the AFC Championship Game only for Rivers to play on a torn ACL and Tomlinson to get hurt.
The 2018 Chargers had similar magic but once again ran into the buzzsaw that is the Patriots in the AFC Divisional Round. The 2022 Chargers seemingly had all the pieces to make a run but blew a 27-3 lead to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Los Angeles finally got its future Hall of Fame coach in 2024 but hasn't won a playoff game under his tutelage. It's the same cycle of high expectations met by devastating losses. They do just enough to reel you back in, only to slam the door of success right in your face.
The 2006 Chargers didn't just teach me how to love sports or how to deal with heartbreak. They taught me what it means to be a Chargers fan.
Being a Chargers fan feels different nowadays
Twenty years after the start of the 2006 season, I find myself in a much different position. It's not just that I'm a full-grown adult with bills that somehow stumbled into covering sports for a living. It's not the grey hairs that are spattered across my dad's head (sorry, pops!). It's about the new member of Bolt Fam that will be joining the Reed family every Sunday.
My wife and I welcomed our first child into the world in May. A beautiful, stubborn, hilarious baby boy named Theodore. I see my dad light up while holding Teddy the same way he would light up when I would ask him to throw the ball around as a kid.
He won't remember it, but 20 years after my dad and the Chargers first taught me how to love football, Teddy is teaching me the real importance of sports fandom.
The wins, the losses, the celebrations, the heartbreaks... they all come and go. It's the relationships we build through this beautiful game of football that really matter. The shared experiences that define a lifetime. The memories that will be passed down from generation to generation.
As the 2026 Chargers get ready to kick off the season, I can't help but look back at the 2006 Chargers not as a source of nostalgia, but as the connective tissue that will connect generations of diehard fans.
Love you, dad. I love you, son. Let's go Chargers.
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