Morning Dump

Good morning! Getting ready for the weekend and I have tomorrow off and will have to get some procrastinator shopping in!

The Lions were that Feel Good team of 2011. Then they started shoving coaches after the game, hitting quarterbacks after the throw, fighting opponents after the play, stomping linemen after the whistle and meekly apologizing for it all after the fact. Thus, they’re now the team everybody wants to see get its comeuppance.

If Philip Rivers didn’t have to play in Saturday’s game against the Detroit Lions, he’d surely be watching it.

The San Diego quarterback obviously loves NFL football, but beyond that, he has an appreciation for the way his Christmas Eve opponent plays the game.

The Chargers have been a disappointment for much of the season but they’re putting together one of the late season runs they’ve become known for. It’s hard to know what to expect from this group so I sent a few questions over to someone that follows the Chargers more closely than me. My thanks to Ernie Padaon, Bolt Beat‘s editor, for taking the time to give us some insight into the Chargers.

Much like the Lions, the Chargers are very much reliant on their quarterback, Philip Rivers. Pretty much, how he goes, so does the Chargers offense. It should, then, come as no surprise that both Rivers and the Chargers were dipping and are peaking at the same times. Before their current three-game winning streak, the Chargers had dropped six straight games and were basically left for dead in the AFC West. Over that span, Rivers had a pretty mediocre passer rating of 75.0, while his team was only putting up 21.5 points per contest. On the flip side of things, Rivers has an astounding average quarterback rating of 132.2 during their current winning streak.

This week, instead of doing 5 Bad Stats from the Ravens game, I did 5 Bad Plays (and it wasn’t easy finding 5 of them). This got me to thinking….the Chargers haven’t really been blown out all year. They’d probably be leading the AFC West if they could take back 5 plays from the season. This brought me here, where I will try and find the 5 plays most responsible for San Diego potentially watching the playoffs from home.

The San Diego Chargers can ill afford another underachieving first-round draft selection.

“You draft those guys early because you’re hoping they’ll make an impact,” said the team’s director of player personnel, Jimmy Raye.

The San Diego Chargers can ill afford another underachieving first-round draft selection.

“You draft those guys early because you’re hoping they’ll make an impact,” said the team’s director of player personnel, Jimmy Raye.

While too many possibilities remain for the picture to be boiled down all that concisely, the Chargers and their fans need to root for the Jets and Bengals to keep losing and for the Tennessee Titans to win both of their remaining games.

SAN DIEGO – Outside linebacker Antwan Barnes was named AFC Defensive Player of the Week on Wednesday for his four-sack effort in a 34-14 win against Baltimore.

Nobody is too surprised the Chargers offense is playing well late in the season. With talent all across the field, the unit has the ability to score on anybody, as proven by the 34 points they posted on the vaunted Ravens defense in Week 15. The surprise is the fact that it took the team until December to start clicking offensively.