Los Angeles Chargers: Facing Steelers, Devlin Hodges, should help team get right
By Travis Wakeman
The Los Angeles Chargers are 2-3 and off to a surprising 2-3 start. The team is much more talented than that record would suggest, but it needs to turn things around soon.
Soon could be this Sunday night.
If you’re a team in desperate need of a win in Week 6, there might not be a better team to face than the Pittsburgh Steelers. Normally that would not be the case, but this is not your typical Steelers squad.
Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell are long gone. Ben Roethlisberger is out for the season with an injury. That would be too much for almost any team to overcome, but it goes deeper for the Steelers.
Several offensive weapons will be missing for the Steelers, including wide receiver James Washington, running back Jaylen Samuels and fullback Roosevelt Nix. In addition, linebacker Mark Barron will miss the game.
As if that wasn’t enough, Roethlisberger’s replacement, Mason Rudolph, will also miss the game. After taking this vicious hit last week against the Baltimore Ravens, Rudolph was concussed.
Where does that leave the Steelers? It leaves them with a guy named Devlin Hodges at quarterback. If you’ve never heard of him, don’t feel bad. Up until last Sunday, almost no one had. Hodges is an undrafted rookie out of Samford who will have to find a way to get it done when he likely never thought he’d see the field six weeks ago.
Hodges will be without Washington, one of the team’s deep threats. Samuels has been used in the “Wildcat” formation fairly often in recent games and has found some success, but the Steelers won’t be able to employ that either.
It should be tough for the Steelers to move the ball with regularity and as a result, the Charges defense should feast in this game. The Steelers weren’t all that scary with Rudolph at quarterback and with Hodges in there now, the Chargers should be licking their chops.
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You get the point, right? This is a game the Chargers should easily win and if we’re being honest, it might be worse if they lose to this Steelers team than it would have if they dropped the game against the Miami Dolphins a couple of weeks ago.
The Chargers should not overlook Pittsburgh, but they also must treat them as they inferior opponent that they are in this matchup. Though these teams are not separated by much in terms of wins and losses, they are two teams going in different directions this season.
This is the Chargers’ “get right” game. They might get Hunter Henry back and should they handle the Steelers as you would expect based on the facts above, this is the game that could get the Chargers on a good roll for the rest of this season.
Should they somehow lose this game, any fears or concerns that you might have concerning this team should be multiplied dramatically.
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