After fending them off for years, Cameron Dicker finally fell victim to the kicking ghosts of LA Chargers' past. Dicker's two missed kicks against the Houston Texans on Saturday ultimately were the difference in the team's 20-16 loss.
Dicker has been the most reliable player on the LA Chargers not named Justin Herbert. Some crowned him as the best kicker in franchise history. He earned a well-deserved first Pro Bowl selection this season.
After never missing a field goal under 40 yards in his career, Dicker missed a chip shot at the end of the second half to reduce the lead to eight. Later in the game, he missed the fourth extra point of his career. Those four points were the difference.
Cameron Dicker wasn't all that went wrong for the Chargers against the Texans
It's starting to feel like the Chargers have a real curse against the Texans. It's not just that the most accurate kicker in league history had two uncharacteristic misses in this game. It's everything else that went wrong, as well as what has gone wrong before.
The Chargers infamously missed out on the NFL Playoffs in 2021 with the key outcome being a blowout loss against a bad Texans team late in the season. Last year, the Chargers were eliminated by the Texans in a back-breaking blowout where Justin Herbert threw four interceptions.
Herbert was great on Saturday, it was everything else around him that crumbled.
The defense had two broken coverages on the first two drives of the game to allow two long touchdown passes. That simply hasn't happened to Jesse Minter's defense the last two seasons, and after those miscues, the defense buckled down and played a great game.
Houston didn't find the endzone again. The two field goals the Texans kicked were a direct result of two horrible punts from J.K. Scott that gave the Texans a short field to score three points.
As if that wasn't enough, fellow fan-favorite Oronde Gadsden II dropped a pass right off his hands on the one-yard-line that bounced in the air and was intercepted. Dicker never would've have the chance to miss the field goal if Gadsden caught the ball.
But Dicker did have a chance after the interception (and subsequent CJ Stroud interception) and he missed it. If Dicker were his normal self the Chargers would've been tied 20-20 after their fourth-quarter touchdown and who knows how the game would've gone.
Dicker wasn't the only player to make a mistake on Saturday, but his mistakes are the most painful. Not just because of the points he left on the board, but because of the authority he has built up as a trusted kicker for a tortured fanbase.
That trust shouldn't erode after one bad game. Dicker has been nails his entire career and has made a litany of clutch kicks for the Chargers. Hopefully, he just got them all out of his system in time for the NFL Playoffs.
But man, a chance at the AFC West title with two more Cameron Dicker-made kicks would've been nice.