The LA Chargers suffered their first blowout loss of the Jim Harbaugh era on Sunday at the hands of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tampa Bay came to Los Angeles and walloped the Chargers, outplaying them at every level.
It didn't look like it was going to be a blowout loss for the Chargers early on. After a Tarheeb Still interception, the Chargers forced another takeaway on Tampa Bay's ensuing drive with a 17-10 lead. With a short field, the Chargers had the chance to make it a two-possession game and go into clock-crunching mode like they have in the past under Harbaugh.
Instead, the Chargers would punt in Tampa Bay's territory and the game was never the same. The Buccaneers went on to score 30 unanswered points to hand the Chargers the 40-17 loss. Every loss may count the same in the record books, but this one stung more than any other loss this season.
It stung the most for Harbaugh, who did not even try to have any kind of moral victories after the game. Nor did Harbaugh try to deflect after the loss (like his Chargers predecessor did so many times). Harbaugh was quite honest in his postgame comments after the game; the Chargers simply were not good.
Jim Harbaugh: “There’s not one place we can point to and say we were good enough.”
— Kris Rhim (@krisrhim1) December 16, 2024
The Bucs 506 yards are the third most a Jim Harbaugh-led team has allowed in his NFL coaching career.
Jim Harbaugh is right. The Chargers were awful on Sunday.
There is not a single area of the game where the Chargers played up to their ability. The offensive line struggled, the secondary was exposed, the pass-rush couldn't get home and even Justin Herbert wasn't himself on his sprained ankle.
Even the most steadfast player in Ladd McConkey had an uncharacteristic drop in a big moment before the game got out of hand. And in perfect metaphoric fashion, standout pass-catching tight end Stone Smartt fumbled the ball away on the Chargers' last drive of the game.
The only hope for Chargers fans after this destruction is that the team got all of the ugliness out of the way in one game. Los Angeles is heading into the team's most important game of the season on Thursday against the Denver Broncos.
While the Chargers have two "easy" opponents in the New England Patriots and Las Vegas Raiders to close out the season, no game can be taken for granted (Sunday was a reminder of that). The Chargers desperately need to finish the season sweep over Denver on Thursday to give the team a fast track to the NFL Playoffs.
All the Chargers can do until then is rest, get healthy, burn this tape and bury it in the backyard. This was the ugliest game of the Harbaugh era to date and hopefully there is no game that comes close to replicating it.