Favre Beats The Chargers

The Chargers coming into Sunday's game at Green Bay hadn't shown any flashes of the team that dominated most of the regular season last year. The Charger offense looked at least functional against Green Bay with Rivers seemingly passing to Gates whenever needed. But the other side of the ball is how Green Bay won this game and the Charger defense is a far cry from what it was able to do last year.

Brett Favre will be the lead story on every major sports show for the entire week and the Chargers are the byline to the story. Favre was able to pass to Donald Driver whenever he wanted too and the Chargers had sloppy/no tackling for the entire game. The Packers all but abandoned the running game and passed almost exclusively against the Chargers who were unable to defend against the pass at all. Shawne Merriman, and the rest of the Charger defense, barely were ever to get any pressure on Favre. And to put an exclamation point on the game, the Packers score the game winning touchdown on a pass, catch and long run by Driver, who seemed to just run by Charger defenders standing around...similar to what folks saw in the game against New England in week 2.

Charger fans are in various states...there is a strong faction of fans that has already seen enough of Norv Turner and Ted Cottrell ruining this football team. Other fans are still in the 'wait and see' approach and no need to panic...things are fine. I'm somewhere in-between. Is this season already lost? Are these signs of a team that is going to compete at a higher level? The primary flaws of this team, right now, is pretty simple, I think...both their offensive and defensive lines are not playing well. Tomlinson has had very little blocking and like the previous 2 games, Tomlinson is oftentimes met with defenders as soon as he receives a handoff. The defensive line hasn't been able to get much pressure on any of the quarterbacks they've faced so far this season which has prevented Merriman, Phillips and others to be successful in pass rushing. I think it is quite clear that both the offense and defense are going to be ineffective against most teams if these areas are not addressed asap.

The next three games have the Chargers going against division foes. If the Chargers are able to get 3 consecutive wins against division rivals...and by all indications I think they could because Denver, Oakland and KC all stink...it would be a huge step in calming the Charger fans about ready to jump off a bridge.

It sucks being a Charger fan in an area where there are plenty of Green Bay fans, so for the rest of the year I get to hear their shit and hear how great Favre is.... bleah...

(AP recap here)