Chargers might skip suspense, get right to disappointment
At least the Chargers might spare everyone the wait this year.Usually, it takes a while.A few impressive wins.
A stretch of brilliant quarterback play from Justin Herbert.Enough promise to convince otherwise reasonable people that this is finally the season the Chargers stop being the Chargers.Then comes the disappointment.If they lose Sunday to the Raiders at SoFi Stadium, they will have considerably shortened the process.An 0-2 start, including a home loss to a rebuilding division rival, would get everyone to the familiar destination without all the trouble of building expectations first.Unless, of course, the Chargers intend to do something about that.Sunday would be a good time to start.An energized Raiders team comes to Los Angeles with a victory over the Dolphins and an opportunity to send the Chargers deeper into an identity crisis that predates this season.Are they tough enough? Resilient enough? Capable of taking a punch without spending the rest of the afternoon checking their chin?Those questions might sound harsh one week into a season.They would be if this were only about one week.But the Chargers were embarrassed in the playoffs last season, and some of the same protection problems that left Herbert vulnerable followed them into their opening loss to the Cardinals.Different season.
Familiar sight.At some point, the benefit of the doubt becomes something a team has to earn back.The Chargers have received plenty of it.We spend so much time admiring their talent, imagining their ceiling and explaining why things should be different that we sometimes forget to demand proof that they actually are.Then they make everyone who believed look foolish again.Jim Harbaugh understands the immediate assignment.“It’s a feeling of when you get punched,” Harbaugh said.
“And how we respond is what I’m thinking about right now.”There it is.The punch.With the Chargers, the concern is never simply whether they will absorb one.Every NFL team does.
It is wheth...