(News4usonline) – After beating the Tennessee Titans, the Los Angeles Chargers have put themselves back into the playoff picture with a wildcard spot if the regular season ended today. That’s today.
The Chargers’ 17-14 win against the Titans, the AFC South leader, puts Los Angeles in the second wildcard spot, just behind the Baltimore Ravens and a step ahead of the Miami Dolphins.
“I felt like all three phases hung tough today,” Chargers head coach Brandon Staley said after the game. “That’s been the story of our season, hanging tough together. We definitely needed all three phases to win today. It was a tough, rugged game. That team was playing for their playoff lives, for their division.
“You can see that they play with a lot of purpose. I felt like our guys had their best when their best was required there at the end. But, it was a tough, tough football game. I’m proud of our football team, that we finished it.”
The victory over the Titans gives the Chargers a leg up on other AFC opponents, but they can’t sleep. Riding a two-game winning streak after picking up wins against Miami and Tennessee, the Chargers are now 8-6 on the season.
With three games left in the regular season, the Chargers can ill afford a slip-up as the New England Patriots (7-7), New York Jets (7-7), Las Vegas Raiders (7-7), Jacksonville Jaguars (6-8), Cleveland Browns (6-8), and the Pittsburgh Steelers (6-8) are all waiting in the wings should Los Angeles, the Ravens, and Miami stumble.

“It’s been tight since the bye [week],” Staley remarked. “Every game that we have played is against the team that’s in the hunt. I think that we’ve played quality football since the bye. We’ve been in a lot of these tight games. We’re used to being in these games. I think that you see the poise and the confidence in our team come alive, even when it’s tight. That’s a good football team.
“They’ve been in the playoffs three straight years, probably going to go four. They have a lot of players that have been in big games. To beat them after they’ve lost three games, they were playing with a lot of purpose. You saw what Miami did the other night. For us to have two quality wins in a row at home, I’m very proud of our team.”
The Chargers end their season with two of their last three games on the road with those contests against the Indianapolis Colts and the Denver Broncos. Sandwiched in between is a SoFi Stadium home date against the Los Angeles Rams.
One of the advantages the Chargers have in all three of those games is having Justin Herbert line up under center as the starting quarterback. As long as Staley has a healthy Herbert orchestrating the offense, the Chargers are a serious threat to make a deep postseason run.

The record-breaking quarterback put a couple more marks under his belt in the win against Tennessee. Against the Titans, Herbert went for 313 yards through the air, taking him over 4,000 yards for the third time in his career. Herbert is the only quarterback in the history of the league to pass for 4,000 yards or more in his first three seasons.
He also dropped Los Angeles Rams signal-caller Matthew Stafford into the No. 2 position for a quarterback with the most completions through their first 50 games. Herbert is now at the top of that line with 1,246 completions, surpassing Stafford’s 1,239 total.
Staley is used to Herbert doing something special just about every time he steps on the football field, so he is not surprised or amazed at what his quarterback does.
“Not much. Rarely,” said Staley. “I’m more amazed at practice than I am at the game, to be honest with you, because there’s some things that you guys don’t even get to see on the practice field that blows me away. The poise that he has is his biggest trait, to me, is his poise. You have to have that in your quarterback. Today was a tough day, kind of, for our offense. It was kind of an uneven day, but he’s not that way. He’s not uneven. He’s steady. Then, when you have to have it with 40-plus seconds left on the clock and no timeouts, you know that he is going to perform, and that’s what he does.”

For all of the superlatives heaped deservingly on Herbert, the Chargers were in a dogfight with Tennessee all the way up to the end. With the game tied and seconds remaining in regulation, the Chargers needed to get a 43-yard field goal from Cameron Dicker to prevail.
“It wasn’t easy for us today out there,” Herbert said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t put up enough points to really give our defense a shot. I have so much respect for our defense for coming up with big stops all game long and they played their tails off. They did an incredible job. We have to be better as an offense.”

Dennis has covered and written about politics, crime, race, sports, and entertainment. Dennis currently covers the NFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, and Olympic sports. Dennis is the editor of News4usonline.com and serves as the publisher of the Compton Bulletin newspaper. He earned a journalism degree from Howard University. Email Dennis at dfreeman@news4usonline.com
Discover more from News4usonline
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.