Five stats highlight just how badly the Chargers have struggled in close games
The Chargers have made quite an impact in “Monday Night Football” games. Unfortunately, it’s not the good kind.
On Monday, the Chargers blew a 17-point lead against the New Orleans Saints, missed a game-winning field goal at the end of regulation and lost 30-27. Michael Badgley’s 50-yard field-goal attempt that would have won the game hit off the upright:
New Orleans kicked a field goal in the extra period and the Chargers turned the ball over on downs to end the game. Mike Williams was stopped just short of the first-down marker by the Saints’ Marshon Lattimore.
Does the Chargers’ inability to hold a 17-point lead sound familiar? It should, because LA did it a week earlier against the Buccaneers. That’s a rarity in NFL history as ESPN Stats and Info noted:
That’s not the only wild stat about the Chargers’ struggles. NFL Update shared this about the team’s record in close games:
The Chargers are 1-4 this season, and their four losses have been by a combined 18 points:
Here’s another depressing stat for the Chargers: Since the start of the 2011 season, they are 4-9 in overtime games.
And this from ESPN Stats and Info shows how often the Chargers have wasted a 17-point lead on “Monday Night Football:”
On Tuesday’s “Good Morning Football” on the NFL Network, Kyle Brandt took the Chargers to task.
“There should be a stat for the team that just knows how to win, because we saw both sides of that last night,” Brandt said. “The Saints know how to win and the Chargers don’t. That’s why they won the game last night. You make the field goal at the end of regulation. It’s a 50-yarder. Hit it.
“I guarantee you Wil Lutz would have hit that for the Saints, and most importantly on that last play of the game, get to the sticks. Get to the damn sticks. That is stuff that they teach you in high school, in Pop Warner. ... It’s the little stuff that kills you about the Chargers.”
The stats bear that out.
