5 Bad Things: Miami Dolphins at SD Chargers

Let me preface this post by saying that I did not watch yesterday's game, as it was blacked out in my area. Instead, I spent the day riding rides in Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure. I will probably be able to watch the game at some point today/tonight, but for right now I'm going off of the box score and highlights.

Running Back Fumbles
Another week, and another pair of fumbles by the San Diego Chargers that they were lucky enough to land on top of. Mike Tolbert and Ryan Mathews apparently continued their pre-game ritual of eating heavily buttered popcorn and then not washing their hands afterward.

Philip Rivers
I understand that, statistically, he had a good game. Zero turnovers seems like an accomplishment for El Capitan this season, but he just doesn't look right on passes downfield. He needs to figure that out before defenses start to realize that they can play Cover 1 instead of Cover 2 with their Safeties and bring more pressure against Rivers.

Mike Tolbert
Everyone has always looked at Tolbert and thought that he was a little too big to be a great runner in the NFL. The common thought process was that one day he would lose a step, and after that day he'd be almost useless. Similar to Jerome Bettis in his last few seasons. Right now, I'm going to blame his 2.6 yards per carry on his strained calf and a lot of goal line carries, but I'll be keeping my eye on Mike.

Penalties
Penalties and turnovers are ways in which good teams shoot themselves in the foot and lose games, or at least keep games close when they shouldn't be. The Chargers did a good job of winning the turnover battle, but had 8 penalties (for 80 penalty yards) against the Dolphins' 2. This Bolts' team needs to form an identity of being mistake-free, not mistake-prone.

Blackout
I have two reasons here. Number one, blackouts suck because the people that really want to watch the games but can't afford to drop $100 or so dollars for 1 ticket plus parking plus a beer at the game can't see the game. Number two, the people that are tech-savvy enough to find and watch the illegal streams of games put themselves at risk (at least some risk) and still come away unsatisfied because they had to watch their favorite team on a 3" tall video box that's heavily pixelated and jittery. That's not fun.

I'll add a third one in here, but I don't know if it's a bad things and it's somewhat unproven. I'm almost positive that the Chargers are undefeated when they are blacked out. The logical side of my brain knows that it's because those are games in which they're playing lesser opponents, but the crazy fan side of my brain wants to know why they save all their good football for when I can't properly watch them.