Bolts from the Past: Reboot!

Ok, so my last attempt at this didn't work out quite the way I had hoped. But that's ok, you guys are patient right? RIGHT?!?

Anyway, what I've decided to do is reboot the series and take a slightly different path. I'll still be going through the best and worst of various games of different periods as described last week, but rather than me just declaring one game or another the winner, I'll ay out the candidates, and then you readers will get to vote! This way, we'll have real live clashes of will for what the best and worst moments of recent Chargers history have been.

I'm going to go to a slightly different place this week, and wait a bit to re-do last week's look at bad pass defense. This time, we'll go the opposite direction and look at the best rushing offense performances by the Chargers. I'm going to divide this one into three different periods: LT as the featured back under Marty, LT as the featured back under Norv, and Mathews as the featured back under Norv. Don't like my divisions? Too bad, it's my series. We'll kick it off with the most recent period, Mathews as the featured back under Norv.

We have 4 candidates to look at this week, 2 from 2010 and 2 from 2011.

Week 8, 2010, Tennessee @ San Diego: This game sported the highest rushing offense DVOA from the 2010 season, at 33.5%. The Chargers as a group gained 156 yards on 34 carries, good for a 4.6 ypc. Both Tolbert and Sproles each had 30+ yard runs, and each found the end zone. It wasn't a day of spectacular big plays in the ground game, but it was a very efficient day.

Week 14, 2010, Kansas City @ San Diego: This match was another that lack big explosive plays in the run game, but was extremely efficient and productive. Tolbert and Mathews each ran for over 60 yards with a touchdown, Sproles ran for over 50, and all combined for a 4.8 ypc. The Chiefs were able to avoid surrendering big plays, but consistently gave up decent yardage.

Week 3, 2011: Kansas City @ San Diego: Here, we don't see a ton of domination in the raw stats. Mathews ran for a nice 98 yards on 21 carries with two touchdowns, including this nifty little play here. DVOA liked the game though, and gave the Chargers a 34.4% rating for their ground offense.

Week 13, 2011: San Diego @ Jacksonville: Ryan Mathews just ran all over the Jaguars in this contest. Ryan carried the ball just 13 times, but racked up 112 yards, including a 31-yard touchdown. Mike Tolbert tacked on 24 yards on 6 carries including a 13-yard touchdown. In all, there was very, very little Jacksonville could do that day to stop the San Diego ground attack. For the stat-inclined, the Chargers' rush DVOA was 66.2%.

There are your choices. I won't vote (at least, not right away) so as not to bias you all. Next week, we'll tackle the next period in the list--LT under Norv. That should be fun, right?