Chargers Week 17 ‘Surge or Static?’: Austin Ekeler breaks LT’s receptions record, runs rampant over Rams

With a 31-10 victory over the Rams, Brandon Staley secured his first double-digit win season as a head coach and has his team right on track to earn the No. 5 seed in this year’s playoffs.

The Bots’ biggest win of the season came behind another monster effort from Austin Ekeler who amassed 161 yards of total offense and another three rushing scores, his 12th and 13th of the season. Several other offensive stars did their thing, but the team’s RB1 most certainly deserved one of Brandon Staley’s game balls.

Curious to see who ended up on the right or wrong side of yesterday’s game? Let’s go ahead and take a look at this week’s winners and losers from the Chargers latest victory.

Surge

WR Mike Williams

Williams hasn’t found the end zone in the past three games, but you’d be very wrong to think he hasn’t played one of the biggest roles in helping the Chargers get to four wins in a row.

Against the Rams, Williams hauled in seven passes for 94 yards, including a nice catch-and-run with a nifty shake of cornerback Jalen Ramsey and an incredible one-handed grab on the sideline to help set up the Chargers for one of their four touchdowns on the night.

This was as vintage Mike Williams as it gets and it’s easy to believe that if he didn’t miss five games this season, he might have been looking at a new career high in receiving yards heading into the season finale.

RB Austin Ekeler

With his first reception on Sunday afternoon, Ekeler tied LaDainian Tomlinson’s single-season franchise record with 100 catches. The next three balls he caught helped rewrite the record book with his name alone at the top with 103 receptions. He still technically has one more game to add onto the mark, but Ekeler being able to surpass LT within the same 16-game span means there’s no asterisk next to this record. It’s all Ekeler and deservedly so.

Ek put up his second-best rushing game of the season with 122 rushing yards on just 10 carries. That’s one heck of an average and it was certainly aided by his 72-yard touchdown sprint that helped create an insurmountable lead over the Rams. In back-to-back games, Ekeler scored two rushing scores and now has six in his past four games. After starting the year with zero touchdowns in the first three games of the year, he now has 18 total touchdowns, just two away from the career-high 20 he had a year ago.

Static

LB Kenneth Murray

After three strong games from Murray, he looked like he reverted back to his 2021 form against the Rams. Time and time again, Murray would be seen flying past ball Cam Akers in the backfield only for the latter to record a chunk gain. At one point, Murray had a bead on Baker Mayfield scrambling out of the pocket, but the linebacker over-pursued which allowed Mayfield’s middling juke attempt to work before he ran for a first down.

It was overall just a very unfortunate performance for someone who seemed to really be turning the corner and putting distance between the Murray we’ve come to know and the one the team was hoping he’d become by the end of his third professional season.

After recording the three highest individual game grades of his 2022 campaign, Murray followed them up with a 28.1 grade against the Rams which is the single-worst game grade of his career thus far.