Chargers say they've learned what it takes

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SAN DIEGO -- If the San Diego Chargers indeed are the last team standing when the Lombardi Trophy is handed out Feb. 1 in Tampa, a lot will have to do with the lessons their players and coaches learned in 2007. A slow start, a furious finish and an extended playoff run took them to places they hadn't previously gone. In the process, they learned about managing high expectations, dealing with adversity and handling the pressure of the postseason. "One thing about this team, we understand what it takes," tight end Antonio Gates said last week. "It ain't about being picked No. 1, and it ain't about being picked the last-place team. It's about going out there together as a team, executing on Sunday, letting the regular season carry over to the postseason and getting everybody on the same page, especially the young guys that come in." If they have, indeed, learned from last season, they will ignore the background noise that has them among the favorites to get to the Super Bowl. They didn't a year ago, in the minds of several players. That, plus the adjustment to Norv Turner and his coaching staff and a difficult early schedule, led to a 1-3 start that had the Qualcomm Stadium multitudes screaming for Turner's predecessor, Marty Schottenheimer, during a late September home loss to Kansas City. But San Diego won 10 of its final 12 regular-season games and its second straight division championship, a development that a number of the Chargers said was attributable to Turner's refusal to panic. The Chargers added their first postseason victory since December 1995, followed that by knocking off the defending champion Colts in Indianapolis and might have had a shot at beating New England in the AFC title game if LaDainian Tomlinson hadn't been sidelined by a knee injury. Along the way, they learned about the pressure-cooker of the postseason. And they learned about themselves. "It was disappointing in the way it ended," quarterback Philip Rivers said. "I think it left us all with a little pit in our stomach, a sick stomach. But when you look back on it a month later, after the dust settles, we accomplished a lot last year -- a lot to build on. "It was unknown what it was like to win a playoff game. You could go around the room and not many guys knew what it was like to win one. It was unknown to go win on the road at Indy. All those unknowns ... you have an idea of what it's going to be like, and then it's reality." The steady progression to the top happens frequently in other sports: one or two failures in the postseason, learning how to win, getting deeper in the playoffs and finally being in position to win it all. The New York Giants bypassed that process last season, going from 8-8 in '06 to a Super Bowl title. But each of the two previous NFL champions, the 2006 Colts and 2005 Steelers, endured painful playoff losses the previous season and came back stronger. "That's how you hope you continue to progress," Rivers said. "We've got all the pieces to the puzzle to make this thing go. Now it's a matter of just doing it. "I keep using the word 'understand.' I think we just have a better understanding of what this whole thing takes and what it is. We understand that if you get off to a good start, play well early, do all those things that we didn't do last year ... maybe we'll progress to where we need to (go) to get it all done." The Patriots are trying to atone for their own postseason failure, of course. But for the Chargers, any talk of it being their "turn' will be met with the party line, as enunciated by linebacker Shawne Merriman: "I don't think it's anybody's turn. They always say the team that almost gets there last year should win it the next year. That's all good for statistics. For us, we just look at it as something we have to do." Chargers players may have gotten caught up in the high expectations a year ago. "All through training camp it was 'Super Bowl,' and we weren't afraid to talk about it," Rivers said. "I fell into that trap, too. Last year we talked a lot about the big picture, but I'm not sure we understood it. And now I think we understand: 'Let's not worry about December and January right now.' That seemed to be all the talk in the preseason, what you hoped the end of the season would be like, and we forgot to take care of the first half of the season. So I think our focus is getting off to a good start, and then just getting better." That's not to say the expectations shouldn't be there, just that the players and coaches shouldn't pay too much attention to them. "It's tough because whenever you look around at this team and see the kind of players we have, the first thing you want to say is, 'This team is going to the Super Bowl,' " Merriman said. "But that's what started us 1-3 last year, because we came into the season after 14-2 the year before automatically assuming that we were going to the Super Bowl because of the kind of team we had. That's how we had the slow start." Added Rivers: "People say, 'You gonna go all the way this year?' And I say, 'Yeah, that's the plan.' I mean, that's the ultimate goal. There's no denying that. But it's a journey ...''(Contact Jim Alexander at jalexander@PE.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)