Heading into a must-win game in Week 15, Philip Rivers and the Los Angeles Chargers were on a four-game winning streak and were quite possibly the hottest team in the league. Then at Arrowhead Stadium against the Kansas City Chiefs, the wheels came off.
Rivers, who hadn’t thrown a single interception during the recent winning streak, was picked off three times. As a team, the Chargers turned it over four times and didn’t force the Chiefs into a single one.
Looking back at the game, Rivers admitted the Chargers, “kind of fell apart in a sense, I guess,” per the team’s website.
“We’ve just got to execute. Again, just what we talked about during the last four games, not turning the ball over and getting takeaways, we were the opposite of that today. We turned the ball over too many times in this environment.”
The end result was a 30-13 blowout that propelled the Chiefs to the AFC West lead. Now, though the Chargers are still in the playoff hunt they no longer control their own destiny.
“I think the hardest part of it is that while it’s not necessarily over yet, now you’re not in control,” echoed Rivers. “You’ve got to make sure you take care of the next couple, but then you need certain things to happen. So that is the toughest part, to claw our way (to) right here and taste it again, and then not play very well.”
It was a disheartening performance at a critical moment in the season, but one Los Angeles might still be able to overcome. Though at this point, Kansas City is going to need to slip up big time for the Chargers to have a shot at the division crown, having swept its rival 2-0 this season. The wild card is still in play, but again, the Chargers will need a lot of help to get in that way.