DENVER — Funny how this stuff works out sometimes, right? But in the final 60 minutes of football the 2013-14 Chargers would play together, they ran an absolute replay — only in miniature — of the entire 2013-14 Chargers season.
Not just a microcosm. But possibly the quintessential microcosm.
“We fought together. We played together. We competed,” quarterback Philip Rivers said. “And the character of this team allows us to hold your head up high. But that doesn’t mean it’s OK.”
Rivers was talking about this game, about this 24-17 loss to the top-seeded Broncos, but he easily could have been referring to this whole season. Across 12 games the Chargers were 5-7, with some positively brutal losses numbered among them. They were playoff exiles on the wrong side of the border.
And then they won. And won again. And again. They beat the Broncos — here, at Mile High — and they made a stirring comeback against the Chiefs in Week 17 and got the break of the year when a last-second field goal sailed wide. And then, last week, they walked into Cincinnati and stomped the Bengals.
Not a bad comeback.
This time? They were awful in the first half, down 14-0 at the break (and it easily could have been 21-0), they were behind 17-0 and 24-7 … and then …
“We came a long way from where we started from,” wide receiver Keenan Allen said, “and then we put it together and found our character and saw what we could do.”
Allen was talking about the season, but he could have been talking about the game. Down 17, Rivers found Allen for a touchdown with 5:49 left, and then the Chargers recovered the on-side kick, drove to the Denver 12 and settled for a 30-yard field goal to pull within seven. They eschewed another on-sider but did force Denver into a third-and-17, one play away from inciting and inviting full-blown panic among the locals.
They just happened to run into Peyton Manning. Tough luck.
“As long as there’s ever time left on the clock in a game, we’re going to play until the bitter end,” said coach Mike McCoy, the head coach whose first season ended at 10-8 and with more feel-good vibes than most recent Chargers seasons that ended with more wins. “We came up short of our goal but we did a lot of good things, I’ll say that. We’ve got a good group of people in our building.”