LT remembers 2007 promise

Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson was asked about the mental state of his team Monday afternoon when he went into his mental archives and pulled up a quote he used a year ago after the club’s 1-3 start.

“I promise you, it’s like I told you last year, you can take this to the bank: this team is like a quarter horse and at the end, it’s going to come running,” Tomlinson said.

Two games into the young season, the Chargers were still feeling the sting of their 0-2 start but were quick to point back to last September when they started 1-3 before eventually claiming their second-consecutive AFC West title.

While Tomlinson acknowledged that talk can be cheap, he vowed that those inside the Bolts’ locker room won’t be shaken by a pair of last-second losses to start the season.

“When you’re 0-2, people start to panic,” Tomlinson said. “It’s human nature. Even we can start to panic, but it’s a long season. We’ve got four months. Let’s hope it starts this week.”

Head Coach Norv Turner started his press conference by saying that he’d been in contact with NFL officials concerning the controversial nature in which his team lost Sunday, but he refused to rehash the manner in which Sunday’s game in Denver ended, citing that it would benefit neither himself nor his team.

“It’s not frustration in my mind,” Turner said. “I’ve been through them. You’re (ticked), and then you know that no matter what you do, its not going to change that decision that’s been made. You have to move on. It’s gone, it’s gone. We get ready and we get started and going and its not going to be a thought in my mind because my mind says how do we prepare to play our best football game on Monday night.”

Quarterback Philip Rivers called the last two weeks the two most difficult losses of his life because of the manner in which they happened. Despite erasing fourth-quarter deficits in each of the Chargers’ first two games, the Bolts were unable to pull out victories, which didn’t sit well with the signal caller who is now 25-9 as a starter in the regular season.

“It should hurt and it should eat at you,” Rivers said. “If you’re a competitor and you care, it ought to eat at you and bother you. It’s okay to still be sick about it but we’ve got to move forward to a home game against the Jets that will hopefully get us going.”

Tough breaks aside, Rivers and company took responsibility for their play. Specifically, Rivers was hard on himself regarding two red-zone throws, one to Antonio Gates and another to Legedu Naanee that would have resulted in touchdowns rather than field goals.

“There are things out there we could have done,” Rivers said. “All the calls, everything the same, I think as players the only way to truly do it the right way is to say, ‘What could we have done? What could we have done in our control to make the outcome different?’”

The Chargers also allowed 329 yards of total offense, were credited with just one sack and were penalized eight times. Turner sees it as a lot of small, correctable mistakes piling up.

“We had a lot of plays in that game where we have just one guy out of position or we’re a step away from getting a pressure,” Turner said. “Those things we can improve on.”

The Chargers will have a bit of a different schedule this week as they have an extra day to prepare for the New York Jets, whom they’ll face next week on ESPN’s Monday Night Football. They’ll have plenty of time to chew on their disappointing start, but like they did a year ago, they believe they’ll eventually benefit from some difficult times early in the season.

“Being 0-2 and not getting off to a (good) start, it’s either going to make you a better player and person or it’s going to make you worse,” Rivers said. “We aren’t going to stay the same. Hopefully it’ll make us better. That’s what we’re planning on.”

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