Add The California Post on Google The Chargers asked their fans to wear powder blue on Sunday afternoon.
Raiders jerseys swallowed entire sections of the building, “Rai-ders!” chants rolled down from the upper deck to the lower bowl as silver and black easily outnumbered Chargers supporters by a 3-to-1 margin. By the fourth quarter, the NFL’s most expensive stadium looked less like the Chargers’ home and more like the world’s nicest Raiders bar.
The Raiders completed their takeover on the field as well.
The Raiders beat the Chargers 26-14 Sunday, handing Los Angeles its second consecutive home loss to begin a season that arrived with Super Bowl expectations and has instead produced one of the NFL’s ugliest offenses.
The Chargers have now lost their first two games by an identical score. That’s not a typo, it’s a trend.
The Chargers opened the season as heavy favorites with two winnable games at SoFi Stadium and somehow emerged 0-2. Now they head to Buffalo searching for answers after an offense coordinated by Mike McDaniel has produced just 28 points in eight quarters.
This wasn’t the offense that anyone envisioned when McDaniel arrived.
Justin Herbert finished 15 of 26 for 192 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions. He was sacked three times. Joe Alt committed three false-start penalties and a holding penalty that resulted in a late safety. Cameron Dicker bounced a 58-yard field-goal attempt off the crossbar. Omarion Hampton lost another costly fumble.
Speaking of fumbles, the Chargers had six of them — the most they’ve had in one game since 1987.
“We’re shooting ourselves in the foot,” Rashawn Slater said. “You’re never going to win like that.”
At this point, the Chargers might want to put the gun down.
Herbert briefly gave them life when he escaped Maxx Crosby and found Oronde Gadsden for a 10-yard touchdown that gave Los Angeles a 14-10 lead.
Kirk Cousins answered with a 13-yard touchdown pass to Cody White, who had been elevated from the practice squad one day earlier. Hampton’s fourth-quarter fumble was then scooped up by Jeremy Chinn and returned 43 yards, setting up White’s second touchdown.
Jim Harbaugh is 0-2 for the first time in his college or NFL head-coaching career.
That statistic is surprising, but how the Chargers looked in these two losses is even more glaring.
Harbaugh keeps talking about “fight” and losing “in the margins.” Herbert keeps calling the mistakes “uncharacteristic.”
After two remarkably similar performances, uncharacteristic behavior is starting to look like a pattern.
“There’s no time for us to be patient with how we’re playing,” Herbert said. “It’s not good enough, so we have to be better.”
McDaniel deserves time to install his offense, but the NFL doesn’t hand out grace periods. The Chargers were supposed to spend September refining a potentially dangerous offense against manageable opponents.
Instead, they’re still looking for the instruction manual.
The Chargers trailed 17-14 with less than four minutes remaining and still had a chance to steal a game they had spent most of the afternoon trying to give away.
Chinn recovered it and raced 43 yards to the Chargers’ 16. Three plays later, Cousins found White for an 11-yard touchdown.
Hampton said afterward his teammates told him, “Both hands on it. Next one. Move on to the next one.”
But fumbling in consecutive weeks isn’t something the Chargers can simply keep moving past.
Cousins wasn’t spectacular on Sunday, but frankly, he didn’t need to be.
The veteran completed 19 of 29 passes for 253 yards, three touchdowns and one interception, calmly taking advantage of a Chargers defense that surrendered a 40-yard touchdown to Tre Tucker on a busted coverage and couldn’t get the stop it needed late.
While Los Angeles unraveled, Cousins remained composed.
This rivalry has always carried a strange geographic history because the Raiders’ roots in Los Angeles never disappeared when the franchise did.
When the Chargers asked their fans for a powder-blue-out, Raiders fans answered with a blackout. The visitors didn’t just occupy a corner of the stadium. They appeared to own the entire building!
As the Chargers walked toward their second straight defeat, the soundtrack inside their own building belonged to the other team. Even during Harbaugh’s postgame press conference, Raiders fans could be heard celebrating next to him, drowning out the defeated voice of the Chargers’ head coach.
The Chargers just wasted two home games against Arizona and Las Vegas. Now their first road trip sends them to one of the NFL’s most unforgiving environments inside a brand new billion-dollar stadium. After that, a trip to the defending Super Bowl champions.
Teams that start 0-2 only make the playoffs 15% of the time. An 0-3, or god forbid an 0-4 start, likely means the season is already over.
“We’ve got the guys. We’ve got the coaches,” he said. “Just got to find our way.”
