The Chargers ruled quarterback Justin Herbert out for Week 18 early in the week and they did the same with running back Omarion Hampton on Friday.
Hampton will not play against the Broncos after sitting out of practice all week with an ankle injury. Hampton will turn his attention toward getting healthy in time for the team’s playoff opener during the wild card round.
Running backs Kimani Vidal (neck) and Hassan Haskins (concussion) are listed as questionable, so Jaret Patterson may be in line for plenty of playing time on Sunday.
Center Bradley Bozeman (neck), safety RJ Mickens (shoulder), and cornerback Benjamin St-Juste (shoulder) are also listed as questionable. Left tackle Jemaree Salyer (hamstring) and defensive back Elijah Molden (hamstring) are listed as doubtful while cornerback Nikko Reed (hamstring) has already been ruled out.
Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert will not play in Sunday’s regular-season finale against the Broncos.
The Chargers have already clinched a wild card, and head coach Jim Harbaugh said today that he’s keeping Herbert healthy for the playoffs. Herbert is playing with an injured left hand and has taken a beating this season.
Trey Lance will start at quarterback for the Chargers.
Harbaugh also indicated some other starters who are banged up will get this week off.
That’s good news for the Broncos, who only need to beat the Chargers on Sunday to earn the No. 1 seed in the AFC. It’s also bad news for the Patriots, who can still earn the No. 1 seed, but only if they win on Sunday and the Broncos lose.
The Chargers will open the playoffs on the road in the wild card round, and Harbaugh wants Herbert to be healthy and well rested. If that means accepting that the Chargers are going to lose to the Broncos on Sunday, Harbaugh will take that.
A potentially exciting ending to Saturday’s Texans-Chargers contest evaporated in a flash, thanks to a ticky-tack illegal contact foul that extended Houston’s final drive, keeping L.A. from trying to mount a potential game-winning drive. NFL officiating spokesman Walt Anderson addressed the call on NFL Network’s Sunday morning four-hour pregame show, in his usual two-minute chunk of real estate to talk about officiating decisions from the week that was.
“What a lot of people may not realize is illegal contact is a very unique foul to the National Football League,” Anderson said. “Illegal contact does not exist at any other level of football. And what that foul is, is receivers, once you go five yards, defensive players have got to let them freely run their route. You can chuck them once within five yards, but after five yards, you’ve gotta let them go. And so what happened on this play is when Christian Kirk got past five yards, then, number 29, Tarheeb Still, he slid over into his path. If you slide over into the path of the receiver, you chuck them, you ride them beyond that five yards, that is illegal contact, and that is what was called on the play.”
In isolation, that’s right. And Steve Mariucci followed up with the (frankly) irrelevant question of why the flag wasn’t dropped for illegal contact with a different receiver on the same play. Anderson explained the reason for a foul not being called on Chargers defensive back Donte Jackson (as Kurt Warner initially assumed when discussing the replay during the broadcast) for a collision with Texans receiver Xavier Hutchinson.
Here’s the reality. The officials typically don’t call illegal contact quite so tightly. So the better question is this: “Walt, why isn’t illegal contact called every time it happens?”
Despite the rule that revolutionized passing offenses in 1978 by preventing defensive backs from constantly jamming and hitting and disrupting pass routes before the ball is in the air (with the exception on “one chuck” within five years), some degree of technically illegal contact occurs all the time. It doesn’t get called all the time because, frankly, that would slow the game down to a crawl. (The Legion of Boom, among other successful teams, parlayed that reality into a Super Bowl win 12 years ago.)
That’s the real problem. By “letting them play” more often than not, with illegal contact called only sporadically or when blatant, it stands out (in a bad way) when the rule is strictly enforced — especially when a game is on the line.
This is another one of those “normal incidents of the game” that become tinfoil-hat fodder in a world of widespread legalized sports betting from which the NFL significantly profits.
Obviously, we don’t expect official NFL spokesman Walt Anderson to say that. But that’s the real problem with what happened on Saturday at SoFi Stadium. Illegal contact of the kind that was flagged in crunch time very often isn’t. So why was it called at that specific time?
Houston’s win over the Chargers got the Texans into the playoffs. And it leaves only one spot in the AFC unclaimed.
Six teams are now in: Broncos, Patriots, Jaguars, Texans, Chargers, and Bills.
That leaves one more seat at the table, for one of two teams. Either the Steelers or the Ravens will be the AFC North champions. Pittsburgh’s magic number is one; a Baltimore loss to the Packers tonight or a Steelers win over the Browns on Sunday seals the deal.
Plenty of seed remain TBD, including the AFC East and AFC South champions, along with the all-important No. 1 seed.
Still, six of seven AFC teams are set. Which is the same situation as the NFC, where the only remaining spot will go to eventual NFC South champs, Carolina or Tampa Bay.
The Texans are headed to the playoffs for the third straight season.
Saturday’s 20-16 win over the Chargers in Los Angeles sewed up a postseason berth for DeMeco Ryans’ squad and it closed the door on any hope the Colts had of salvaging a season that has gone off the rails after a 7-1 start. The Texans will face those Colts in Week 18 and the win means there will remain a possibility that they can leapfrog the Jaguars and win the AFC South regardless of what happens in Sunday’s game between their AFC South rivals.
The Chargers loss also means that the Broncos have clinched the AFC West title. It is the first time that a team other than the Chiefs has won that division since 2015.
The Texans got off to a hot start thanks to C.J. Stroud touchdown passes to rookies Jayden Higgins and Jaylin Noel on their first two possessions, but they failed to put the game away despite a slew of Chargers mistakes. Kicker Cameron Dicker had a pair of them with a missed field goal at the end of the first half and a missed extra point after Omarion Hampton’s touchdown run brought Los Angeles within four points with 3:37 left to play in the game.
It looked like the Chargers would get one last chance to try to pull out the win when Odafe Oweh and Daiyan Henley sacked Stroud on a third down before the two minute warning, but cornerback Tarheeb Still was flagged for illegal contact and the Texans were able to run out the clock from there.
Stroud was 16-of-28 for 244 yards and threw two interceptions to go with the two early touchdowns. Running back Woody Marks added 19 carries for 71 yards, but the driver for the Texans all season has been the defense and it remained so on Saturday.
Justin Herbert was sacked five times and the Chargers failed to get into the end zone until they were down 17-3 at the end of the third quarter. Pass protection has been their Achilles heel all season and their playoff stay is unlikely to be a long one if they can’t find some way to shore it up before the wild card round arrives.
