Thursday, October 22, 2015

Silver Linings

Here we sit, at 2-4 and blaming yet another rash of injuries for our failures. I can accept that. Excuse making is human nature in today’s society. I personally believe that is a product of living in a world without accidents. Fault must always be distributed these days or how would anyone know who to sue? That’s a discussion for another day and another site. I’m here to talk about silver linings.

A lot of people would say-and I agree!-that good teams should measure themselves by how they manage against other good teams, and on that front we have fallen short. Given opportunities in Cincinnati and Green Bay, we showed that we are not ready to play with the big boys right now. But all is not lost. This is the time to find our true selves. There is not a team left on our schedule that you can say is clearly a stronger competitor than our Chargers. Even the 6-0 Broncos have warts that all but portend the certainty of their eventual collapse this season. Before you tout their impressive defense, go look at who they’ve actually played so far. A real murderer’s row consisting of offensive powerhouses like the Ravens, Lions and Browns. No one else on our schedule has more wins than we do right now. Not a one. So now is the time to assert ourselves. Now is the time to turn it around and take advantage of a league of NFL misfits laid out before us by the scheduling Gods. Some of those teams will rise from the ashes, but so must we. It’s time to be the best of the worst.

Even if we do crush it for the rest of the season, though, I’m inclined as many of you no doubt will be, to say who cares? If we make a run and find the postseason on the backs of the corpses of lesser teams, so what? Surely we’ll be swept clear by the real contenders before the playoffs start in earnest. But winning begets winning in this league. We have the talent. A string of victories, no matter who’s on the other side of the ball, can only sow the seeds of our success and assure that we rise up and reach our full potential. It can be done. There’s a lot of football left to be played. Now let’s go smash the Raiders. Go Bolts!!!

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