Who to Watch: Chargers at Falcons
Channel: trending videos
Date: 2016-10-23

Who to Watch: Chargers at Falcons

For the San Diego Chargers, the importance of last week’s 21-13 win over the Broncos on Thursday Night Football cannot be overstated.
Instead of reliving in detail the carnage that was that 1-4 start where they blew a pair of double-digit leads in the 4th quarter, let us instead focus on what changed against the defending Super Bowl champions. The Bolts may have finally gotten the proverbial monkey off their back. Or, perhaps more accurately, out of their heads.
When you give away as many games as the Chargers seem to give away it’s easy to start believing your team is simply cursed or star-crossed or snake bit or insert cliché here. It is possible that breaking that string can be the catalyst for a run of a different kind of luck.
“There’s no question it was tough, those games that we’ve been in,” said offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt. “To lose them, especially leading the way we have, I think human nature is, you know, ‘Here we go’ or ‘This is happening again’ but it’s funny … in this league a lot of times you have one game like that where, even the fact it was a national television game and there was a lot of excitement about the game, you pull that game out … you win it … and maybe it can be the springboard for when you’re in those situations now you pull them out.”
The Bolts get their first shot at proving they’ve broken the spell on Sunday against the 4-2 Atlanta Falcons, owners of the highest-scoring offense in the NFL. San Diego brings in the league’s 3rd highest-scoring unit so one would naturally think this game is going to be a shootout, which brings us to this week’s three players to watch:
Drew Kaser, P
The rookie bounced back from what might be the worst game a punter has ever had in Oakland with a pretty good Mike Scifres impersonation against Denver. Against Matt Ryan, Julio Jones and company field position is going to be massive. If the Falcons get short fields they will boat race the Bolts. You have to make them try and string together long drives (which they certainly can do, as well) if you want to have a shot at winning the shootout. Kaser needs to keep sticking punts inside the 20 like he did on Thursday night and avoid any more 16-yarders like he had against the Raiders for San Diego to have a shot.
Dwight Lowery, FS
As defensive coordinator John Pagano said multiple times during the week Atlanta has one of the most explosive offenses in the NFL. They have big play threats across the board, none bigger than Jones, who cane beat a defense pretty much any way he wants to. The key here to avoiding splash plays in the passing game is to just not let anyone get behind you. The next key is, if they’re going to try and hit you with big plays, hit them back with big plays of your own. Lowery is a veteran who understands how this thing is going to work. Something tells me he’s going to get his first interception in a Chargers uniform at the Georgia Dome.
Antonio Gates, TE
The future Hall of Famer has been eerily quiet n 2016. Gates has only 12 catches for 81 yards and two touchdowns for the entire season. But if there was a game for Gates to break out, this one is probably the one. Only the Browns have allowed more passing yards to tight ends than the Falcons have this year. Now that defensive coordinators have to start paying really close attention to fellow tight end Hunter Henry, Gates is the guy who might start getting freed up and looking like the game wrecker we’ve seen for more than a decade.
Derek’s Prediction
The numbers say this is going to be a shootout that looks like something you’d see in the Arena Football League. I think the numbers will be right. While the Chargers have the ability to outscore the Falcons, playing on the road will be simply too tall a task.
Final score: Falcons 38, Chargers 34


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