Chargers 14, Bears 3
Some odds and ends from Sunday's season opener:
-- San Diego's new inside linebackers, Matt Wilhelm and Stephen Cooper, each made big plays. Wilhelm fell on the Mike Scifres punt that deflected off Chicago's Brandon McGowan, setting up the Chargers' first touchdown. Cooper recovered Cedric Benson's fumble at the start of the second half.
-- Cooper led the team in tackles with eight, seven of them unassisted, while Wilhelm had five. Interesting, considering departed inside linebacker Donnie Edwards routinely led the team in tackles, and some in the Chargers' organization suggested it was because he had to run downfield to make so many of them. (This was, of course, when they were trying to get rid of him.)
-- Eric Weddle's interception streak in Qualcomm Stadium ended at four (two University of Utah games, two Chargers exhibitions.) But Weddle had three tackles and a sack in his official NFL debut.
-- Shawne Merriman finished with three tackles and no sacks, nothing close to a sack, on a day when the Chargers defense got Rex Grossman three times (one by Jacques Cesaire and one by Shaun Phillips in addition to Weddle).
-- Phillips set a tone on the Bears' third play from scrimmage, sacking Grossman for a 5-yard loss on second-and-8.
-- Cooper on Phillips' play: "We're waiting for both (Phillips and Merriman) to get after the quarterback and apply pressure, and make big plays. So when you see Shaun make big plays, it helps get us going."
-- Marlon McCree on the pressure the Chargers applied to Grossman: "I think that Rex didn't realize how fast that pressure was going to be on him. I think after taht first hit that Shaun Phillips put on him, he was looking over his shoulder for the rest of the game, and that played to our advantage for the rest of the game."
-- Grossman on the pressure: "They did a pretty good job with their blitzes and having some stunts with their defensive line that made it hard for our guys to ge tout on some of their blitzes. You know they did a good job and at times got to the quarterback, but it was mostly our fault why we didn't get into the end zone."
-- Norv Turner on his discussion with the officials after the fumbled snap at the goal line: "The biggest thing was they were explaining to me that I could review the call if I felt that Philip (Rivers) was down when he had control of the ball. I asked Philip if he was down with the ball and he said, 'I never got the ball. The guy was in my lap before the ball was snapped.' ... Some plays you look at and you say, 'Hey, that went our way,' and some didn't in terms of calls. That's one that didn't go our way. I can go by what my O-line said, the center did not snap the ball. The guy's in the neutral zone. He's to our guard's hip. You can't challenge the play that's the rules of the game. You can't challenge that call."
-- Bears coach Lovie Smith's view of the play: "It was a fumble and we recovered it. There's not a whole lot more to it than that."
-- Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher on falling short: "That's our job. We had chances to do it. We held them on the goal lijne. We had a takeaway there on the 1-yard line. Someone made a good play. We had a fumble. We had chances to make plays. We had that one third-and-12 play that we were able to convert and had third and long a few times. We just have to convert when we have the chances to do it."