The elements of football
When you get right down to it, the most important aspect of offensive football is being able to run the ball. Any coach, no matter how wedded he may be to the aerial game, will acknowledge that.
And the single most important skill on the other side of the ball is tackling.
When you can't do either consistently? You're lucky to be 1-2, as in your San Diego Chargers.
The tackling problems were on display last Sunday at Green Bay with a number of plays -- including the 57-yard pass play for the ultimate winning touchdown -- that could have been avoided or limited with better tackling.
Shawne Merriman's reaction was predictable.
"I just want to hit somebody," he said. "It really gets under my skin, seeing two teams being able to march up the field on us. That's not our defense, missing tackles, not being as physical as we can be. ...
"It's something you learn in pee wee football. That's why we don't take to the ground during the week. We know how to tackle. We should know how to tackle. And that's something we all got on each other about after the game and during the week. It's something we will correct.
"First and foremost, you gotta be physical out there. You go out there and you try to run through a guy ... It's basic, and it's something you've got to make an emphasis."
And on the other side of the ball? Obviously, opponents are stacking eight men in the box against the Chargers and daring LaDainian Tomlinson to find a hole. But, as head coach Norv Turner pointed out, the Chargers saw a lot of eight-man fronts last year, and Tomlinson still gained 1,815 yards and scored 28 rushing touchdowns.
"A couple of plays, they know where we're going," Turner said. "But he had great success last year, and he ran the 'power' over 100 times last year. He ran the 'slant' over 80 times. So I'm sure there were people that knew we were running the 'power' and the 'slant' last year."
Tomlinson said the Chargers are "trying to get back to some of the things we've had success doing, some of our zone stuff where we can block the eight-man front.
"I wouldn't say (the offense is) predictable, but I would say with our run game ... it's easy sometimes for people to say, 'This is their running formation. They got Lorenzo (Neal) in the game and they got Brandon (Manumaleuna) at the point of attack, let's guess that they're going to run here.' It's easy to do that. I think sometimes people just catch us. That's going to happen sometimes. But I think it has happened more times than we would like it to happen."