And the losers cry foul

I woke up this morning and checked for a house full of empty bottles. Nope, I’m still good for 32+ years, so that doesn’t explain it. I accused my wife of beating me with a stick, but she claims she doesn’t have a stick. Oh, yes, 35-21 last night.

And of course the players are singing the song they always sing after a loss, even a 14 point loss, the one with the lyrics about "just a few missed plays." Give me a break. If the dog hadn't stopped to scratch it's ass it would have caught the rabbit. If you miss a few plays when you are leading by 21 points you'll still win the game. The issue is to go out and play better than your opponent and not miss plays, a few of them or a lot of them. If, on the other hand, you make enough good plays, you can miss a few and it won't matter. If you are not making enough plays then you can't miss any.

And the fans and sportswriters are, of course, whining endlessly about “bad calls” by the refs, which they do every time the Chargers lose a game. Interestingly, they never seem to be concerned about the performance of the refs when we win. My reaction is much the same as with the "few missed plays" nonsense; if we are outplaying the opponent those few (presumably) bad calls don't matter. We can shrug and move on.

The problem isn't "a few missed plays" or a couple of supposedly bad calls by the refs. The problem is that we didn't have enough good plays and enough scoring to make those few issues not matter. Go out and make 45 good, ground gaining plays and score 35 points, and we won't have to worry about one fumble we didn't recover, or one ref who supposedly can't see past the end of his nose.

A team wins games by playing well for the entirety of the game, not be the outcome of a few plays or based on one or two calls by the official.