Poor Kaeding

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Nate Kaeding did not sleep that night and was in the Chargers’ complex at 5 o’clock the next morning, watching his kicks on a big screen in a darkened room.

He spent time last week — when he wasn’t in seclusion with his wife and two young children — being counseled by his coaches. It seems Kaeding has reached a point of being ready to at least try to move forward, but he has been in a bad way since those kicks sailed left and right and short on Jan. 17.

“I was just really blindsided by it,” Kaeding said yesterday. “I was looking for answers.”

Kaeding spoke after the AFC Pro Bowl squad’s morning practice at a high school here.

A few hours later, he withdrew from the Pro Bowl after suffering what appears to be a slight tear in his groin.

“Stay 10 yards away from me; I’m not good luck right now,” Kaeding said with a laugh. “It’s beyond unbelievable. I’m laughing to keep from crying.”

Kaeding left practice believing the tweak in his groin was not a problem. But after undergoing tests later, Kaeding said the injury was “significant enough” that it was prudent for him to skip this week’s festivities. He will undergo further tests this week.

Kaeding had been looking forward to kicking in Sunday’s game. Even though just an exhibition, it was going to afford him the opportunity to kick in a game.

“I had mentally structured it in my mind, I was going to take this week seriously,” Kaeding said. “I was looking forward to getting out there (in the Pro Bowl) and getting to kick and going through that, rather than six months from now.”

He only briefly considered not kicking here this week.

Before being forced to withdraw, Kaeding spoke of beginning that process.

“It’s not my nature to run and hide,” he said. “I sat and thought about it. I said, ‘It’s my job to come kick the football, and I’m going to do it.’

“The circumstances of the last week have been so overwhelming … the last thing I want to do is look at a football. But I decided I needed to suck it up, be a man and go down (to South Florida).”

Yesterday was Kaeding’s first time since that night publicly addressing the disastrous game in which he missed three field goals in the Chargers’ 17-14 season-imploding loss to the New York Jets.

But, privately, it is about all that has been on his mind.

“It’s impossible for me to not think about,” he said. “There haven’t been 30 seconds that have gone by since that game that I haven’t thought about it.”

Kaeding spoke evenly, but his anguish was plain.

The most accurate regular-season kicker in NFL history entered that game having made 20-consecutive field goals, most of them not even flirting with the uprights but going dead center. He had made an NFL-record 69 straight from 40 yards or closer.

Yet, that day, he missed to the left from 36 yards in the first quarter. His try from 57 yards fell short and right at the end of the second quarter. And his attempt from 40 yards in the fourth quarter went wide right.

“It’s been a nightmarish scenario,” Kaeding said. “To have it going so good and over one day, to go so bad … It’s hard right now, if not impossible, to wrap my head around and figure out what went wrong.”

Kaeding is not running from the task, but he has several months to right himself.

He said the first miss was because he hurried. The second two were not technical mistakes. He candidly acknowledged they were in his head.

“On the other two, it was my inability to mentally get over that first miss,” he said. “… On that day, I wasn’t mentally strong enough to come back and swing through the ball.”

Kaeding will not rush the process of mentally healing and processing what went wrong. But, he said, “That’s my job. If it doesn’t naturally come in the next week or two I’m going to sit down and make myself figure it out.”

He has for four years consulted a sports psychologist during the offseason for all manner of issues that confront a kicker — who is rarely called upon to contribute but so often has his contribution matter.

“It’s helped me tremendously,” Kaeding said.

He said he will continue to see the psychologist, and his playoff misses will certainly come up.

Kaeding, whose 87.2 percent success rate during the regular season is unsurpassed by any kicker ever, has made just eight of his 15 field goal tries (53.3 percent) in the playoffs.

He missed four of his first six postseason kicks but had made six straight going into this year’s playoffs.

“Kicking in the postseason was a hurdle I thought I’d gotten over,” Kaeding said. “Therein lies the disappointment. I work extremely hard every year at getting better. To have it blow up in my face that one day … ”

Kaeding knows he will be judged going forward by how he does in the postseason. Most people, in fact, won’t care what he does in the regular season.

“I understand, looking at it from the outside,” he said.

But he argues he has to continue to excel in the regular season to even have another shot in the playoffs.

He said that process will begin shortly, even though he doesn’t get to kick anymore this week.

“I was not mentally tough enough on that day,” Kaeding said. “But trust me, I’m pulling myself up. I know 100 percent for sure, I am tough enough to make field goals in the playoffs. I wish I had that chance tomorrow.”

San Diego Chargers: For Better or For Worse

By: Zach Friend

I know there are better ways to spend a Sunday. I've seen others do it -- productive things like fixing the leaky faucet or spending time with your family. But ever since I moved away from San Diego, I spend my Sundays scouring television guides, Internet stations and my friends' satellite dishes to watch my beloved team. Every year, I show my loyalty and build hope for a year better than the last only to have the season end in anguish and despair. Anyone who is a Chargers fan is well aware of this phenomenon, and not just because you are most likely a Padres fan as well.

But you don't have to be a Chargers fan to understand this cycle of loyalty, anticipation and the anguish of dashed hopes. In fact, 31 teams and cities fail to win the Super Bowl every year and the Sunday ritual of dodging chores is played out across the country. Many cities don't have winning seasons (or winning decades for that matter) and I know how fortunate I have been to even see my team in the playoffs. After all, it seems if you aren't from New York or Boston the last decade that championships weren't really for you.

But why do we allow ourselves to go through this despair year after year? Teams have the ability to place cities on their backs during times of anguish (as has been seen in New Orleans after Katrina and San Diego after the fires) and build uncommon bonds between people. They allow for a common language between a father and son or even the stranger at the supermarket. If nothing else, they bring a commonality beyond locale and connect us with a loyalty not really seen in other aspects of our community.

Clearly this loyalty isn't reciprocated by some owners and business managers who are responsible for astronomical ticket prices, demands for new stadiums and players that are treated like disposable dishes (can anyone say LaDainian Tomlinson?). To the business world it doesn't matter if you are one of the best running backs in history -- a few injuries or no MVP-like season and you're gone.

Some owners expect our blind loyalty winning season or not but rarely give us much love in return. But we trudge on -- with open arms. What is interesting is that for many of us, our loyalty to teams does not translate into loyalty in other elements of our life. For instance, what happened when you went to a restaurant that you loved for the first five trips and then had two bad experiences? Do you go back? Do we give political figures or co-workers the same leniency? Most likely not.

I suppose this is what makes sports different. Teams, like my San Diego Super Chargers, are something you grow up with and stick with -- for better or for worse. Many will never understand why we develop these trusting and eternally hopeful bonds with teams. It is like Charlie Brown continually thinking that Lucy won't pull the football out from underneath him. Or it is like a relationship where everything seems to be going so well only to find out on week 18 that it's immediately over.

But we keep coming back for more. We irrationally cultivate our trust year after year and feel optimism undeterred by the defeats of the past. Maybe we want to have something in our lives that is innocent and hopeful or maybe we just want to justify to our significant others that we are doing something valuable on Sundays. Either way, I think this off-season I'll leave my Bolt banner up -- after all, I can sense that September portends something good.

Letting go of letting Brees go

By: Tim Sullivan

Drew Brees is the hurt that won’t heal, the second guess that won’t stop, the big arm that got away, Ryan Leaf in reverse.

Just as the grief of Chargers fans was transitioning from anger to, well, more anger, just after one local pastor opened his Sunday sermon by lamenting the Bolts’ playoff loss to “the stupid Jets,” here was Brees sprinkling creole salt on San Diego’s open wound.

In leading the New Orleans Saints to their first Super Bowl Sunday afternoon, the erstwhile Chargers quarterback has brought rapture to the bayou and fresh rancor to the seething fans of his former team. He has revived a debate that is sometimes dormant but never dies — the question of whether the Chargers exercised haste, waste or careful calculation in letting Brees leave.

The simple answer is that it was never a simple question; that General Manager A.J. Smith’s decision was not made in a vacuum, but as the product of converging personnel and financial forces. While many Chargers fans remain miffed that a Pro Bowl quarterback could walk away for comparatively token compensation, it is not altogether clear — even in retrospect — that a better alternative was available.

To review: The Chargers drafted Eli Manning in the first round of the 2004 NFL draft, then turned around and traded him to the New York Giants for a package featuring Philip Rivers. Manning purportedly wanted no part of the Chargers — since Tom Condon represented both Manning and Brees, the agent’s agenda entailed conflicting interests — but the team’s insistence on finding a new quarterback was largely driven by doubts Brees had been unable to dispel.

The Chargers owned the No. 1 overall selection that spring as the reward for a 4-12 finish the preceding fall. Brees’ record as an NFL starter was then 10-17. He had thrown 31 interceptions against 29 touchdown passes. He was unquestionably undersized, allegedly the owner of a substandard arm, not nearly the player he would later become.

“Like any young quarterback, it takes time,” former Chargers coach Marty Schottenheimer said yesterday. “Like with (Mark) Sanchez in New York, people don’t realize how hard it is to get a young quarterback to play the game at the speed it is played. …

“I think the thing about Drew is that he’s a student of the game. He understands the mechanics of throwing the football, and he had great balance. I just think he reached the point where the skill set he had was complemented by (experience). When those two things dovetailed enough times, he had a chance to become a big-time quarterback.”

Because Brees’ breakthrough 2004 season dovetailed with Rivers’ rookie year, the Chargers found themselves with an unexpected surplus of talent at football’s priciest position. Smith plainly preferred Rivers, and arguably had a larger stake in his success because he had inherited Brees, but he saw enough in the Chargers’ 2004 playoff run to apply an $8 million “franchise” tag to Brees for the 2005 season.

Brees had taken a series of extraordinary steps to improve his game before the 2004 season, enlisting the aid of dietitians, exercise experts, personal performance coaches, personality analyses and former baseball pitching coach Tom House. Through this painstaking process, Brees remade himself from the NFL’s 29th-ranked quarterback into a Pro Bowl player.

Still, Smith wasn’t completely sold. His praise of Brees was consistently faint and his negotiating stance conspicuously short-term. While Brees stumped for a multi-year contract, the Chargers showed little interest in locking him up for any length of time. Even that tepid interest evaporated when Denver’s Gerard Warren smashed Brees’ right shoulder in a pileup during the Chargers’ 2005 season finale.

With Brees fresh from surgery on a torn labrum, the Chargers offered their recuperating quarterback an incentive-laden lowball deal, possibly just for appearances. Brees chose instead to sign a contract with New Orleans that included $10 million guaranteed.

“It was never discussed with me that it was going to be done until after the fact,” Schottenheimer said. “I was disappointed in it. From my perspective, we could have had an opportunity to work and develop them (both) over a period of time. But on the other hand, Philip Rivers has turned out to be a pretty good quarterback, too.”

Among the more popular alternative scenarios was one in which the Chargers would have “franchised” Brees a second time as an insurance policy in the event Rivers stumbled, and as a means of exploiting his trade value in the event Rivers succeeded. There might be an argument for that approach, but it’s not a particularly pragmatic argument. Keeping Brees at that point would have entailed paying a post-operative quarterback roughly $9 million to fill what was projected to be a backup role.

That’s like leasing a Lamborghini just in case your Ferrari breaks down.

Conceivably, the Chargers could have kept the battered Brees and traded a healthy Rivers, but that was never a realistic option. Even now, with Brees one win from the Lombardi Trophy, it’s not yet obvious which guy will have the better career. That’s not a slight for either player, either, but a tribute to them both.

What bearing Brees’ injury had on his career path is conjecture, but it likely pushed Smith in the direction he was already leaning. Having provided Rivers a two-year apprenticeship, Chargers management was eager to see the kid play.

“I don’t know what we would have decided with a healthy (Brees),” Smith said at the time. “I don’t know if the value would have changed or how much it would have changed. But (was it) a factor? Absolutely.”

Smith declined an interview request yesterday, but he has often made the point that the Chargers did not allow Brees to walk away “for nothing,” as is widely perceived.

Because the Chargers tend to be spectators in the marketplace for front-line free agents, they ultimately received a third-round 2007 draft choice as compensation for Brees signing with the Saints. That draft choice was spent on Clemson linebacker Anthony Waters, who was credited with three tackles before the Chargers cut him last February.

Feel better? Didn’t think so.

Chargers Staying Put Next Season

Source: San Diego Tribune

Chargers home games will be at Qualcomm Stadium for at least one more season as the team tries to build support for a new venue in downtown San Diego.

The announcement that the team won’t trigger the termination clause in its lease this year came yesterday from Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani.

But Fabiani, who has spearheaded the team’s stadium search since 2002, said the team won’t commit to staying in San Diego beyond the 2010 season.

The team’s announcement comes the same week that the Centre City Development Corp., San Diego’s downtown redevelopment arm, considers launching a 15- to 18-month process to obtain the approvals to pump hundreds of millions of tax dollars into a stadium.

Fabiani said the Chargers’ focus in 2010 will be on assessing the political support for building an up to $800 million stadium, partly via public subsidy.

“What we expect to know during the next year is whether city elected officials, particularly the mayor and a majority of the City Council and a majority of the county Board of Supervisors, will support a downtown plan,” Fabiani said. “I think we can figure that out before the CCDC process is over.”

Fabiani called political support crucial for a project of this magnitude but said he doesn’t expect elected officials to get behind it unless a financing plan is in place that works for the city and team.

Under its contract, the team is able to quit Qualcomm Stadium between Feb. 1 and May 1 from now until the end of its lease in 2020. The team must notify city officials in writing of its intention and pay a termination fee.

That fee decreases annually. It’s set at $54.6 million this year and falls to $25.8 million in 2011.

City Hall observers have long speculated that if the team were to leave, it would not do so before the end of next season because of the drop in the termination fee.

Fabiani addressed that issue yesterday.

“I don’t want to be cavalier about $20 million or $30 million,” he said. “It’s a lot of money by any one standard, but in a billion-dollar deal, no one’s going to be making a decision based on $20 (million) or $30 million.”

Before focusing on the site east of Petco Park, the Chargers considered building a stadium in Chula Vista, Escondido, National City and Oceanside.

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders broached the idea of a downtown stadium with Chargers President Dean Spanos last year. The team said in December that it would only be possible with downtown redevelopment money from the city of San Diego.

Such sums are usually raised by borrowing against future property tax revenues. In this case, the approach needs approval from a range of elected officials.

The public may be asked to vote on a new stadium in 2012.

The CCDC board of directors meets at its downtown offices at 9 a.m. tomorrow to consider asking the City Council to support seeking approval to use redevelopment revenue for a stadium and other downtown projects.

It will also discuss the downtown site’s financial viability with stadium finance expert Mitchell Ziets — his first public presentation since being hired for $160,000.

Vincent Jackson to Pro Bowl

Source: Chargers.com

Chargers wide receiver Vincent Jackson learned Sunday that he’ll make his first Pro Bowl appearance next week in Miami.

Vincent Jackson was added to the AFC Pro Bowl roster Sunday, making him the sixth Charger to receive the honor this season. Jackson replaces Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne, who won’t participate due to his team advancing to the Super Bowl.

Jackson set career highs with 68 receptions, 1,167 yards and nine touchdowns this season. His yardage and touchdown totals led the Chargers, while his average of 17.2 yards per reception trailed only Philadelphia’s DeSean Jackson among players with at least 45 catches.

Jackson becomes the first Chargers wide receiver to earn Pro Bowl honors since Tony Martin in 1997. Jackson had his name mentioned with Martin’s on a few occasions this season as “VJ” became the first Charger to record back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons since Martin accomplished the feat in 1995-96.

Chudzinski not heading to Bears

After interviewing for the vacant offensive coordinator position in Chicago last week, Chargers Tight Ends & Assistant Head Coach Rob Chudzinski notified the Bears that he has removed himself from consideration.

Merriman Shocked by Paternity Suit

Source: SD Tribune

Shawne Merriman said he’s excited about becoming a father for the first time. His close friend, Tiffany Horne, is pregnant. The two have known each other for almost six years and have a good relationship, he said.

Which is why the Chargers linebacker said he was “shocked” to learn yesterday that a paternity case was filed against him in Horne’s name this week in San Diego Superior Court.

“She’s a great friend of mine and has been for almost six years now,” Merriman said. “There’s no denying of any kind of paternity. For this to be even taking place is a shock.”

Horne couldn’t be reached for comment. Merriman attributes the court filing to a communication breakdown between attorneys for him and Horne.

The case is under seal in court, which is common for paternity matters. Because of the seal, further details aren’t publicly available.

“It’s not a paternity suit,” said Horne’s attorney, David Schulman, “It’s between two people who have an agreement.”

He declined to give further details and said the matter was private.

Asked why the case was filed in public court, Schulman said the filing was “a formality.”

Merriman’s attorney, Jim Scott, called it a “standard paternity case.”

“We’re looking forward to it being handled quietly and favorably,” Scott said. “Mr. Merriman is a stand-up guy. It’s surprising they’ve gone to this action with the child not even being born yet.”

Scott recently had to leave San Diego to attend a family funeral, leading to a breakdown in communication between attorneys, Merriman said. That may have led to a public filing in a matter that Merriman said otherwise was being handled privately between attorneys.

Shortly after explaining his side of the situation yesterday to the Union-Tribune, Merriman sent out a message to his followers on Twitter.

“Wanted to wait until after the season to share some exciting news,” Merriman wrote. “I’m going to be (a) Dad. I’m so excited.”

Other Chargers legal news

• Chargers receiver Vincent Jackson sued the California Department of Motor Vehicles last year to avoid having his driver’s license suspended. San Diego Superior Court Judge Ronald Frazier denied that request in September and reimposed the suspension of Jackson’s license at that time. That ruling led to his citation Sunday for driving with a suspended license, shortly before the Chargers’ playoff defeat against the New York Jets.

Jackson’s license was suspended after he was arrested in January 2009 on suspicion of drunken driving. He was already on five years’ probation for a 2006 DUI conviction.

• Chargers linebacker Shaun Phillips is still facing a civil suit stemming from an alleged incident at the Ivy Hotel in April. A security guard there, Robert Chase Van Cleave, accuses Phillips of punching him and spitting in his face and is seeking payment of his medical expenses and unspecified damages.

Phillips was cited for misdemeanor battery. The San Diego city attorney’s office declined to file a charge for lack of evidence.

Rivers withdraws from Pro Bowl

Source: SD Tribune

Some day, Philip Rivers will play in a Pro Bowl.

This won't be that year.

For the third time in his four seasons as a starter, Rivers has withdrawn from the Pro Bowl due to the impending birth of his fifth child.

Rivers withdrew last year to rest his knees. He withdrew after the 2006 season due to a foot injury.

He is healthy now, but his wife is due any day.

Rivers finished the season with 4,254 yards, averaged 8.8 yards a pass, had 28 touchdowns and threw just 9 interceptions. He finished the year with a 104.4 QB rating.

Tennessee's Vince Young will take Rivers' place.

That leaves Kris Dielman, Antonio Gates, Kassim Osgood and Nate Kaeding as the Chargers in the Pro Bowlers. The Chargers coaching staff will coach the AFC squad.