Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Two excellent regular-season teams who not only didn't win the Super Bowl, not only didn't make it there, but didn't even get to the CCG! Of course it is Bobby Ross's 1994 team that's the only Charger team to make it to a Super Bowl, and the '80 and '81 Coryell installments at least made it to the CCG (as did Norv's '07 squad, real easy to forget), but safe to say, amongst Charger-faithful, that these two are the franchise's tops post-merger of all-time. Yes, the latter was 14-2 while the former was 'just' 12-4, but very easy to forget, time and time again, that the '79 installment was...12-4! Blasting both that year's Super Bowl-participants by a combined 75-23 just for starters! If you'd like to eek the '04 squad into the convo (they were 12-4), that's fine. You could also bring up that very non-playoff team who was actually #1 in both O and D, but was so brought down by special teams!

Even with the '14-2 to 12-4' edge aside, I'd guess that what '06 would have going for them is they at least gave Belichick/Brady's Pats quite the game in the divisionals as opposed to losing to a depleted Oilers team. Marty's team seemed more balanced. Running game and D each noticeably better! When watching bits of that 35-7 November '79 slaughter at the Murph just now, even Enberg/Olson were commenting on how that very 8-3 team going in was a bit weak in the run-game as well as some aspects of their D. Perhaps a case of the weaknesses being better disguised in that very first playoff year of 'Air Coryell'? The '79 Chargers were better than the teams that came immediately after. In each of those remaining early-'80s playoff teams, their D did get worse and worse. 1979's D was noticeably less-suspect even if a weakness may have been seen already.

But my final conclusion to that 35-7 debacle was simply SD playing a real great game while the Steelers were - with help of some injuries - maybe a bit 'spent' after that Monster 124-20 performance vs...the Orange Crush...Dallas...Washington...and at Arrowhead vs very-respectable Levy's Chiefs! Steelers were already a bit long-in-the-tooth but still with enough punch to win a 4th Lombardi when it would matter most that January, as Chargers were upstart in front of their fans and seized the moment. If they weren't able to beat a depleted Oiler-squad in the divisonal, then what would their chances be had the Steelers visited them (with a Super Bowl berth on the line, mind you) on 1/6/80?

But maybe there are many here who'd go with '79. So, anyway, who do you think wins between these two teams whose HCs would each end up with two AFCCG-berths (back-to-back in each case) to their credit?

Sometimes it comes down to matchups. Chargers beat the Steelers in 1979, also beat them in 1980 with playoffs on the line, also beat them in the playoffs in 1982.

Steelers seemed to win this way:

1) Franco will have a big day
2) We'll stop you guys from running
3) If 1) and 2) don't work, Bradshaw will hit Swann or Stallworth for a big play.

The Chargers were a big play team too, they never cared about establishing the run the way other teams were still doing. So they're not even trying to win that way, and they're more prepared for #3 since that's how they play and they aren't beating their brains out on the first two.

The Oilers lived off turnovers in 1979, Fouts threw a lot of INT anyway, then you're replacing Pastorini with Nielsen and they reined in the game plan a lot. I'd rather have gone against Pastorini without Campbell myself. Lot of things going the Oilers way, block field goal returned 65 yards, taking a FG off the board for a TD after an offsides. The INTs. Nielsen completes one pass to a WR and he spins and runs 35 yards for a TD. Renfro had the moves for that sort of play, but it's one completion. The only other time Nielsen tried to throw downfield, he got picked off.

Jay Z wrote:Sometimes it comes down to matchups. Chargers beat the Steelers in 1979, also beat them in 1980 with playoffs on the line, also beat them in the playoffs in 1982.

Steelers seemed to win this way:

1) Franco will have a big day
2) We'll stop you guys from running
3) If 1) and 2) don't work, Bradshaw will hit Swann or Stallworth for a big play.

The Chargers were a big play team too, they never cared about establishing the run the way other teams were still doing. So they're not even trying to win that way, and they're more prepared for #3 since that's how they play and they aren't beating their brains out on the first two.

The Oilers lived off turnovers in 1979, Fouts threw a lot of INT anyway, then you're replacing Pastorini with Nielsen and they reined in the game plan a lot. I'd rather have gone against Pastorini without Campbell myself. Lot of things going the Oilers way, block field goal returned 65 yards, taking a FG off the board for a TD after an offsides. The INTs. Nielsen completes one pass to a WR and he spins and runs 35 yards for a TD. Renfro had the moves for that sort of play, but it's one completion. The only other time Nielsen tried to throw downfield, he got picked off.

Yeah, that 79 game played out well for the Oilers. Nielsen never threw the ball more than 5 yards past the LOS other than the Renfro pass, and even then the Renfro TD was mostly Renfro running after the catch. The Chargers really missed Winslow, because Klein caused two INTs by having passes clank off his hands. And as you said, Pastorini likely would have created some turnovers himself had he been able to play.

Poor San Diego destroyed both SB participants in 79, and they beat both SB participants again in 1980. The breaks didn't go their way in the postseason.