Chargers Power Rankings: Bolts see minimal fall following loss to Chiefs - Bolts From The Blue

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The Chargers could not find the end zone on Monday night and it set them up for a frustrating loss in primetime.

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The Chargers fell 17-15 on the road to the Cardinals in what has to be the most-frustrating game of the season thus far.

Justin Herbert threw for nearly 350 yards with a receiving group filled with more practice squad players than legitimate starters. He threw zero picks. Still, the offense was limited to five field goals. In the end, the Cardinals won with a walk-off field goal following a defensive collapse unlike anything we’ve seen from this unit through the first five games of the season.

Where did this implosion land the Chargers in this week’s power rankings? Let’s go ahead and find out.

This one is going to sting. Jim Harbaugh was irate with a pair of late officiating decisions — a non-call while his offense had the ball and an unnecessary roughness on his defense — but the Chargers really lost the game at Arizona by failing to finish drives. Los Angeles bled off more than eight minutes on its final march, but ultimately had to settle for Cameron Dicker’s fifth field goal of the night to go up, 15-14. On the Cardinals’ ensuing drive, the 15-yard flag on Cam Hart hurt, but giving up a 33-yard catch-and-run to James Conner on the very next play was what truly allowed Arizona to score the final three points and nab a 17-15 win. Justin Herbert threw for a season-high 349 yards and made some pretty throws — some caught, some not — when he wasn’t under heavy pressure. L.A.’s lack of offensive weaponry right now is glaring, especially with the run game stalling out. The Chargers crossed midfield seven times, but ran just one play inside Arizona’s 10-yard line. The schedule lightens in the coming weeks, but this loss is going to stick in Harbaugh’s craw for a while. - Eric Edholm

Justin Herbert passed for 349 yards, his highest total since Week 3 last year on Monday night, but it wasn’t enough for the Chargers, who rushed for a very un-Jim Harbaugh-like 59 yards. Los Angeles’ three losses this season have come by an average of 6.3 points, but their three wins aren’t terribly impressive. The Chargers are 12th in the league in point differential (plus-23).

Who’s got it better than us? A team that can score at least one touchdown. - Mike Florio

The Chargers know themselves well as a hard-nosed, defensive-minded team that can also run the ball. They should be more dangerous with Justin Herbert growing into a bigger factor but they need to score more TDs and fewer field goals. - Vinnie Iyer

You could say a lot of things about the Bolts over the years, but rarely that they were boring. Welp. HC Jim Harbaugh’s Big Ten approach probably further lowers this team’s already limited ceiling. - Nate Davis

Too low? I was impressed with the team’s ability to grind out an eight-plus minute drive to take the lead late in Monday night’s loss to the Cardinals, but Jim Harbaugh is going to have the time and space to build out his weapon set here in Los Angeles … and he’s going to need it. Will Dissly led the way tonight in receiving for the Chargers. - Conor Orr

They are limited on offense with the injuries at receiver, and it showed up in the loss to the Cardinals. They need to get bodies back. The defense let them down late in that loss. - Pete Prisco

The Los Angeles Chargers came into Week 7 a team that was above .500 in spite of the passing game, not because of it. The Bolts won with defense and the run game—not the right arm of Justin Herbert. And as Herbert told reporters, that was just fine with him.

“If we throw 500 times or 50 times, we just have to be executing as an offense,” Herbert said. “Selfishly, I love to throw the football, but I want to get this offense to be as best as we can and what that looks like changes from week to week.”

Well, Monday night in Arizona, Herbert had his best passing game of the season, throwing for 349 yards. But the Chargers were held out of the end zone, Arizona gouged the Bolts for over 10 yards a carry on the ground and when the dust settled Los Angeles was on the wrong side of a two-point loss that drops Los Angeles behind Denver in the AFC West.

It was a reminder that while the Chargers aren’t a bad team, they aren’t a squad with much margin for error. - B/R NFL Staff

Analyst’s Take

This is the sort of loss that comes back to haunt a franchise late in the season—the sort of defeat that can be the difference between a Wild Card spot and watching the postseason on TV. The Chargers outplayed the Cardinals in some respects. But the run game never got going, and Los Angeles only reached the red-zone once and settled for a field goal then. The argument can be made that Jim Harbaugh’s Chargers got out-toughed Monday night—and that’s a bad look for a squad that has hung its hat on physicality over the first month-plus of the season. - Kyle Davenport

The loss at Arizona is a tough one. Justin Herbert threw for 349 yards. The Cardinals scored points on only two of their first eight drives. And Los Angeles still lost. That’s what happens when you can’t turn all of those yards into a single touchdown. - Frank Schwab