What the Chargers need is a closer

By: LOREN NELSON - Staff Writer | Monday, January 15, 2007 11:23 AM PST ∞

SAN DIEGO ---- Marty Schottenheimer once worked as a real estate agent. Wasn't very good at it, the way he tells it.

"I always had trouble closing the deal," he says.

No kidding.

Whether it's real estate, coaching football, unclogging drains or installing new brake pads, there's one thing good employees must do, or soon enough they are out of a job.

Close the deal.

Schottenheimer couldn't do it pedaling spacious four-bedroom walkouts. He couldn't do it as head coach of juggernaut NFL teams in Kansas City and Cleveland.

He couldn't do it Sunday afternoon with the winningest Chargers team ever assembled.

The New England Patriots, with inferior talent at most every position, stunned a thundering Qualcomm Stadium crowd of 68,810 with a 24-21 victory in the AFC divisional playoffs.

A good portion of that audience, the largest ever to watch a Chargers home game, will be joined by a million more Monday morning quarterbacks calling for Schottenheimer's head today.

They will point to Schottenheimer's decision to eschew a field goal try on a first-quarter fourth-and-11 play that went nowhere. They will talk about the wasted timeout used to challenge the ruling on safety Marlon McCree's fourth-quarter interception and fumble. They will say that timeout would have been extremely useful as the Chargers drove frantically for a potential game-tying field goal in the final seconds.

They will talk about the undisciplined penalties. They will talk about a 14-2 team that went one-and-done in the playoffs. They will talk about it all.

This is going to get ugly.

"Marty didn't take one snap today," Chargers linebacker Shaun Phillips said. "We played every play, so therefore we should get all the criticism."

Right or wrong, it doesn't work that way in the NFL.

Football isn't a game here. It is big, mean, serious business. Win or you're gone. That's the deal going in, and everyone knows it.

Schottenheimer has one year remaining on his contract, for a little more than $3 million. Chargers ownership, notoriously cheap, has a very expensive decision to make. Maybe it already has been made.

Should he stay or should he go?

It's a tough thing to call for anyone's job. To say you, your neighbor, the guy sacking groceries at Vons could do it better. Schottenheimer, it should be noted, has 200 career regular-season victories and a realistic chance to one day be enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Besides, who among us is perfect? You? Certainly not me.

That's the disclaimer. Here's the opinion: Marty must go.

Tough as it is, all those Chargers fans who threw their television sets out their windows and are busy burning images of Schottenheimer in effigy are right this time.

Forget about closing the deal. Schottenheimer barely got this job started.

A playoff victory, at least one, was required from this Chargers team stocked with nine Pro Bowlers, including a running back in his prime who might one day be called the greatest ever. A Super Bowl title wasn't that far-fetched. Or maybe it was, with Marty at the helm.

Schottenheimer, who has a chilly relationship with general manager A.J. Smith, was asked about his future with the Chargers. He said he expected to be back next season. Read between the coachspeak, and it's clear he knows his job is in jeopardy.

"I know this: Right now, the only thing I'm interested is making sure that this group of young men in our locker room and that coaching staff understand that we, while we didn't go anywhere in these playoffs, had a damn good football season," he said, while choking back tears. "And at this point, I'll take some comfort in that, to kind of balance this disappointment today."

The players love Schottenheimer. They all want him back.

Listen to them: "We have no quarrels with our head coach at all," safety Marlon McCree said. "He's our leader, and we follow his lead. He's a great coach."

That's great. But all those in support of Schottenheimer should take a second and envision Patriots coach Bill Belichick leading the Chargers in Sunday's game. Put Schottenheimer on the other sideline.

Who do you suppose wins?

Schottenheimer is 5-13 in the postseason and has gone one-and-out in the playoffs nine times. In 1995 and '97 with the Chiefs, he took a team that went 8-0 at home into the playoffs as the No. 1 seed. Both those teams lost in the divisional round, just like the Chargers on Sunday. The only other team with those credentials to not win a game in the playoffs was the 1996 Denver Broncos.

Schottenheimer has done it three times now. That's plenty. Time to look for a new coach. One with a short resume. Six words should about do it.

Proven ability to close the deal.

Contact sports editor Loren Nelson at (760) 745-3332 or lnelson@nctimes.com. Comment at sports.nctimes.com.