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Donald Brown carries on for Chargers

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Donald Brown didn’t want to have to work this hard, which is no reflection at all on his ethic. In fact, he gladly took the ball again and again.

“You’d have to carry me off the field,” Brown said late Sunday afternoon following the busiest game of his NFL career.

The six-year veteran said, too, “it wasn’t close to” him having to be carried off. But it’s possible he was being as tough afterward as he was during the Chargers’ 22-10 victory over the Buffalo Bills.

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Brown was always going to be the guy who got the most carries Sunday, with Ryan Mathews out at least a month with a sprained knee suffered the previous Sunday. Then Danny Woodhead went down on the Chargers’ third play from scrimmage, suffering a lower leg injury that likely has him out for the season.

So Brown became simply the guy.

Between his 31 carries and five receptions, Brown touched the ball on 36 of the Chargers’ 63 plays – the most touches he’d ever had (almost double his previous high of 20) and the most by a Charger in eight years.

It wasn’t entirely productive. Brown knows it has to get better.

“Two yards a carry, you can only go up from there,” Brown said after rushing 31 times for 62 yards. “The running game starts with me. I’m going to do everything in my power to get things rolling.”

LaDainian Tomlinson gained 131 yards on his 31 rushes in the 2006 season opener, the last time a Charger ran that many times in a game. But LT had 30 carries in a game eight times in his career, 25 or more on 33 different occasions. He’s a future Hall of Famer around whom the Chargers’ offense was centered for a decade.

Brown had never carried more than 18 times in a game. He was signed in March as an insurance policy the Chargers didn’t envision having to cash so soon.

But now the envisioned three-headed monster is down to him, plus undrafted rookie Branden Oliver and whoever the Chargers sign this week.

Brown’s bravado aside, he will need more backup than the three carries Oliver had Sunday.

Brown didn’t so much run toward the end of the game as fall. Of his nine fourth-quarter touches, five went for zero yards or a loss.

Between the lines of Philip Rivers’ expressed confidence was an implied reality.

“Donald is a true pro,” said the quarterback who had not handed off to anyone so often since his first career start, that Sept. 11, 2006 game in which Tomlinson was leaned on so heavily. “He takes care of his body. He’s going to get the load of it here for a while . . . He physically can handle it. Now, I don’t think we want to give it to him 30 times the next six weeks, eight weeks. But he can handle it.”

He handled it Sunday, if only barely.

“I love winning, so whatever it takes to win that’s what I’m here for, whether it’s one carry or all the carries,” he said. “. . . We have to keep rolling. We have no choice.”

San Diego Chargers 22, Buffalo Bills 10

9/21/2014 at Ralph Wilson Stadium

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