Chargers, Rivers need to tighten up offense

The Chargers’ best hope needs to give them more of a chance.

“Can we do some things better? Yeah,” Philip Rivers said this week. “But it comes down to don’t turn it over.”

In this time of crisis – two straight losses, a listing and leaky offensive line – the Chargers need to simplify and tighten their offensive approach. As much as anything, they need to be more careful.

The Chargers have trailed at halftime of six straight games dating to last season. Not coincidentally, they turned the ball over at least once in the first half of the past five games.

Rivers has had a hand in six of the Chargers’ eight giveaways through this season’s first three games. He knows he held onto the ball too long in allowing sack-fumbles the past two games, and he took away a chance at Chargers’ comebacks with ill-advised throws in the fourth quarter of those games.

“One thing I told myself after the last game, ‘Quit turning it over. Just don’t turn it over,’ ” Rivers said. “On the plays I’ve turned it over, it’s not like we’re about to throw a touchdown … It’s reminding myself in those situations, ‘Don’t do too much.’ ”

Rivers had a similar spate of turnovers while adapting to what Norv Turner wanted from him the first half of the ’07 season. He was intercepted six times and fumbled once over the first three games of ’11. The only other time he’s given the ball away more in a three-game span was in the middle of the ’12 season, a campaign pocked with offensive ineptitude brought on largely by an oft-injured and consistently bad offensive line.

Rivers has never looked as jumpy as he did the final two months of that season. That seemed like a different person, at least a lifetime ago. Until recently.

He knows he needs to be better than that. It is why, for all the times he was hit and even with the four sacks he took in reach of the past two weeks, he was so upset after the Minnesota game.

“Do we win the last two if we don’t turn it over? I don’t know,” Rivers said. “But I think we might.”

Now, he can be helped.

Hopefully, Chargers offensive coordinator Frank Reich took a page out of Turner’s playbook by taking some pages out of the playbook this week.

Even Turner – notoriously stubborn about running his offense in all its grandness, often when not it was not advisable and pretty much impossible to succeed – scaled back for one astonishing afternoon late in his final season.

The circumstances were remarkably similar to this week, wherein the Chargers will face the Cleveland Browns sans starting left guard Orlando Franklin, seem almost certain to be without left tackle King Dunlap and center Chris Watt and could even be down right guard D.J. Fluker.

On Dec. 9, 2012, the Chargers went into Pittsburgh with a four-game losing streak and without three starting offensive linemen.

Reggie Wells played every snap at right tackle against the Steelers after signing on Dec. 5. Kevin Haslam, promoted from the practice squad a week earlier, was the starting left tackle. Left guard Rex Hadnot made his second start in his fourth game as a Charger.

The Chargers’ success that day was in doing only what the offense could do, building a first-half lead on screens, short passes with yards gained after the catch, a healthy dose of run, mixing in the deep strikes only when they’d softened up a Steelers defense clearly shocked.

It was a team we didn’t recognize. It was the team it needed to be for that day.

The shift wouldn’t be that dramatic here. This Chargers offense, under Ken Whisenhunt in 2013 and Reich the past two years, is always at its best when it is, in essence, dinking and dunking.

In the 35-game Mike McCoy era, the Chargers are 14-7 when their average reception is made within 6.2 yards of the line of scrimmage. Further down the field, their record is 5-9.

Their average reception came 3.1 yards from the line of scrimmage in a 33-28 victory over Detroit in the season opener. Last week at Minnesota, that number was 7.8 yards.

In the opener, just 106 of Rivers’ 404 passing yards (26 percent) actually came in the air, 298 coming in yards gained by receivers after the catch. In their loss at Minnesota last week, 142 of Rivers’ 246 yards (58 percent) came in the air. It hasn’t always been that dramatic, but consistently since the start of the ’13 season Rivers air yardage is less in victories than in defeats.

That is an oversimplification, but it generally defines what has made the Chargers’ offense effective.

It’s what it needs to get back to, especially today.

The Chargers have the talent, and with tight end Ladarius Green likely back to allow them to stretch the Browns’ defense, something they couldn’t do to Minnesota with John Phillips, there should be opportunities for more quick passes to the backs and receivers.

Rivers is at his improvisational best when directing that quick-strike attack.

And when he’s not turning the ball over. (He certainly recalls the Chargers did not give away the ball that day in Pittsburgh.)

Those two alterations will enable the hope to return.