Gates

Chargers head coach Norv Turner dressed only seven offensive linemen on Monday night and the gamble almost backfired.  Injuries to Nick Hardwick and Louis Vasquez left the Chargers with only five healthy bodies on the line.  Turner won’t make that mistake again:

(due to NFL rules we had to take down Turner’s audio after 24 hours.  The transcript of his comments is below)

Norv Turner

“Obviously, our first and most pressing need is to make sure—and that’s why the evaluation of the injuries is so important—but to make sure we dress eight linemen next weekend and we’re sound there.  You play the odds, and very rarely do you have two linemen injured in the game.  I think maybe once or twice in my coaching career I’ve gone with seven linemen, because you know that can happen.  But obviously, we had needs defensively, so we went with seven.  I was telling some of the guys, we went with seven (linemen) all three years I was in Dallas, and we never, ever got down where we had less than six.  We do it one time here, and we’re down to five.  Gates-ey was telling me a story that when Marcus McNeill was down on the ground with a twisted ankle-and obviously he got up and kept playing-Gates was saying to him, “c’mon, we’ve had enough of this around here already, someone’s got to play now!”  And he said Marcus just smiled and kept playing, but under normal circumstances he would have come out.”

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