Los Angeles Chargers’ quarterback Phillip Rivers overcame two first-half interceptions in Thursday’s night’s opening game of the NFL’s Week 15, to spearhead his team to a tense and thrilling victory over AFC arch-rivals Kansas City Chiefs.
The stunned Chiefs, who, prior to this match, had won 11 of their 13 games and were the bookie’s and almost everybody’s favorites, looked to have done enough for victory with only minutes remaining on the clock at LA’s Arrowhead Stadium.
But it never happened. To their dismayed fans, Chargers quarterback Rivers put up his hand for the second time in minutes, fired a short 3-yard touchdown pass to Mike Williams with just four seconds left and then, together with Williams, added the vital two-point conversion required to squeeze his men home to a last-gasp 29-28 victory in one of the season’s best edge-of-the-seat thrillers.
With this win, the Chargers clinched a playoff berth alongside the Chiefs, the Saints, and the Rams, and pulled level with the Chiefs atop the AFC West division at 11-3 but Chiefs own the tiebreaker thanks to a better record against division rivals.
“It’s good to be in the playoffs, but we are not yet done,” Chargers coach Anthony Lynn said.
“We want to win this division. So we’ve got work to do, and we’re going to need a little help to get that done, but that’s our goal.”
Lynn added that it was a “no brainer” to have gone for the two-point conversion, rather than the extra point to tie.
“We didn’t come here to tie,” he said. “We came here to win.”
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Rivers threw for a total of 313 yards on the night, going 26 of 38 and overcoming two first-half interceptions on a night when the Chargers were without their top two running backs, Melvin Gordon (knee) and Austin Ekeler (concussion) and their top receiver, Keenan Allen, who left the field in the first quarter with a hip injury.
The Chiefs scored on their opening drive for the 10th time this season, this off an excellent pass made under pressure from their MVP candidate quarterback Patrick Mahomes which gave Demarcus Robinson the touchdown.
In all, Mahomes passed for 243 yards, going 24 of 34, with two first-quarter touchdowns and putting Kansas City into a 7-nil lead in the first quarter, a 14-7 lead in the second, a 21-7 lead in the third and a 28-21 lead in the final quarter before Rivers got Mike Williams over for the crucial TD that would win the match.
Rivers started a little shakily and was intercepted on both his first and final passes in the first half. He was also sacked four times before the break, and five times overall.
But he came bouncing back from all that, first finding Mike Williams for a 19-yard TD in the second quarter, then Justin Jackson with a three-yard score in the final quarter before making that a pin-point one-yard winner to Williams on the stroke of time.