The Chargers dropped to 3-3 with Monday night’s 17-15 road loss to the Cardinals.
Here are five takeaways from Week 7:
The Chargers suffered a bitter loss in primetime Monday night.
And while the Bolts were certainly frustrated in the postgame locker room, they also acknowledged the defeat had plenty to do with their own doing, too.
“We didn’t play a lot of detailed football and it showed throughout the game,” Khalil Mack said.
Chargers Head Coach Jim Harbaugh said: “It was a game of a lot of near misses or close calls … came down to a lot of details, a lot of things. I’m not putting it on one play.”
The play Harbaugh was referring to came with just under two minutes to go.
The Chargers, leading 15-14, had Arizona facing second-and-10 at its own 30-yard line.
The Bolts broke up a pass on the right sideline but rookie cornerback Cam Hart was flagged for unnecessary roughness.
“We try not to be surprised about the call, but just try to move on to the next play,” Derwin James, Jr. said. “Even if they make the call, we can’t change the call in that moment.
“We just trying to go to the next play and get a stop, but we didn’t get a stop,” James added. “That flag was devastating, kind of hurt us.”
Mack added: “He’s just playing hard-nosed football. Even though the call was questionable, I don’t know what you can do when a guy is lowering is head and you’re trying to make contact so he can’t make the play. We’ve got his back.”
Harbaugh said: “I saw what I saw, but I have no comment about it.”
Given new life, the Cardinals hit a 33-yard pass on the ensuing play and later drained the clock before kicking a game-winning field goal.
A few minutes before all that, the Bolts thought they would have a chance to salt the game away.
But a third-down flag thrown by the officials was picked up despite an Arizona defender getting up close and personal with wide receiver Simi Fehoko.
Instead of a fresh set of downs after the 2-minute warning, the Bolts only took a one-point lead on a field goal.
“I saw our receiver get held, wrapped around. They were doing the uncatchable sign,” Harbaugh said. “We had a double move on, he got grabbed. I’ll let them explain how they officiated that play.”
The four-minute sequence didn’t break the Bolts way as the Chargers came up agonizingly short in Week 7.
The focus now turns to a short week as the Bolts are at home Sunday against New Orleans.
Harbaugh said he wants the loss to put “steel in your spine” for his team.
“You have a [bad] taste in your mouth and you have to suck it up,” Harbaugh said.
He later added: “This is the kind of stuff you use as fuel and learn from.”
James said: “Frustrating. You don’t want to lose no games, especially because we know how much they count in the end. We going to look back at this game and I don’t want to just dwell on it … we need these type of games. We need to win these types of games to position ourselves where we want to be at the end of the season.”
Justin Herbert added: “There’s a lot to improve and we’re looking forward to the challenge of this week.”