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From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: Jim Harbaugh called. The Chargers responded.
Needing to bounce back quickly from a blowout loss last Sunday to not only save their playoff seedings but also reinforce Harbaugh’s first-year turnaround of the much-maligned franchise, the Chargers delivered a thrilling second-half comeback against the Denver Broncos, winning 34-27 at SoFi Stadium on Thursday night.
“This is a challenge and the challenge is how you’re going to respond,” Harbaugh said. “I knew how our guys were going to respond and they did.”
The Chargers (9-6) clawed back from a near-disastrous first half to secure their first season sweep over the Broncos (9-6) since 2010, backing up a Week 6 win in Denver that was the team’s first road win in the series since 2018.
While the Broncos missed an opportunity to clinch their playoff berth, the Chargers moved back into the No. 6 seed in the AFC playoff standings. They can clinch their first playoff spot since 2021 on Sunday if the Miami Dolphins lose or tie and the Indianapolis Colts lose or tie.
Still in firm control of their own playoff destiny with road games remaining against the New England Patriots and Las Vegas Raiders — two teams already eliminated from the postseason — the Chargers aren’t waiting to activate their personal playoff mode.
“We emphasized all week, hey, this is a playoff game to us,” said quarterback Justin Herbert, who threw for 284 yards and two touchdowns on 23-of-30 passing. “It’s the environment, it’s the team. They’re obviously a very talented and incredible team, so for us to be able to pull away with one there, I thought it was awesome.”
The Chargers surpassed 100 yards rushing for the first time in more than a month. Led by 68 yards rushing from Gus Edwards, the Chargers ran for 117.
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RAMS
From Gary Klein: Both rank in the top 10 in NFL career-passing categories. Both have won a Super Bowl title.
On Sunday, Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford and New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers will square off for the 18th time.
“It’s two greats,” Rams coach Sean McVay said Wednesday. “Two guys that I look at as Hall of Famers.”
Most of the matchups between Stafford and Rodgers occurred when they played in the NFC North.
Stafford, 36, played 12 seasons for the Detroit Lions before he was traded to the Rams in 2021. Rodgers, 41, played 18 seasons for the Green Bay Packers before he was traded to the Jets in 2023.
Stafford is 4-13 in games against Rodgers, a four-time NFL most valuable player.
LAKERS
From Dan Woike: Midway through the first quarter Thursday night, LeBron James checked out against the Sacramento Kings, walking to the bench in the city where he played his first NBA regular season minutes more than 21 years ago.
It would be his last walk off the court before achieving another milestone. By the time his next shift ended in the second quarter, he passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most minutes logged in the regular season, breaking the previous record of 57,446 minutes.
“I just think it’s just a commitment to the craft and to the passion and love I have for the game,” James said about his achievement — one in which he has spent more than 957 hours playing in professional basketball games.
Still, after all that time, James is capable of making winning plays — the chase down block, the key defensive stop and the bully-ball dagger all playing a role in helping the Lakers defeat the Kings 113-100.
Austin Reaves led the Lakers with 25 points, James had 19 points, six rebounds and seven assists, and despite a slow shooting night, Anthony Davis dominated with 21 points, four assists and season highs of 18 rebounds and six blocked shots. Davis also had three steals.
Darvin Ham says what he accomplished with Lakers warranted an extension, not firing
CLIPPERS
Norman Powell scored 29 points, James Harden added 24 and Ivica Zubac had 21 points and 15 rebounds as the Clippers beat Dallas 118-95 on Thursday night in the Mavericks’ first game this season without star guards Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.
Doncic sat out with a left heel contusion, Irving with right shoulder soreness, in the first of a two-game series against the Clippers that will conclude Saturday night.
First-year Maverick Klay Thompson scored 22 points, his first game leading the team in scoring. Spencer Didwiddie added 19 making his first start of the season.
From Ryan Kartje: After nine days of chaos and uncertainty, during which 19 of his players left USC for the transfer portal, Lincoln Riley found himself longing Wednesday for a time, not so long ago, when the process of building a college football team was less opaque, teams were equally allotted 85 scholarships, relationships were forged in living rooms and decisions were made with more than money in mind.
But now, Riley lamented, that was long gone. In its place was a colder, more professional model, with much less clarity for all parties involved. College football, he said, was now “more of a business than it’s ever been.”
“I don’t think any of us could have predicted, I guess, just how quickly it has changed, how fundamentally it has changed,” Riley said. “I think the whole college football world is trying to adapt right now, which is, honestly, I think for everybody a little difficult to keep up with.”
That world had never felt so far away at USC as it had last week, as former top prospects whose living rooms the coach once sat in left in droves for the transfer portal. Among them were two five-star receivers in Zachariah Branch and Duce Robinson, both of whom were seen as two of the coach’s biggest recruiting victories at USC, as well as Branch’s older brother, Zion, himself a top-60 recruit in the 2022 class.
Safety Kamari Ramsey elects to stay at USC for another season, passes on NFL draft
UCLA BASKETBALL
From Ben Bolch: Grainy game footage and yellowed newspaper clippings confer UCLA’s standing as college basketball royalty, the team’s status as a blue blood rooted in the success of a coach who retired nearly 50 years ago.
John Wooden’s 10 national championships in a 12-year span are more than any other program has won in its history. On the flip side, the Bruins have won just one championship since Wooden’s departure, Jim Harrick’s 1995 team preventing the school from going 0 for the last half-century.
UCLA’s Ed O’Bannon celebrates after the Bruins won the 1995 national championship game. (Associated Press)
North Carolina, the fellow blue blood that the Bruins will face Saturday afternoon at Madison Square Garden in the CBS Sports Classic, has won five of its six titles since 1982. By comparison, the bulk of UCLA’s success can feel like something accomplished on peach baskets.
As the years pass, those banners hanging inside Pauley Pavilion fade like the memories of those championships. UCLA has gone almost 30 years without a title while seven teams have added multiple banners to their collection over that same span. Has the fundamental power structure of the sport changed? Might the Bruins be on the verge of ceding their hallowed status, their blood no longer the deepest shade of blue?
“Hell no,” Marques Johnson, a member of Wooden’s final national championship team in 1975, said this week. “I just don’t think you give up that spot in terms of the prestige and elite-level claim that you deserve based on historically what you’ve done as a program.”
KINGS
Anze Kopitar and Kevin Fiala scored two goals each and the Kings rallied to beat the Philadelphia Flyers 7-3 on Thursday night.
Kopitar scored the tying goal in the final minute of the second period and then re-directed a pass from Alex Turcotte for an insurance goal in the third period. Darcy Kuemper made 23 saves.
Kopitar now has at least one point in 19 of his last 24 games, but it was his first multi-goal game since scoring a hat trick on the opening night of the season.
THIS DATE IN SPORTS
1921 — Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis casts the deciding vote to return to best-of-seven World Series from the best-of-nine format. The American League votes to return to best-of-seven World Series, while National League votes for the best-of-nine format. The a best-of-nine series was used in 1903 and 1919 through 1921.
1966 — The NBA grants a franchise to Seattle, expanding the league to 11 teams for the 1967-68 season.
1973 — Henri Richard of the Montreal Canadiens scores his 1,000th point, getting an assist in a 2-2 tie with the Buffalo Sabres.
1980 — NBC experiments by not providing commentators for the national broadcast of the game between New York Jets and Miami Dolphins. The Jets win 24-17.
1981 — Winnipeg’s Doug Smail scores a goal five seconds into the game to set an NHL record for fastest goal from the start of a game. The Jets beat the St. Louis Blues 5-4.
1983 — Montreal’s Guy Lafleur scores his 500th goal as the Canadiens beat the New Jersey Devils 6-0. Lafleur scores the milestone goal at 8:34 of the third, beating Glenn Resch with a rising 30-footer.
1985 — North Carolina sets an NCAA record with 18 blocked shots in an 87-55 rout of Stanford.
1998 — Green Bay’s Brett Favre becomes the first NFL player to throw for more than 30 touchdowns in five seasons. Favre connects three times with Antonio Freeman in the first half of a 30-22 win over Tennessee to break a tie with Dan Marino.
2003 — St. John’s provides a perfect ending for coach John Gagliardi’s record-breaking season, snapping Mount Union’s NCAA-record 55-game winning streak with a 24-6 victory in the Division III championship game.
2005 — Kobe Bryant scores a career-high 62 points and the Lakers beat Dallas 112-90. Bryant scores a franchise-record 30 points in the third quarter and sits out the fourth after outscoring the Mavericks 62-61 over the three quarters.
2006 — Bode Miller wins the super-giant slalom in Hinterstoder, Austria, 90 minutes after Lindsey Kildow and Julia Mancuso finish 1-2 in a downhill at Val d’Isere, France. Those successes give the U.S. team five wins and an unprecedented nine podium results over six days. It’s the most impressive streak for the American team since 1983.
2009 — Ben Roethlisberger completes 29 of 46 passes with three TDs and 503 yards, becoming the first Pittsburgh quarterback to throw for 500 yards in a game during a 37-36 win over Green Bay. He hits rookie Mike Wallace for a 19-yard touchdown on the final play.
2009 — Cleveland’s Jerome Harrison scores his third touchdown with 44 seconds left for the winning points and rushes for a team-record 286 yards in a 41-34 win over the Kansas City Chiefs. Joshua Cribbs of the Browns has two kickoff returns for touchdowns.
2014 — No. 1 Kentucky scores the game’s first 24 points in an 83-44 victory over UCLA. The Wildcats lead 41-7 at the intermission. It’s the lowest point total in a half for UCLA and the fewest by a Kentucky opponent since December 1943.
2015 — New England improve to 12-2 with a 33-16 win over Tennessee, and becomes the second team in NFL history with at least 12 regular-season wins in six consecutive seasons.
2017 — Fletcher Magee scores 27 points to help Wofford stun No. 5 North Carolina 79-75, snapping the reigning national champion’s 23-game home winning streak.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com, and follow me on Twitter at @latimeshouston. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.