end zone

What began as a blowout, ended as a down-to-the-wire finish Saturday, as the Houston Texans held off the Chargers with a 20-16 victory at SoFi Stadium.

The outcome rippled through the AFC, with the Denver Broncos clinching the AFC West, and the Indianapolis Colts eliminated from playoff contention. The Broncos are the first team other than Kansas City to win the division in the past decade.

The Chargers (11-5), who had won four in a row, made some uncharacteristic mistakes to fritter away scoring chances.

Justin Herbert, who otherwise had a tremendous and gutty game, was intercepted a yard away from the end zone in the first half.

Cameron Dicker, the most accurate kicker in NFL history, missed for the first time in his career inside of 40 yards and in the fourth quarter hooked an extra-point try, only the fourth PAT miss of his career.

Herbert completed 21 of 32 passes for 236 yards with a touchdown and interception.

Houston’s C.J. Stroud completed 16 of 28 for 244 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions.

The Texans (11-5), who got off to an 0-3 start this season, came into Saturday’s game riding a seven-game winning streak.

They played host to the Chargers in the first round of the playoffs last season and collected a 32-12 victory, intercepting Herbert four times.

On Saturday, Herbert kept the Chargers in the game, absorbing hits from every angle yet still throwing a one-yard touchdown pass to Oronde Gadsden II at the end of the third quarter and setting up another touchdown, a five-yard run by rookie Omarion Hampton, with 3:37 left in the fourth.

Dicker missed the extra point on the latter touchdown, meaning the Chargers couldn’t tie with a field goal and needed a touchdown.

At the end of the first half, Dicker missed a 32-yard field goal, and weird as that was, it encapsulated what kind of start it was for the Chargers.

They were flat and flat-footed from the beginning, surrendering a 75-yard touchdown pass on Houston’s first possession and a 43-yard touchdown pass on the second.

The Texans were up, 14-0, before the Chargers got their initial first down.

Herbert was sacked three times in the half, and on the first appeared to have hurt his surgically repaired left hand. At least he was wincing and favoring that hand as he walked off the field, but it didn’t sideline him.

Despite getting off to a two-touchdown lead, the Texans didn’t run away with the game.

Derwin James Jr. had an interception early in the second quarter to set up a field goal for the Chargers.

The Chargers got a field goal and moved into position for a touchdown in the second quarter when Herbert connected with Quentin Johnston for a 60-yard gain.

On the following play, however, Herbert attempted to hit Gadsden over the middle. The pass wasn’t perfectly timed, and glanced off the hands of the rookie tight end, who was near the goal line. Houston linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair made the interception at the one.

Minutes later, the Chargers would get another golden opportunity to score. Elijah Molden made an interception at the Houston 32, and his team made it into the red zone before Dicker’s failed attempt.

SEATTLE — In a matter of minutes, the home of the Seattle Seahawks went from a painfully quiet Lumen “Library” to a rollicking madhouse that sent seismologists scrambling for their ground-motion sensors.

Call it the Sheesh-Quake Game.

In a historic comeback, the Seahawks dug their way out of a 16-point, fourth-quarter ditch to beat the Rams in overtime, 38-37.

Oh, the visitors will agonize over some of the bizarre calls, some deserving of further explanation from the NFL. An ineligible-man-downfield call that wiped out a Rams touchdown when they were a yard away from the end zone? That had people scratching their heads. Then there was that do-or-die two-point conversion that seemingly fell incomplete… but later was reversed. More on that in a moment.

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Gary Klein breaks down what went wrong for the Rams in their 38-37 loss to the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field on Thursday night.

When the Rams wincingly rewind the video of the collapse, they’ll be peering through the cracks in their fingers.

You’ve heard of a no-look pass? This was a no-look finish.

As soothing wins go, this was a warm bubble bath for the Seahawks, who secured a playoff berth and assumed the driver’s seat in the race for the NFC’s No. 1 seed.

“You hear people late in the year have losses, and you hear people come up here and say, like, ‘Man, this is going to be a good thing for us,’” said Seahawks receiver Cooper Kupp, a onetime Rams hero. “It’s much better to be up here right now saying this is going to be a good thing for us.”

Kupp atoned for his first-half fumble with a successful two-point conversion in the fourth quarter — the first of three in a row for the Seahawks — and a 21-yard reception on the winning drive in overtime.

“If you find a way to get a win when you do turn the ball over three times, you do end up down 16 points, or whatever it was, in the fourth quarter, just finding ways to win games when the odds are against you and things aren’t going right — finding a way to fight back — it’s going to be a good thing for us,” Kupp said. “A good thing for us to draw on.”

The Rams are sifting through the debris of a different lesson. It was a reminder that this charmed season, with Matthew Stafford in line to win his first Most Valuable Player honor, can come crashing down at any moment. There’s no more smooth glide path to Santa Clara for the Super Bowl.

As good as it was for most of the game, picking off Sam Darnold twice and sacking him four times, the Rams defense failed to hold up when it counted most. Shades of the three-point loss at Carolina.

Darnold will have a story to tell. He exorcised a lot of demons. The Rams sacked him nine times in the playoffs last season when Darnold was playing for Minnesota, and intercepted six of his passes in two games this season.

“It’s not great when you have interceptions and turnovers, you want to limit that,” said Darnold, the former USC star. “But all you can do is fight back. For us, I was just going to continue to plug away.”

Darnold came through when it counted, completing five passes on the winning drive, then finding the obscure tight end Eric Saubert — his fourth option — wide open in the end zone on the triumphant conversion.

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold looks to pass against the Rams in the first half Thursday.

(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)

The second of the three conversions was the game’s most controversial moment. The Seahawks needed it to forge a 30-30 tie with a little more than six minutes remaining in regulation.

Darnold fired a quick screen pass to his left, trying to get the ball to Zach Charbonnet. Rams defender Jared Verse jumped the route and knocked down the pass. Everyone thought the play was dead, including Charbonnet, who casually jogged across the goal line and picked up the ball as it lay in the end zone.

That proved critical because officials — after what seemed like an eternity — ruled that Darnold had thrown a backward pass and the ball was live when Charbonnet picked it up. Therefore, a fumble recovery and successful conversion, tying the game.

Asked later if it felt like a backward pass, Darnold had a half-smile and said, “Um, yeah. It felt like I threw it kind of right on the side. I’m glad Charbs picked it up, and that turned out to be a game-changing play.”

Was that designed to be a backward pass?

“It just happened to be backwards,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily talked about. We were just trying to get it in down there on the goal line.”

The Seahawks were lined up to kick off when officials announced that, upon review, the previous play was successful. Suddenly, the most improbable of come-from-victories was within reach.

Earlier in the fourth quarter, when the home team was trailing, 30-14, the Amazon Prime crew had to do some vamping to keep viewers engaged. Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit told some Kurt Warner stories from the “Greatest Show on Turf” days. Hey, it had to be more interesting than this game.

Michaels delivered an obscure stat: When leading by 15 points or more in the fourth quarter, the Rams were 323-1.

Informed of that, Seahawks running back Cam Akers — once shown the door by the Rams — had a wry response.

“Now, they’ve lost two,” he said.

Celebration in one locker room. Silence in another.

Do you believe in meltdowns?