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EDWARDS: “San Diego anticipated getting off to a better start. At this point they are 1-2 and a lot of that has to do with shooting themselves in the foot. When you look at them play offensively, they haven’t scored a lot of points early in games. They have only scored 14 points in the first half and have been down on their opponents going into the third quarter. They’ve scored a bunch of their points in the second half. They’ve gotten away from some of the things they do well like running the football. They have struggled there and they’ve played two pretty good football teams on the road (Green Bay and New England). That’s tough, but they are a good football team. They still have all of the weapons and they will be in the mode to be at their very best. They don’t want to lose another game and all-of-a-sudden get to 1-3. This is a division game and it’s a very important game going into Week Four when you look at our division. It’s very important this week that we understand that and where we’re sitting at right now. We’ve talked about it. After one win, life is a lot better for everybody and for us, we know what we’re walking in to. We’re walking into a hornets’ nest with some guys that are playing how we played the first couple of games. They are frustrated and we better be ready to play.”

Q: What do you think are the problems with the running game right now?

EDWARDS: “It’s a combination of things and some of it is due to guys penetrating on the back-side of the football. We tried to get the ball outside some because their tackles were so big inside and they penetrated to make some plays. Also part of it is that we couldn’t get any passes in the first half, so they started putting eight guys in the box. When you start throwing the ball down the field, which we did in the second half, they back off a little bit and you run it a little better. RB Larry Johnson had a really good run down to the two-yard line, but it’s called back on the five. We’ve had some penalties that have hurt us some, but we just haven’t been very consistent and we’ve been behind in some games. Against Minnesota we were only down one score, so we could stay in our game of running the football, but in the first two games we were out of it going into the third quarter, so the run game kind of goes away.”

Q: Are the running lanes there?

EDWARDS: “There are some there. Like I said, it’s a combination of a lot of different things. You can’t put your finger on one thing; it’s a bunch of things. We have to clean up some blocking at the next level and when you have a great running back, people come in and try to stop the run. It’s no different then what they tried to do to us last year. They put everybody up there to stop the run and make the quarterback beat you. We have to anticipate that and do some things to get some big plays in the passing game that helps your run game.”

Q: Will the way that you passed in the second half against Minnesota open up things a little bit?

EDWARDS: “Yeah and we really tried to do that in the first half, too. The first play of the game was a pass to TE Tony Gonzalez over the middle and it was high and he couldn’t get it. Then we came back on the next series and missed another one. You start getting frustrated and you say, ‘I don’t want to throw so many passes that all we’re throwing are incompletions.’ What happens to you is that you’re stopping the clock and all-of-sudden you go three plays and out and you’ve only taken 50 seconds off of the clock. That’s not any good. Field position hurt us too early. It seemed like we were always coming out of our own end zone.

“Three-and-outs hurt you. We had 10 possessions and we went three-and-out on five of them. That’s half of our possessions; you’re not going to get anything accomplished. That’s kind of been our deal too when you look at us. When you do that you get no rhythm on offense with the pass or the run. In the second half I thought QB Damon Huard hit some plays down the field and we took advantage of some things with Gonzalez, then WR Dwayne Bowe made some plays. We hit a run with Larry that gets called back, but we got into a little bit of a flow which was good to see.”

Q: Did you ever think of making the switch to QB Brodie Croyle?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, to tell you the truth. If we kept struggling and weren’t able to move the ball, yeah. But that’s why the good thing for me is that I have patience. I’m a pretty patient guy and I sat there and waited. In my mind I let it go for a couple more series and then if it doesn’t get going I have to do something to get it going. You don’t like doing that, but that’s why you have patience. You don’t make an emotional decision. If you do that you will be making a lot of switches and you don’t do that. You go by your gut and you see if the thing works itself out and it did. I thought we made some big-time passes and catches in the second half, but we still didn’t score enough points. It’s hard to win like that. You have to win some games like that, but you don’t want to win all the games like that. The magical number to me is 24. If you can score 24 and your defense is good enough to hold opponents to 17, you are going to win a lot of games.”

Q: Why is your offense not where it should be?

EDWARDS: “For one, when you go three-and-out you don’t get into a rhythm. Two, there are only two offensive line starters that return to their same positions from a year ago. Three, one of the lineman is new and the others have been moved around some. Four, the runner wasn’t here and Damon didn’t have much preparation in the preseason; all of those things. That’s making excuses, but that’s the truth. It was the same way with us last year. Guys got hurt on the offensive line and we struggled a little bit early, but we got it going. There are a lot of offenses struggling with that right now if you look around the league. I think seven of the 12 playoff teams from last year are 1-2 or 0-3 right now, so there are a lot of teams struggling offensively. You don’t panic and you just keep doing what you do.

“We need to make some big plays and that always gets offenses excited. We’d obviously like to be better in our run game; we did a nice job of pass protecting last week. We’re not running the ball like we would like to, but we have a lot of games left and we’ll get it going.”

Q: What do you think of the play calling over the first three games?

EDWARDS: “It’s been okay, but I think what’s happened is that when you go three-and-out it is hard to get any rhythm as a play caller and that’s been our problem. I think some people fail to realize that when you miss a play or there is a penalty; then what do you call? The first play of the game you have a guy wide open and we don’t hit it. People forget about that one. You only remember the last play and that’s what you get into with the three-and-outs. When we start getting into rhythm, you will start seeing more plays. There is never a question about the play calling when you go on a long drive. When you go three-and-out you get questioned and that’s all part of it. We have to get better on offense and we know that, but we’ll get better.”

Q: A lot of that has to do with running the ball on first down and not getting any yards?

EDWARDS: “Right, but when we did throw early we didn’t complete passes. So now its second-and-long. What do you do? You throw another pass. Okay, so if you don’t hit it over five it is now third-and-seven and that’s hard to convert in this league. Now, we were better on third down last game then we have been all season. We converted 40% on third-down and that got us moving a little bit. But we’ve got to get better; there is no doubt about it.”

Q: Is the arguing between players and coaches during the game something you’re okay with?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, I’m okay with that as long as you don’t cross the line. It’s all in the competitive environment and I think that it goes on all the time. This has gone on in sports forever. The thing that kind of makes it unique now is that there are so many cameras. Twenty-five years ago, this thing went on. I mean, guys smoked cigarettes at halftime 25 years ago. It just wasn’t on television. So now, whenever something happens with a player or coach hollering, it’s on television. If you’re not winning, it’s like, ‘hey, let’s go down that road. They are all frustrated.’ Its guys being competitive. It’s no different than having a company softball game between people in the company. You get competitive and people start hollering. Go watch a pick-up basketball game. When I was play in the schoolyard, you couldn’t call any fouls. So, if you were just an innocent person driving by, you would hear all the talking and think that they were getting ready to have a fight over there. Nobody is getting ready to fight, it’s just what you do and that’s sports. I think that once the players get that emotion out of them they are okay and they go back to what they need to do. That’s what you do and that’s what we did. You blow it off and collect yourself.

“The strange thing about all of this is that if we didn’t do that people would say that we didn’t care and that we had no emotion; they don’t what to win. But when you do it people say that you’re out of control. No, you’re not out of control. It’s that players are sick of losing and sick of not moving the ball and having the other team score touchdowns on us. That’s part of sports.”

Q: Do you take their input?

EDWARDS: “I just let them vent because most of the time players vent there are a lot of things that go into it. I’ve always found out this; when a player comes to the sideline you say, ‘what are you mad about?’ and he says, ‘Coach, this is what happened.’ Then you show them the picture and it shows them that didn’t really happen. They might have thought it happened, but it really didn’t. You have to understand that and I had some conversations with coaches when I was a player too. I didn’t agree and neither did they, but you do what they ask of you. At the end, it’s called being competitive and that’s part of the game.”

Q: What is crossing the line to you?

EDWARDS: “I think that’s when the game is over with and there is no peace. When it’s done, it’s done and I always tell players that at the end we are all here trying to do the same thing. We’re trying to win. The coach is coaching you to be a good player. He’s not coaching you to be a bad player. He wants you to do good, he really does. We don’t coach players to play badly, we want them to play really good because that kind of helps us win and sometimes players forget about that. All staffs watch enough tape to know what they want to try and do. You have to adjust at times, because football is about people who can make adjustments throughout the game. As a player, you have to understand when it’s time to adjust off of the original plan. I just think that you cross the line when you take it personal, because it’s never personal. Every coach has different relationships and every coach has his line that he draws in the sand and the players typically don’t cross that line.”

Q: When a wide receiver like Dwyane Bowe says he wants the ball; when does it become a difference of wanting the team to win and being selfish?

EDWARDS: “I think most of the receivers I’ve been around; it’s been as situation of us needing to make a big play. It’s never been a matter of having 10 catches and needing one more to break a record. The good ones that I’ve been around will tell you that they can get open on certain plays. Those guys have it figured out and they know because they are playing, so you sit down with your play caller and dial that play up again. Dwayne Bowe is very simple about what we talked about on sideline. If he is one-on-one, do we throw it to him? We said, ‘yeah, throw it to him and see what happens.’ We threw it to him and he did pretty well. He jumped up and caught it. That was one of those deals where he’s really covered, but you’ve got to have enough guts to throw it up to the guy and he jumped up and got it. It’s the same thing with Tony. When Tony gets those mismatches, even if he’s in coverage, you have to throw it to the guy and put it on the player to make a play. Good players want to do that.”

Q: What has your experience as a scout taught you about selecting wide receivers?

EDWARDS: “When we decided to select Bowe, there was one thing that I liked about him more than anything; that the guy has tremendous energy when he plays football. You need that in a receiver and you need that seed that makes people get excited and he’s that kind of guy. He has a great personality and the game is not too big for him. When you go back on his history, he played as a freshman at LSU, he played in big games. That audience wasn’t too big for him and he wants to just play ball in the yard. He’s a little bit of a recess player. When you let kids go to recess, some kids stand in the corner by the teacher because they are afraid to go out in the yard by themselves. He’s not afraid to go out in the yard, he’ll go out in the yard and go play and when he gets in the ballpark he’s going to play. It’s doesn’t matter who he plays against, it could be the Chicago Bears. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who the corner is or who the defense is; ‘I’m running the route coach and I’ll catch it.’”

Q: Is this a good time to play against the Chargers as they had some problems last Sunday with guys talking back-and-forth?

EDWARDS: “Kind of like we were doing? How about that? Well, I’ll put it like this. They are in the frame of mind that they are going to be ready to play. They were in the right frame the other two games that they lost, they just played good opponents. It’s going to be tough, but they are going to be ready. When things like this happen it brings the team together and you know that. They are going to be a good football team; there is no doubt about it. They’ve missed some plays that would have got them going because right now they’re only scoring about 17 points a game. Their defense has played against two quarterbacks who can make plays and it’s one of those deals where we know that we have to come out firing. They are going to try and get the run game going and they are going to try and get it to #21 (Tomlinson), because that’s who their offense runs through. It’s goes through 21 and then 85 (Gates) gets working and then they start firing that cannon, singing that song and all that stuff. We are going to have our hands full.”

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