The Los Angeles Times du lieu suivant : Los Angeles, California • Page 30

LOS ANGELES TI JC6 MONDAY. JANUARY 9, 1995 NFL PLAYOFFS i 1 v. 1 '71 i i vm I 'Hi' II HI. Jl. LI Hill II IUII I I .1 An unusual play left San Diego's Mark Seay (82) wide open with seconds to play, and he caught a pass J.

H-- I 1 1 from Stan Humphries, scored Reception Gives Seay His Place in Charger Lore "Before we even ran the play, I was thinking that if we get inside the five-yard line that we would run that play." Seay's claim to instant fame was probably one of his easiest catches, thanks to a twist the Chargers put in for the Dolphins off a play San Diego has run all season. It's a play that has worked against teams whenever the Chargers got near the goal line. It starts out with Seay going in motion to the left and then running a pass pattern into the left flat after a pulling offensive lineman sets up in front of Humphries. Against Miami, however, San 4 tiS mu AIM eta i i i "rr .1 ti. Vk'f 'Si DAVE CATLEY Los Angeles Times to celebrate making the AFC final.

allow him to play because of the location of the bullet has downplayed his role as a hero. "I am not a hero from what I did," Seay said before the season, i "It only let me know how quickly your life can change. You can be walking around one day and on your death bed the next. It teaches you to appreciate life that much more. You take it one day at a time, try to make the best out of the hard days.

It's a blessing, just having your health and a chance to see another day. To me, I'm not a hero." But after Sunday, he will always be remembered as one. i loss of down, but not loss of possession. Referee Johnny Grier said he had never seen a call like that made on anyone other than a quarterback. The Chargers were angry.

But not as angry as they were later in the quarter when an apparent 37-yard touchdown pass from Humphries to Shawn Jefferson was ruled incomplete. Again, the camera showed something different: Jefferson with both feet in bounds. "I looked for the official's hands to go up," Jefferson said. "When I saw his hands going east and west, I said, 'Hey buddy, what's Humphries threw an interception on the next play. But he got one more chance with 3:16 to play.

Starting at his own 39, Humphries drove to the Miami eight with 48 seconds to play. From there, the Chargers ran a play on which receiver Mark Seay runs a route to the right, through defenders heading in the other direction. If all goes well, Seay "comes out with the ball," Humphries said. All went well. "It felt great.

It felt like all the pressure was off," said Seay of his romp into the end zone. Not quite. There was still Marino. Actually, there was still the San Diego pass defense. A 32-yard interference call against Eric Castle, trying to defend Scott Miller, put the ball in position for Stoyanovich's try.

The snap was high. "I stretched my arms out to get the snap and I got the ball down as fast as I could," said holder John Kidd, a former Charger. "We saw it going to the right and looked at each other and there wasn't anything to say. The season was over." Kidd could look. Jefferson couldn't.

"I had my head down," he said, "but when I looked up, I saw the officials' hands going east and west again." But this time the Chargers didn't protest. This time, they were headed east. forward to Sunday being a wonderful day. He caught two touchdown passes and knelt in the end zone to pray after each, once simultaneously crossing himself with one hand and slapping Marino's palm with the other. But Miami's luck ran out late in the game, when San Diego caught the defense blitzing and called a surprise pass by Stan Humphries to an all-alone Mark Seay.

Charger offensive coordinator Ralph Friedgen said, "The funny thing is, Stan hates that play. Hei hates it. But all of a sudden we looked up and it opened up like the Red Sea." Miami couldn't do much after that but pray for a miracle. Didn't 1 was hugged by Tony Martin (81) "I don't know," said Seay, who played at San Bernardino High and Long Beach State. "As far as touchdowns go, it probably is." That Seay is playing at all in the NFL is remarkable, considering that he has a bullet lodged only inches from his heart as a reminder of an incident on Oct.

30, 1988. Seay, then a sophomore at Long Beach State, saved the life of his three-year old niece, Tashwanda, when he draped his body to protect her during a gang shooting at a Halloween party in Long Beach. Since then, Seay who had to fight to continue his football career when school officials refused to Associated Press showed he stepped out of bounds. Means insisted. "He side judge Tom Fincken had the best seat of anybody in the house." Fincken's seat was on the ground, run over on the play.

There was more controversy ahead. In the fourth quarter, Marino connected with Jackson on a 20-yard pass. As Jackson went down, he tossed the ball as if he were trying to lateral it to some teammate only he could see. San Diego defensive back Darren Carrington fell on the ball. After consultation, officials ruled that it was an illegal forward pass, drawing a five-yard penalty and stepped out of bounds a few yards shy of the goal, but was awarded a touchdown by an official who was knocked backward and couldn't see.

The one break the Dolphins did get was when Keith Jackson, their tight end, inexplicably pitched the ball forward after catching it. San Diego recovered, but the play was interpreted as an illegal forward pass, rather than a fumble, by referee Johnny Grier, who said afterward, "They the Chargers thought it was a fumble. But the officials felt that he just threw the ball forward, and not fumbled it forward. It's a call you very seldom see because you normally only get it on the quarterback." Jackson, as devoutly a religious man as Fryar is, also had looked Reuters and then lot of blitzes and the idea was that they would lose the guy underneath," Friedgen said. "But, even I was having trouble finding Seay." To say that Seay was open would be the understatement of the season.

"All of a sudden, it opened like the Red Sea," Friedgen said. Seriously open. "I'd expected to be open, but I didn't know that I would be that wide open," Seay said. "All I know is that it took a long time for the ball to get there." So was this the biggest catch of Seay's career? tf vr 111 24-yard line. From there, Means, who gained a game-high 139 yards rushing, took off around the right side.

He ran between two defenders at the 10-yard line, picked up J.B. Brown on his back at the five and then encountered Michael Stewart at the three. Stewart tried to knock Means out of bounds. As he tumbled, the Charger running back transferred the ball from his right hand to his left and stretched it across the goal line. But a replay clearly showed Means' right foot out of bounds inside the three.

"I knew I wasn't out of bounds," wide, the Dolphins were dead meat. Viewing from his Shulamobile, the golf cart to which he has been confined while nursing a leg injury, Miami Coach Don Shula said, "That's about as tough a loss as I've ever been around." And this man has been around. Dolphin linebacker Bryan Cox said, "I just hope people don't put all the focus on Pete. San Diego beat us all of us. That train got rolling and we couldn't jump off the tracks." Most of the breaks that had gone Miami's way before halftime began to go the other way.

In one half, Natrone Means of the Chargers made a dive toward the end-zone marker on fourth down and missed by inches. Later on, Means clearly 'fS Winning By LONNIE WHITE TIMES STAFF WRITER SAN DIEGO-Mark Seay might i not have been a household name to San Diego fans at the start of the season, but he is now. In a span of 13 seconds, Seay became a hero for Charger fans everywhere when he caught the winning touchdown pass from Stan Humphries in Sunday's dramatic come-from-behind 22-21 playoff victory over the Miami Dolphins. "It could have been a diesel truck coming, but I was going to catch the ball," Seay said of his "eight-yard touchdown reception. CHARGERS Continued from CI appearance in the AFC title game and its first since 1982.

All around Davis, Charger players and fans were yelling and screaming, shaking their fists and proudly displaying anything they could find with a lightning bolt on it to a world they believed never took them seriously. "I can't describe any of it," said San Diego quarterback Stan Humphries. "I guess it really won't hit me until the whole thing is over with." Davis just lay there, at peace in a sea of chaos. No more Dolphins. No more Dan Marino.

No more controversial calls. And there were certainly a couple of those. If the Chargers were the biggest winners Sunday, instant replay might have come in a close second. San Diego was given one touchdown and denied another on calls that were not confirmed by television replays. It didn't appear that any of that was going to matter after the first 30 minutes.

The first half featured a virtuoso performance by Marino, the maestro of quarterbacks who appeared headed for another brilliant performance. In that first half, Marino brushed off a San Diego defense determined to apply pressure with a relentless blitz, calmly surveyed the field and repeatedly found a welcome pair of arms to catch his passes. More often than not, those arms were Keith Jackson's. Marino completed 17 of 24 passes for 206 yards and three touchdown passes before halftime. Two scoring passes went to Jackson, for eight and nine yards.

The other went to receiver Mike Williams for 16 yards. While Marino was getting seven points at a gulp, the Chargers were settling for field goals. They got down to the Dolphin DOWNEY Continued from CI football, Fryar had told his congregation back home not to expect him on Super Bowl Sunday, because he works on Sundays. But he had placed too much faith in the right footofStoyanovich. "Pete makes those kicks, shoot, with his eyes shut," Fryar said.

The Dolphins could scarcely believe their eyes. Everything had been going their way. Quarterback Dan Marino was going to take them coast to coast first here to San Diego for a quick victory, next to his hometown of Pittsburgh for the AFC championship game, then to his current home of Miami for the big Super Bowl By the Beach. Diego decided to have Seay reverse his route and slide behind left guard Isaac Davis into the right flat. "It looks like the same play we've run this season and I think that was what Miami was thinking, but I caught them off guard by going the other way," said Seay, who caught six passes for 61 yards.

"The key for me was to not get tangled up with the pulling guard and to stay running low so they couldn't see me." Seay ran the pattern so well that Charger offensive coordinator Ralph Friedgen did not see him. "The Dolphins were running a line when Means was shouldered out of bounds by Marco Coleman. Miami took over, but only for an instant. With Davis, a run-stuffing specialist, on duty, Marino handed the ball to Bernie Parmalee a couple of yards deep in his own end zone. Parmalee made up only one of those yards before Davis wrapped him up, giving San Diego a safety.

"When I was in the huddle," Davis said, "I looked down and said, 'I'm getting a safety right now. The play seemed to inspire the Chargers. They drove back to the Miami He was upset and had a right to be. Miami had gotten so many breaks. A crazy pitch forward by Keith Jackson had cost the Dolphins nothing but a loss of down.

A long touchdown pass to San Diego's Shawn Jefferson was ruled incomplete, even though replays showed Jefferson coming down with both feet in bounds. Then an interference call went Miami's way with 24 seconds to play, putting the ball at the Charger 30. "I should have done more," Marino said. "I should have gotten us closer for Pete." Instead, the Dolphins went nowhere. Marino aimed two passes at Michael Williams, both incomplete.

He left Stoyanovich a full 48 yards from the crossbar. The snap was high, the kick was it San Diego's Natrone Means stretches, beating J.B. Brown (37), Michael Stewart to score, though replay two- and three-yard lines on successive drives, only to run out of downs. John Carney responded with field goals of 20 and 21 yards. San Diego also turned the ball over twice, on a fumble by Natrone Means and Humphries' interception.

All in all, it was a pretty depressing half for the Chargers. It got a lot better in the second half, in which the Chargers held Marino to seven of 14 passing for 56 yards and limited Miami's runners to two yards. San Diego drove 71 yards to open the third quarter, only to be stopped at the Dolphin one-yard There they were, up by 15 at the half. "Yeah," Marino said, "but you've got to come out and do something in the second half." His season his great comeback season from 1993's terrible injury-had been turned upside down. Marino was partly responsible for San Diego scoring a safety.

His very deep handoff to Bernie Parmalee got stuffed behind the line of scrimmage. It cost Miami momentum after a fine goal-line stand. "What about the safety?" Marino was asked. "What do you want to know?" he asked back. "What happened?" "The guy didn't get back to the line of scrimmage, that's what happened," Marino said, tersely.

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