Kassim Osgood on KLAA AM830

December 18th, 2009

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So a little backstory here (I’ll try to keep this short and sweet).  My sister, Mary, went to college at Sonoma State University.  There, she met and became best friends with Alex, and Alex quickly became a friend of the family.  Several years later, Alex married a man named John Conti.  She and John live up in Orange County, and John is a regular guest and contributor to KLAA AM830’s afternoon program, “The Drive“; he’s basically their NFL guru.

On yesterday’s show, San Diego Chargers special teams extraordinaire, Kassim Osgood, was a call-in guest and was interviewed by the team at KLAA.  Kassim has been on the Chargers since 2003, and was twice selected for the Pro Bowl (in 2007 and 2008) for his excellence at special teams.  Off the field, he is easily my favorite Chargers player to follow on Twitter.  Not only does he talk about football and give some new insight into the team operations, but he actually acts like a normal person on Twitter and tweets his feelings and opinions on things completely unrelated to football.  He even has a segment he does on Twitter called “the couch”, where he invites his followers to ask him questions and seek his advice.  Whenever he does that, it’s generally guaranteed to garner a few laughs from myself.

Mary too is a big Kassim fan, and add to it that John was going to be a part of his interview, she called me and told me I had to record the segment.  So, I did, and I cut it down to John’s NFL segment which includes Kassim’s interview.  Without further ado, I present yesterday’s show:

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On a side note: today I became a contributing columnist for the best San Diego Chargers resource on the entire web, Bolts from the Blue.  It’s a fan–run blog, but don’t let that fool you, it’s easily the most in-depth site and well-run website I’ve come across.  The knowledge and level of expertise among the people who are a part of the site amazes me to this day and is a valuable resource for any Chargers fan.

It’s tough to take

September 15th, 2008

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What exactly is wrong with the Chargers defense? Are we missing Merriman that badly?

So last week’s game against Carolina was a disappointing loss for sure. Losing the game on the final play of the game. But it was a little easier to take knowing that Carolina won fair and square and that we just flat out lost the game.

Denver didn’t win, they were handed the game, twice.

The first came on just the second offensive play for the Chargers. It was ruled an interception, the replay clearly showed that Chambers was down before the ball was ripped out, so Turner challenged the play. However, the replay equipment was conveniently malfunctioning and after 2 minutes, the ruling on the field had to stand. Denver was given the ball and they quickly scored a touchdown.

The second was a fumble by Denver QB Jay Cutler on the San Diego 10-yard-line, recovered by the Chargers, but was blown dead and ruled an incomplete pass by the ref. They reviewed it and said, “yes it should have been called a fumble, but because it was already blown dead, we can’t overturn it.” Denver got to keep the ball and scored another touchdown, and then a subsequent 2-point conversion for the win.

Yes you could argue that the Chargers should have been able to overcome both blown calls, and that they had no business winning a game in which they allowed 31 points to be scored in the first half; I will give you that. The defense has been looking mighty weak the last two games. But the offense persevered and managed to score 21 unanswered points, even successfully converting a 2-point attempt, to take a 38-31 lead. I was excited again, thinking, “yeah we’ve got this”.

But then disaster.

Given the emotional rollercoaster that was yesterday’s game, and the tough loss a week ago, I’m thinking this is going to be a long season …