C.J. Stroud passed for 282 yards and a touchdown, Joe Mixon rushed for 106 yards and a score, and Eric Murray returned an interception for a touchdown as the host Houston Texans routed the Los Angeles Chargers 32-12 in an AFC wild-card game on Saturday.
Houston advanced to the divisional round for the second straight season.
After throwing just three interceptions in 504 passing attempts during the regular season, Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert was picked off four times on Saturday. Herbert was 14-for-32 for 242 yards and a touchdown.
“It’s tough,” Herbert said. “I let the team down.”
“Gotta throw the ball away. Throw it further. Gotta do a better job of not putting the ball in harm’s way,” he added.
Not only was it a disappointing end of the season for Herbert, but for head coach Jim Harbaugh as well. After leading the Chargers to an 11-6 record in the regular season in his first year back in the NFL since 2014, Harbaugh lost in the same building that he won the national championship with the University of Michigan a year ago.
The Chargers scored the first six points, on field goals of 35 and 39 yards by Cameron Dicker in the first 8 1/2 minutes of the game. His second came after a Texans fumble gave Los Angeles a short field.
Ka’imi Fairbairn connected on field goals of 41, 37 and 30 yards for Houston.
Houston ran just four offensive plays during the first quarter and had two punts bookending a Stroud interception to start the second.
Fortunes changed just before halftime. Houston drove 99 yards in 13 plays, punctuating the possession with a 13-yard scoring pass from Stroud to Nico Collins with 58 seconds left in the second quarter.
Stroud extended the drive with a highlight-reel play entering the two-minute warning. He scooped up a fumbled snap, then scrambled to connect with Xavier Hutchinson for a 34-yard gain to the Los Angeles 49-yard line on third-and-16.
“To me that was the play of the game,” Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said. “That really created momentum for the game.”
Herbert threw three straight incompletions on the ensuing Chargers possession, and Houston responded with Fairbairn’s 41-yard field goal to take a 10-6 halftime lead.
The Texans scored the first 13 points after intermission. Murray delivered the lone touchdown over that span with a 38-yard pick six with 13 seconds left in the third quarter.
Derek Stingley Jr. snagged two interceptions for Houston and Kamari Lassiter had another.
Herbert recovered from his third pick with an 86-yard pass-and-run touchdown to rookie Ladd McConkey following two straight Houston sacks, making the score 23-12. The burst followed two straight Texans sacks. Houston blocked the extra-point attempt, however, and D’Angelo Ross returned it to the end zone for two points.
Mixon, who had 25 carries, capped the scoring with a 17-yard run with 3:42 left in the game.
The Chargers, by comparison, ran for 50 yards on 18 carries.
“I’m most proud of how we stopped the run, and then you make teams one-dimensional,” Ryans said. “And that’s what we did.”
McConkey caught nine passes for 197 yards and a touchdown.
Collins had seven receptions for 122 yards and a score.
Houston outgained Los Angeles 429-261.
–Field Level Media
