Tomlinson

When it comes to football drama, there isn’t much that compares to a Patriots-Colts game.

There isn’t quite the same soap-opera quality to the New England-San Diego rivalry, but it hasn’t exactly been boring either.

Take the October game in Foxboro two seasons ago. The Chargers dominated the defending Super Bowl champs, 41-17, and ended the Pats’ 21-game home winning streak. As the teams walked off the field that day, a Chargers player whooped it up, bellowing that they had whupped the Patriots’ butts, and that no one should look shocked by what had happened.

After the game, then-San Diego coach Marty Schottenheimer paid tribute to the Patriots but said the injuries the team had suffered — Tedy Bruschi’s stroke, an injury to Rodney Harrison, the retirement of Ted Johnson — may have taken their toll on the roster.

Tom Brady saw the comments and interpreted them as Schottenheimer ringing the Pats’ death knell and lashed out in a way he never had before.

“I just assumed you talk about your own team,” Brady said. “You don’t talk about our team. He has no business talking about our team. We’ll let our coach talk about our team. We’ll let our players talk about our team. The only thing we ever do is give respect to the other teams. They played a good game. They beat us. That’s what it is.”

Schottenheimer apparently learned his lesson. In the run-up to the team’s meeting in the AFC Divisional round last January, he was nothing but complimentary of New England, calling it well-coached in fundamentals and technique, and expressing admiration for the job Bill Belichick and his staff do in preparing their players.

He had no idea how right he’d be.

While San Diego held pre-game rallies, New England prepared.

The underdog-but-more-playoff-experienced Patriots had some issues — Brady was picked off three times, LaDainian Tomlinson gained 123 yards and scored twice — but the Chargers made numerous mistakes. They went for it on fourth-and-11 in the first quarter, botched a punt, committed several costly penalties, and were stripped of a potential game-clinching interception.

This time, it was the Patriots that got to whoop things up on San Diego’s field. Some of the players did Charger linebacker Shawne Merriman’s “lights out” dance, and Rosevelt Colvin reportedly stood outside the home locker room shouting, “Cut the lights out!”

Tomlinson said the Patriots lacked class, and that it started with their coach, Belichick.

The pair allegedly made up at the Pro Bowl a few weeks later, but Tomlinson clearly forgot the truce seven months later. As the events that became known as Spygate unfolded in the days before the teams met in Week Two, Tomlinson stood in front of the cameras in San Diego and said: “I think the Patriots live by the saying, ‘if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.’ I think they live off that statement and nothing surprises me really.”

Coach Norv Turner, suspicious of potential subterfuge, didn’t hand out the game plan to his team until the morning of the Sunday night game and reportedly sealed off the visitors’ locker room at Gillette Stadium in the hours before kickoff.

Keeping his players in the dark for so long may have led to the night’s result: New England jumped out to a 24-0 halftime lead and rolled to its second 38-14 victory to open the season.

The Chargers get to face the Patriots again on Sunday.

Quarterback Philip Rivers and Tomlinson both suffered knee injuries in last Sunday’s win over the Colts. They’ll need to spend more time this week rehabbing and preparing for the Pats instead of standing in front of cameras and notebooks.

Unless, that is, they prefer the off-field drama to the drama of the game on the field.

smanza@projo.com