After losing both their top receiver and top rusher, the San Diego Chargers looked more like a good bet for last place than Super Bowl-bound.
Three games into the new season, the Chargers are one of five unbeaten teams in the NFL."We're 3 and 0 and, hopefully, we'll be able to handle it well," Stan Humphries said following San Diego's 24-10 victory over the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday.
The Chargers lost their leading receiver, Anthony Miller, as a free agent to Denver and traded away their top rusher, Marion Butts, to New England.
They also swapped their No. 2 receiver, Nate Lewis, to the Los Angeles Rams.
"Our receivers are a bunch of guys nobody has ever heard of," Humphries said. "They don't get down when they make a mistake and they make it exciting."
Humphries teamed with Tony Martin on a 99-yard touchdown pass, equaling the longest in NFL history, as the Chargers got off to their best start since 1981.
Also in the third quarter, when the Chargers turned a 10-3 halftime lead into a 24-3 advantage, Stanley Richard stepped in front of Paul Green at the San Diego 27 and grabbed Rick Mirer's pass.
For the second time this season, Richard returned an interception for a touchdown. This one was for 73 yards. He ran back an interception of John Elway's pass 99 yards for a touchdown in San Diego's opener in Denver.
Richard is enjoying showing the NFL experts that they were wrong about the Chargers.
"A lot of people saw us as underdogs," Richard said. "But we're a good team that has earned some respect."
General manager Bobby Beathard and coach Bobby Ross traded Butts because they had Natrone Means in the wings. Means rushed for 86 yards on 24 carries, including a 1-yard touchdown with 19 seconds left in the second quarter to give San Diego a 10-3 halftime lead.
Miller caught 84 passes for 1,163 yards and seven touchdowns for San Diego last season.
The Chargers could have kept Miller because he was their transition player but wouldn't match the offer Miller received from Denver. Instead, they traded for Martin, who averaged 28.2 catches in four seasons in Miami.
Martin caught a career-best six passes for 152 yards and one touchdown. He caught only one pass, a 61-yarder, in his first two San Diego games.
"We're not well known but all the receivers on this team are explosive," Martin said.
Pinned on the 1 after a sack by Brent Williams, Humphries passed from his own end zone on third-and-18. He found Martin in front of Patrick Hunter at the San Diego 35 and Martin outran Hunter to the end zone. Hunter tried so hard to catch Martin that he strained his left hamstring and had to leave the game on a cart.
It was the seventh 99-yard touchdown pass play in NFL history, and it broke the club record of 91 yards set by Jack Kemp and Keith Lincoln against Denver Nov. 12, 1961.
San Diego's defense took care of the rest. The Chargers were helped when Chris Warren, Seattle's back-to-back 1,000-yard rusher, suffered a chipped bone in his left elbow in the first quarter and had to leave the game.
The Seahawks were limited to 59 rushing yards, and 187 yards overall. The Chargers sacked Rick Mirer six times, three by Leslie O'Neal, San Diego's all-time sack leader.
"We put a lot of pressure on the quarterback when both their backs got hurt," O'Neal said. "We took them out of what they wanted to do."
The largest home crowd in Seahawks' history, 65,536, turned out at Husky Stadium in the team's first game away from the Kingdome. The Kingdome, which seats 64,500, is closed until at least Nov. 1 because of ceiling and roof repairs.