Nick Canepa
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San Diego Union-Tribune sports columnist since 1984. Opinions are mine alone. Why would anyone else want them? And, please, as always, no wagering.
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Articles by Nick Canepa
Nick Canepa’s Report Card: Chargers fail to make the grade — again — as they fall to 0-6
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Nick Canepa grades the Chargers following Sunday’s 22-6 loss to the Chiefs in Kansas City: Quarterbacks: C Pounded, breaded and sautéed, Justin Herbert was in a 9-0 pan before the oil got hot (it was 19-3 at halftime). He ran well, once getting kneed in the face (no call). His first pick was horrible, ruining a drive, but he got off the hook on a Patrick Mahomes screw-up.
Nick Canepa: Chargers could still make history — by going 0-17
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The plane hasn’t left the terminal, but flight attendants are closing the doors and are about to give passengers (who don’t listen) safety instructions. So we have this legitimate question: Can the NFL Team That Used To Be Here — you know, the Judases/L.A. Lodgers — go 0-17? It’s possible. Not probable. But it does stink. In 2000, the Judases lost their first 11 (the season was 16 games long then). They were awful.
Nick Canepa’s Report Card: Chargers fade, then fail to remain winless in 2026
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Nick Canepa grades the Chargers following Sunday’s 23-17 loss to the Broncos at SoFi Stadium: Quarterbacks: F Justin Herbert just can’t do it, even when a game is winnable. He threw a short touchdown to third-string tight end Hayden Rucci that tied it at 10 after a 9:28-minute drive to open the third quarter. He ran effectively, but he had the monster fumble loss when hit by his lineman’s foot. His late pick ruined the effort.
Nick Canepa: Baseball in January? That’s one way to fix what’s wrong with the sport
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The Padres were not going to beat the Brewers — even if Game 4 of the National League Division Series happened to be played in a maternity ward. But that’s all just water broken under the bridge. Let’s just say, for now, that the Padres went 0-for-21 at the plate to finish that game and their season. Once again, as my daddy said, can’t win if you don’t score. At the plate, they basically were pre-All-Star break vs.
Nick Canepa’s Report Card: Chargers play better vs. Seahawks, but remain winless in ’26
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Nick Canepa grades the Chargers following Sunday’s 30-23 loss to the Seahawks in Seattle: Quarterback: G For guts. Justin Herbert’s first pass on the game’s opening play was woefully overthrown and picked. More often than not, he didn’t have enough time to throw. He threw another horrible pick near the end of the half that led to an easy touchdown, making it 20-3 in a flag fest. Had a 26-yard run.
Nick Canepa: Protect College Sports act a step in the right direction
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The U.S. Congress should be concerned with — oh, I don’t know, the war that isn’t a war that really is, how gasoline prices affect everything, health care, immigration, protecting the innocent, cuddling up to dictators, buying coastline property in Greenland, calming down Canada, and so many other things more urgent than college kids tossing around balls of different shapes and sizes.
Nick Canepa’s Report Card: Chargers miss chances in road loss to Bills
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Nick Canepa grades the Chargers following Sunday’s 24-16 loss to the Bills in Buffalo: Quarterbacks: D Up 13-10 with 13:25 to play, Justin Herbert had a great chance to go up by 10. But he didn’t see a safety and was picked on the goal line. Once again, he will get the blame, but he needs his pass catchers to get open, and they’re having trouble doing that. A great opportunity wasted. Buffalo was beatable.
Nick Canepa: Trading Justin Herbert would be foolish, no matter how ugly the Chargers’ start
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … I’m not sure what a craw is, but it doesn’t matter. There is one on my person, somewhere. Do you want to know what gets stuck in mine? Idiots. So you know my craw is overflowing, stuffed. Idiots abound. They are, as Ballard Smith once called the media, like bleeping flies. It’s what Unsocial Media does. It breeds insects as aroused minks breed minks. Forget about forgiving them because they know not what they do. That was so 2,000 years ago.
Nick Canepa’s Report Card: Second straight baffling loss puts Chargers behind 8-ball
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Nick Canepa grades the Chargers followiing Sunday’s 27-14 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders at SoFi Stadium: Quarterbacks: F Justin Herbert has the look of a frustrated man. He had trouble finding open wide receivers because not many are open. Fumbled three times and was picked twice. He had plenty of time to throw when he was first sacked — he was sacked three times. There are moments he simply appears lost and ready to go home to Madison Beer.
Nick Canepa: After inexplicable flop, Chargers face a must-win in Week 2
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … I don’t spend much time going into the prediction business, any more than I do burning buildings. First of all, I’ve never really been very good at it. I had the 600 — you know, the Light Brigade — vs. the Russians at Balaclava. I needed Tennyson to inform me someone had blundered. But there are times when I can’t help myself, and this is one of them.
Nick Canepa’s report card: Failing grades everywhere after Chargers’ stunning season-opening loss
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Nick Canepa grades the Chargers following Sunday’s 26-14 season-opening loss to the Arizona Cardinals at SoFi Stadium: Quarterbacks: F The Judases Judased. Justin Herbert had to start from an unexpected 7-0 hole. But once he got the ball in his hands, under new offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel’s tutelage, the train seemed to carry gravy. It didn’t. He had nothing. One of his worst starts, at home, vs. a team coming off a three-win season.
Nick Canepa: San Diego is an NFL city; too bad city leaders left us without a stadium
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The NFL Team That Used To Be Here — you know, the Judases — opens its season Sunday vs. Arizona in Los Angeles. The game should be here. Where it used to be. Where it belongs. In a football town. Which L.A., with 12.8 million people around to disguise it as a great sports capital, is not. It’s a warm-weather destination for football fans from other places with cold-weather climes.
Nick Canepa: Aaron Donald’s return makes Rams the NFL’s best team (on paper)
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The Sunday Game will enter its 107th season Wednesday, and, lo and behold, hooray and hallelujah, Aaron Donald once again is a Ram. So what looks like a cinch to be the best NFL team should be getting better. So much for the great defensive tackle, perhaps the best football player of this century — if he wasn’t, he was leaning at the tape — remaining cozy in retirement.
Nick Canepa: Road rises to meet Irish, who have clear path to national title
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Look away. I’m biting my tongue. Okay. Hate to say it, but I can’t see Notre Dame’s football team losing a game while playing a schedule obviously given to it by a higher authority. The only thing that can stop it from not doing so — in the regular season (no conference title game when you’re not in a conference) — is getting too fat from dining on cupcakes. Notre Dame — the university, not the recovering Paris cathedral — was founded in 1848.
Nick Canepa: Justin Herbert isn’t ‘the best there ever was,’ but there’s lots to like
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … It’s about this Justin Herbert guy. Just who is he? What is he? How good is he? Is he cursed, or did he step in it and inherit The Curse, or what’s known as Chargering? I believe Jim Harbaugh — who captains the NFL Team That Used To Be Here and thus commands Herbert, his quarterback and executive field officer — is a terrific football coach. But although Jim’s different from any other man of his cloth, he’s similar to many. Prone to hyperbole.
Nick Canepa: Drew Brees became generational QB after leaving Chargers
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Ryan Clark went on the air and spouted the absurd. He said Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Peyton Manning were not generational quarterbacks. The remark, made last fall on ESPN’s “First Take,” was generationally absurd. An attention-grabber. Ryan, no fool, was getting his clicks. If those guys were non-generational, who’s generational? JaMarcus Russell? I don’t believe this is why ESPN fired him in July.
Nick Canepa: Blame baseball, not the Dodgers, for LA club’s spending, winning
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The problem with baseball isn’t the Dodgers. The problem with baseball is baseball. The Bums simply are a product of it. They have the wherewithal. And no matter what size the room, they are always the smartest people in it. Am I pleased? Hell no, I’m not. I’ve hated them since I first wet the bed. Hated them long before the Padres came into being. We were a Giants family. You don’t like the Dodgers if you’re a Giants fan.
Nick Canepa: No, Lionel Messi is not the greatest athlete of all time
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Our car has no reverse. No rear-view mirror. So many of us only care about where we are now. Maybe a few wonder where we’re going, what mysterious stupidity lies ahead. When the incredible Temptations sang “Don’t Look Back,” they were speaking of love, not all the good — and bad — things that have happened since man first washed off the swamp scum.
Nick Canepa: Padres’ history with first-rounders leaves little room for hope
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … What’s in a name? Not much — especially if you have one of little consequence, one not even immediate family members may recognize.
Nick Canepa: NCAA finally gets something right
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Well, we didn’t have to wait 250 years for it. But it did seem that way. It’s hard to believe. But this is America, 2026, so anything is believable. Even if it shouldn’t be, we’ve severely dumbed down, and have people in office who can convince its gullible minions that a lie is the new truth. But this is serious. The NCAA got something right. Praise be! Collegiate sports’ governing body has a recent history of being without a spine.
Nick Canepa: Enjoy baseball — even the Padres’ struggles — while you can. There may not be a 2027 season.
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … If the Padres are lucky (and they certainly are not), they won’t have to worry about playing baseball — or whatever sporting endeavor they’ve lately attempted to do — next year. For them, and the 29 other teams, odds are there won’t be a next year. The Cubs will have to wait until 2028 to top the 23 they scored on them the other day. Enjoy baseball, if you can, in 2026.
Nick Canepa: Padres have 3 untouchables as trade deadline nears
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Let’s get real and not tiptoe around on pointe shoes. The Padres don’t have many players who should not be touched. From the farms to the Show, they do have all of three — Fernando Tatis Jr., Mason Miller and Jackson Merrill. Maybe you’re surprised by one of my choices. More on that in a second. In baseball, The Untouchables have nothing to do with Eliot Ness. Or Capone. Or Prohibition. Or the FBI. They are the players who are invaluable.
Nick Canepa: World’s game, all nuance and little scoring, remains an acquired taste
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … I may be showing my age, but if you look at me, you don’t need an explanation. It’s just that for the past half-century or so, I’ve always felt as though soccer is being forced on me like a bogus religion. Because it’s such a great sport for kids, I’ve always heard that soccer will become the great American sport, that the children will grow into international superstars. But they haven’t. And I don’t believe they’re going to.
Nick Canepa: New Padres owners inheriting expensive, ineffective players; what are they to do?
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Memo to new Padres owners José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones: Buyer beware. You are aware of the following, of course, but so am I. So are many people. Of this: Manny Machado: 11 years, $350 million. Fernando Tatis Jr.: 14 years, $340 million. Xander Bogaerts: 11 years, $280 million. Jackson Merrill: 10 years, $156 million. Jake Cronenworth: seven years, $80 million. This (close enough) is what the Padres are paying their best position players.
Nick Canepa: Rich get richer as Rams acquire world’s best football talent
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The preseason experts, who, come to think of it, are no more expert than in-season or postseason experts, have the Rams winning the Super Bowl. In fact, they have become overwhelming favorites to hog the Big Dance floor all by themselves. And you know what that means? They probably won’t win it all. This is the NFL, which lives well, but day-to-day. You can think so, but can’t know so. Despite definitely winning the offseason.
Nick Canepa: Fernando Tatis Jr. finally homers, but power outage remains a major concern
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Fernando Tatis Jr. is a bust. OK, before you get your briefs in some kind of fancy nautical knot, let me say he is not a traditional baseball bust. He’s not Mike Ivie, the Padres’ first No. 1 overall draft choice, a catcher who couldn’t throw the ball back to the pitcher.
Nick Canepa: Expanded College Football Playoff can only help SDSU and other have-nots
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … There will be no crying at Notre Dame. Irish eyes will be smiling. They make it easy if this happens. Twenty-four is the number to remember. We know there is one sure way to save San Diego State football during a time when saving college football amounts to one thing: Money, which doesn’t grow on Montezuma Mesa flora. The Aztecs are now part of the Pac-12, which would have been fantastic years ago.
Nick Canepa: NBA GOAT talk is for the birds
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The National Basketball Association has not merely forgotten its past. It has lost it. Even worse, it obviously doesn’t care that it has. What happened then doesn’t matter now. Its idols of long ago — and even not so long ago — either have their faces and exploits blurred, or are totally out of the photograph. The players are no longer even compared to the brilliant stars, who played the game in the proper fashion. It is today’s League.
Nick Canepa: NCAA Tournament expansion is bad for many reasons
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... If the NCAA had taken my college chemistry class — don’t smile; the course was a requirement — it would have been the teacher’s pet. My professor loved to say, “A little’s good, but a lot’s better.” Me, I worried about a mini-Three Mile Island and glowing in the dark. But the NCAA would have believed, as it does now, that enough is not enough. It is official.
Nick Canepa: Gambling on football isn’t going away, despite the latest scandal
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … There has been, in my feeble mind, one thing that can tackle football and put it out of commission. Gambling. It can be great. It can be fun. It can be like drinking in moderation. It can also be evil. It can be three packs a day. It can be a fifth a day. It can be as addictive as opioids. It can ruin a life. It can ruin a family. A job. It isn’t always run by priests and nuns. So? It can be dangerous.
Nick Canepa: Chargers go big with first-round draft pick
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … “You can only be as right as you dare to be wrong.” — John Barrymore The best advice I’ve received in my career — which has lasted far too long for many — is this, from an old boss: “You have to dare to be great.” The NFL is like many businesses. Some teams dare. Some play it safe. The NFL draft is its greatest example. But the thing is, it’s a crapshoot either way.
Nick Canepa: NFL’s Liar’s Month wraps with draft spectacle
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … There is no evidence that George Washington said: “I cannot tell a lie.” He did. He was president. How could he not tell one? There probably wasn’t a cherry tree, either. His biographer, literary license renewed, had a vivid imagination. Alas, George didn’t live long enough to become an NFL general manager. If he had, he would have become an expert at not telling the truth much earlier in life.
Nick Canepa: College sports needs fixing, and here’s what I’d do
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Today, you get to play a lunatic chef gone wild. So you get this gigantic pot and go nuts. You throw in some Marx Brothers, Three Stooges, Keystone Cops, San Diego High’s Harold Lloyd, a few skits from “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World,” and “Airplane!,” fresh horse manure, and what do you get? Insane college sports stew. It tastes like crap. It smells worse. It won’t stay on your fork. It’s inedible.
Nick Canepa: Will the NFL add an 18th game? You can bet on it
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The NFL is going to have an 18-game season, tout de suite. If not that fast, soon. It’s inevitable. Ice melts. Rivers flow. The League plays 18 games. It gathered fuel last week at the winter meetings, with Patriots boss Robert Kraft throwing his weight behind the idea of adding one regular-season game, a second bye, dropping an exhibition game (leaving one), and ensuring all 32 teams play once annually overseas.
Nick Canepa: History shows John Wooden, not Coach K, to be the greatest of all time
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Santayana, the philosopher, not the misspelled rock guitarist, said many things. His most profound statement: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” He was right, of course, but also incorrect. He just didn’t know it at the time. Ol’ George lived until 1952. So he was around at the wrong time to have that attitude. He was around when history meant something.
Nick Canepa: Aztecs didn’t pass eye test, but they might’ve made noise in tourney
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … If there is a road hereabouts, it’s likely to have a hole in it. Or a bump. Somehow, the men’s basketball team at San Diego State, used to a fairly comfortable ride under driver Brian Dutcher, this year managed to hit both. The Aztecs had trouble with navigation from the beginning. And never corrected it.
Nick Canepa: Federal regulation won’t fix what’s wrong with college sports Original
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The biggest problem with the federal government is its inability to mind its own business. This goes for all governments, but especially federal — now, more than ever, when common ground seemingly is on Jupiter, and we are at war (again). The feds have always taken a half-assed interest in sports, which I’ve found worthless.
Nick Canepa: Padres have the pitchers, power hitters and pieces to be darn good in 2026
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … There are fewer people in China than there are baseball experts. They are legion. Lined up like Central Casting in the 1930s and ’40s. Especially now, during the daunting age of unsocial media. Everybody used to have opinions, but with few ways of expressing them, except maybe in a bar. Now all they have to do is type it into cyberspace, and it’s sometimes taken as gospel by fools. AI only has made it worse.
Nick Canepa: Padres have the pitchers, power hitters and pieces to be darn good in 2026
Winners, Losers from First Big Week of 2026 NFL Offseason Before Free Agency NFL free agency starts next week and the new NFL League year 2026 will also make a few blockbuster trades official. With so much going down in recent …
Nick Canepa: Of all the wacky Padres rumors, this one takes the cake
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me .. The Padres might be moving. Like out of town. Somewhere else. Or haven’t you heard the insane rumor that should have died with the ones that had Paul being no longer of this earth and Elvis still a part of it? OK. I’ve been doing what I do — whatever you want to call it — since Eve told Adam she had a hankering for dessert, maybe an apple pie. Along the road, I’ve seen a lot of crap — and heard most of it — during my time in the newspaper dodge.
Nick Canepa: Tanking is just one of the NBA’s many problems
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The NBA has been weaponized, now meant to inflict harm on the eyes of purists. It survives. Somehow. It’s a cockroach. It’s 80 years of age, but it makes you think slumped-over men came out of a swamp dribbling a basketball. It has been stomped on, sprayed with doubt by traditionalists, given extreme unction, and left for dead. But it goes on. Some of its players, many with unimaginable talent and making many millions, go all out.
Nick Canepa: Olympics are easy to love, even when they’re hard to understand
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … As a rule, I don’t enjoy things I can’t understand. And I can’t understand many things. Too many things. But I love the Winter Olympics. Even though I don’t recognize a lot of it. However, it is fun to get jingoistic every so often — especially in 2026, when we don’t get many chances while shaking our heads, wondering what the hell is going on. It’s just that we don’t always know what we’re watching. The athletes are phenomenal.
Nick Canepa: It’ll be Super Bowl zzzz when Seahawks face punchless Pats Original
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Today’s NFL Championship Game has a real chance to eventually be known as Super Bowl M(etformin) A sleep enhancer produced in the body, but at times necessary out of a TV screen for those in need of extra enhancement to get their z’s. On its surface, this Super Bowl, New England vs. Seattle, is about as sexy as a bag of deceased lice. There is no “it” to the game.
Nick Canepa: Bill Belichick’s Hall of Fame induction should’ve been a no-brainer
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … It’s as though the Nobel Committee denied Hemingway the prize in literature for having a comma out of place. Bill Belichick going into the Pro Football Hall of Fame was a cliché. A no-brainer. How would Chick Hearn put it? Slam dunk. But, in all the Halls of Fame, in all the towns, in all the world, he had to try to walk into this one. And Vichy Prefect of Police Renault stopped him at the door.
Nick Canepa: Bill Belichick’s Hall of Fame induction should’ve been a no-brainer
It has been a while since I typed Bill Belichick’s name in this column, a streak that just ended, but another that will be extended is a mention by …
Nick Canepa: Money will move college football’s power to the North
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … The Southeastern Conference will lose the college football battle for the same reason the South lost the Civil War: Money. It doesn’t have enough of it. It’s not going to have enough of it. Oh, it’s going to get by, but not as a whole. Some schools, such as Texas, Georgia, LSU and Ole Miss and maybe a few others, will have the wherewithal to compete with the Yankees. But not enough of them. And for how long?
Nick Canepa: Jim Harbaugh’s next hire must move Chargers into modern era
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … You could hear the heavy hoofbeats of failure coming. Greg Roman was a knight in shining armor. In football years, a 15th-century knight in dull armor riding an old swayback nag. Roman was long past his days of coming to the rescue. More like a knight error, bringing a blunt sword to the Clark Street Garage on Saint Valentine’s Day. I’m sure Roman is a good football man, an expert.
Nick Canepa’s Report Card: Chargers fail, flail in playoff loss to Patriots
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Nick Canepa grades the Chargers following Sunday night’s 16-3 loss to the New England Patriots in the wild-card round of the playoffs: Quarterbacks: F Justin Herbert used his legs right away. So much was on him early as the primary runner. Got screwed when the referee missed an obvious blow to the head that gave the Pats a field goal. But Herbert missed a lot of stuff even when he had time to throw.
Nick Canepa: Thanks to QB, D, Chargers have more than a puncher’s chance in playoff opener
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Sez Me … Most everything, even stuff without a point, points to the NFL Team That Used To Be Here — you know, the Judases/L.A.Lodgers — not surviving their NFL Wild Card playoff game this evening in New England. As Bill Parcells once said: “You are what your record says you are.” And the Patriots are 14-3, champions of the AFC East. The Judases (somehow) are 11-6, runners-up in the AFC West.
Nick Canepa’s Report Card: Chargers get mixed grades in regular-season finale
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Nick Canepa grades the Chargers following Sunday’s 19-3 loss to the Broncos in Denver: Quarterbacks: C An early August game. Justin Herbert, more banged up than a Buddy Rich tom-tom, wisely was held out, as were others. So Trey Lance, who the 49ers once used three No. 1s to draft, got the start. Trey tried some long stuff early but was throwing airballs, Had an inexcusable delay. At one point before the break, he completed seven straight passes.
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