Another "Marty" self-destructed in 2005.

Oh Marty, Marty, Marty, Marty, Marrrr-tee. What is wrong with you, Marty?

Coach Marty Schottenheimer reverted back to his lovable, lumpy-loser ways this past weekend in San Diego. "Coach Conservative" reared his ugly head yet again, and it was not a pretty site.

It looked like Ernest Borgnine.

Schottenheimer hadn?t even placed his mint Coach of the Year trophy on the mantle before putting the shackles on his 12-4 Chargers, the fifth ranked offense in the AFC, in an overtime 20-17 loss to the New York Jets.

Borgnine won an Oscar for Best Actor as Marty Piletti, but he never played a butcher this well.

Schottenheimer forgot that Comeback Player-of-the-Year Drew Brees carved up defenses all season en route to a 7-1 home record. Coach Marty forgot about his big salami LaDanian Tomlinson with his 1,776 all-purpose yards and 17 touchdowns. Marty-ball turned into Marty-stall because the coach lost the deli slip to his all-pro tight end Antonio Gates until the game-tying, fourth quarter drive.

This Chargers team had won nine of its last 10 games (The only loss was in OT to the Colts) heading into the playoffs and outscored its opponents by 133 points. The Bolts? offense was buzzing and the defense, led by linebacker Donnie Edwards, was marinating running backs, cold-cutting receivers and dry-aging quarterbacks.

Schottenheimer had a USDA prime of a ball club and he let it get moldy by cold-sweating his team into a playoff flop. Come to think of it, Schottenheimer?s look of constipation -- on the sidelines -- makes Borgnine?s mug look like a Paz Vega head shot.

You know that look he had Saturday night when the Chargers refused to blitz Chad Pennington even though he wasn?t 100 percent. The same look he got when he went up 7-0, but Brees threw an interception so the strategy changed. We?ve got the lead, now all we have to do is sit on the ball for three quarters and the game is ours.

It?s the same look he had with the Cleveland Browns when Earnest Byner coughed it up to the Broncos, or John Elway orchestrated "The Drive." It?s the same look he had when his 13-3 Kansas City Chiefs were making tee times in January.

When the Chargers got down 10 points and they re-opened the offense up, good things happened. Granted, Eric Barton gave them life with his moronic roughing-the-quarterback penalty that set up a one-yard TD to Gates in the back of the end zone. But the Chargers only took shots down the field a handful of times. One was the 26-yard touchdown pass to Keenan McCardell in the second quarter, which gave San Diego their only lead, and the other two were in the last two minutes of regulation to Gates (24 and 44 yards) to get them in striking distance.

After getting the Barton, bow-wrapped invitation to overtime, the Chargers still had a chance to advance. But Marty chose to bull rush Tomlinson into the defensive line three straight times to set up a 40-yard field goal as even John Madden put down his Italian assorted to plead for the Chargers to be more aggressive.

Instead, rookie kicker Nate Kaeding sliced the ball to the right and landed on Schottenheimer?s ridiculous resume.

But that is why Marty lost his fifth straight playoff game, dropped to 5-12 in the extra season and his squads have been one-and-done eight times. Marty manages the game like he doesn?t want to lose instead of wanting to win.

In fairness, Schottenheimer wasn?t the only coach fumbling his clipboard this past weekend. St. Louis Rams coach Mike Martz won his playoff game, 27-20, despite refusing to run the ball with Marshall Faulk and Stephen Jackson. Martz can not be accused of being passive, just dumb. Luckily, there were no game-changing plays that needed to be challenged in the fourth quarter because Martz couldn?t have thrown his red flag since he was out of timeouts in the third quarter!

Martz also benefited from Seattle Seahawks receivers that couldn?t have caught water on their helmet if a tsunami erupted in the Puget Sound.

Seattle coach Mike Holmgren, the so-called genius, helped Martz as well. While trying to tie the game in the closing minutes, Holmgren repeatedly called for quarterback Matt Hasselbeck to drop back to pass despite having two timeouts and two minutes to play. With the Seahawks down to the Rams 11-yard line, and no Shaun Alexander (1600-yd rusher) in the backfield, Hasselbeck got sacked at the 17 making their task much more difficult.

But it is so easy to criticize from the couch.

It is also easy to see what a real team like the Indianapolis Colts does when they get the lead. They continued to exploit the Denver Broncos secondary on Sunday, finally stepping on their throats for a 49-24 victory.

They played to win.

Borgnine, as Marty Piletti, was a lonely butcher approaching middle age while his Italian mother hounded him to get married. Piletti said, "Whatever it is women like, I ain?t got it."

In the end, Piletti gets the girl. As for Schottenheimer, he is never going to get the "girl." The girl is that trophy that truly matters, and defines the legacy of a head coach in the NFL. Getting his hands on the Lombardi trophy -- for winning the Super Bowl --would be a Hollywood ending for Marty.

But Marty isn?t ready for award dinners, acceptance speeches and waving on the red carpet. Marty is still stuck playing the extra.

The extra standing in the back of the shot as the camera catches his look of constipation.

(Movie information is courtesy of the IMDB Web site ? www.imdb.com)