Chargers Look More Like Dolts : Pro football: Gilbert has awful day as Cowboys drop San Diego to 3-4 with 23-9 victory.

SAN DIEGO —  Don Sasa, a young San Diego Charger defensive tackle who had just torn a hole in his knee and ruined his season, struggled alone through the stadium tunnel on new crutches Sunday.

The clink-clink of metal on concrete contrasted with the yelping and hollering at the end of that tunnel, where Dallas Cowboy fans and players were celebrating a 23-9 victory over the Chargers.

It was the Chargers’ third consecutive loss, dropping them to 3-4 and three games out of first place in the AFC West with less than half the season complete.

During those three losses, they have thrown eight interceptions, lost three fumbles and been penalized 266 yards.

“We’re all giving our blood out there, but something is missing,” Sasa said. “There’s just something missing from this team right now. I don’t know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.”

He reached the top of the ramp. A woman who been had partying with the Cowboys leaped into his path with a disposable camera.

“Alfred Pupunu!” she shouted. “Smile!”

And so it went for the defending AFC champions on an afternoon when the final traces of last year’s Super Bowl memories vanished like the wispy trails of those fighter jets that no longer fly overhead.

An extraordinary Cowboy team that is only going to get better further exposed the Chargers as only average, with a chance of getting worse.

Sure, the Chargers were forced to play backup quarterback Gale Gilbert, who showed the football world what it has been missing while he sat on the bench for all but three starts in 10 previous seasons: Nothing.

Gilbert personally gave the ball to the Cowboys four times in the first 20 minutes, leading to a 14-2 Cowboy lead that was never seriously threatened.

But the scary thing for the Chargers’ increasingly skeptical fans--the team was booed during pregame workouts Sunday--is that the Chargers probably would have lost this game even with sore-shouldered starter Stan Humphries.

“A lot of people are going to say a lot of negative things about this one,” Charger Coach Bobby Ross acknowledged, later adding, “You can’t blame this on Gale totally and completely.”

For example:

--One touchdown pass in the fourth quarter was nullified because, while receiver Shawn Jefferson ran a strong 37-yard route, most of it was out of bounds.

Jefferson had so blatantly broken the rules that when he began to protest, teammates grabbed and nearly clocked him.

--A great defensive stop on a Cowboy two-point conversion attempt was nullified when linebacker Glen Young broke the obscure “back door” rule.

Before the play, Young left the field through the back of the end zone instead of running directly to the sideline.

--During one early stretch, the Chargers were cited for four penalties in a five-play stretch.

--Instead of spreading out dropped passes throughout the game, the Chargers dropped two passes on the same play. Pupunu dropped a ball that Tony Martin had already muffed.

“I don’t think anyone wants to be here,” running back Natrone Means said. “But that’s the way it is.”

He was talking about the Charger season, which features remaining games against the likes of the Miami Dolphins, Kansas City Chiefs, Oakland Raiders, Cleveland Browns and Indianapolis Colts.

But he could have been talking about San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, where hundreds of Cowboy fans reminded the Chargers of who is probably going to the Super Bowl . . . and who is not.

“It is weird to get booed at your home field, it really ain’t right,” said defensive tackle Reuben Davis, who outscored quarterback Gilbert by recording a first-quarter safety. “To see all those people wearing white shirts with Emmitt Smith’s name on them, that stinks. Why don’t those people just move to Dallas?

“If they boo me, I don’t care, but if they are Cowboy fans, what are they doing here?”

Illustrating their gifts of perception?

The Cowboys began the afternoon listening to an excited public address announcer spread the news of the San Francisco 49ers’ loss. They ended it wondering about reports that Steve Young might have a serious shoulder injury.

“Tell you what, everybody has great players who can go just like that!” Cowboy Coach Barry Switzer said, snapping his fingers.

Then he smiled. Because two of his great players aren’t leaving, they’re arriving, and will be in uniform in two weeks in Atlanta, after next week’s bye.

“We’re getting Deion [Sanders] and Smith [Darrin, recently signed linebacker], and that’s just great,” Switzer said. “Tell you what, we’re getting there.”

The Cowboys won Sunday even though the Charger defense extended its streak of not allowing a 100-yard rusher to 37 games, dating back to 1993. Emmitt Smith gained only 68 yards, a season low.

But Smith still scored twice, and the Cowboys still managed scoring drives of six and eight minutes because of quarterback Troy Aikman, who was brilliant again in spreading the ball to five receivers. “We’re one of the few football teams that can truly be balanced,” Aikman said, later adding, “We’re still a football team that’s hungry.”

Gilbert certainly appeared hungry during the week, this being his first start since the middle of last season. But he played as if he wouldn’t know a forward pass from a doughnut.

Humphries was fooling around late in the game, testing his bruised right shoulder by throwing short passes on the sideline. Considering those throws were better than Gilbert’s real ones, expect Humphries to start in Seattle next week.

“I killed us,” Gilbert said. “It’s kind of hard to have bad days as a backup.”

Think how hard it was for receiver Jefferson, who was involved in what Gilbert called a “miscommunication” on the Chargers’ first drive of the game.

He wound up in the end zone, watching Larry Brown pick off an underthrown ball at the four-yard line. The ball was knocked out of Gilbert’s hand by Russell Maryland on the next drive and recovered by Shante Carver. On the Chargers’ third drive, Gilbert tried to throw it out of the end zone while falling on his back, but didn’t throw it far enough and Brock Marion grabbed it in the end zone.

Finally, on the Chargers’ fourth drive, Gilbert underthrew Tony Martin by five yards, allowing Clayton Holmes to pick it off.

Now, according to the Charger players, it has come to this: They must win against the Seahawks next weekend, or else.

“No trying about it,” Davis said. “We have to take this game. We just have to.”

And to think the Chargers really didn’t have a must-win game last season until the playoffs, which Sunday seemed far away indeed.