The Chargers packed bags Friday for another road trip.

Along with equipment chests, will the Melvin Gordon breakout formula arrive with the Bolts at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and on to the Georgia Dome on Sunday?

When Gordon has room to stretch his long legs, it’s a nerve-tingling sight not only for Chargers fans but blockers such as center Matt Slauson.

Take the recent game against the Denver Broncos.


For most of the night when Gordon took a handoff, Broncos defenders were on him like orange on a pumpkin.

Then, for one sequence when the tumblers all clicked, everything changed.

On the offense’s first play of the third quarter, a vast chasm opened up to the left. Gordon galloped through it and down the sideline toward a 48-yard gain, the longest rush in his 20 games since arriving as the No. 15 selection of the 2015 draft.

To hear Slauson, the dividends from Gordon’s run didn’t end with the three points that culminated the drive, or the 21-13 victory that followed at Qualcomm Stadium.


“It gave us a boost and showed us, ‘Hey, this is what we’re capable of,’ “ he said. “ ‘Let’s keep working and striving for that exact thing.’ ”

The Broncos have a sticky defense, so if the Bolts can burn them for a long run, there’s reason to think they’ll spring Gordon against a Falcons group that’s 26th in points and 14th in yards per carry.

“Melvin has been running extremely hard all year,” Slauson said. “Our coaches are doing a phenomenal job of putting us in those spots. We just have to take it upon ourselves and do it.”

The state of the San Diego ground game isn’t fully captured by the easily plucked statistics: 3.6 yards per carry (25th) and 91.8 yards per game (23rd).


Six games isn’t a lot to go on. And an array of variables, many of them fluid, inform each particular game.

Ideally, coach Mike McCoy said Friday, the offense would be balanced, but the prevailing goal, he reiterated, is to win the game by whatever means necessary. (In other words, lean on a very good pass game led by Philip Rivers.)

Bill Belichick, one of the sport’s coaching greats, has said he cares not a whit about “balance.” A season ago, when Belichick would direct them to the AFC Championship Game, the New England Patriots ran the ball on just 35 percent of their plays.

“Right now,” Slauson said of the Bolts’ ground game, “it is not good enough. It puts too much pressure on our quarterback. It puts too much pressure on our receivers.”


Under play-caller Ken Whisehunt, a member of McCoy’s first staff who returned this season, the team is running more often than in the two years without him. The Bolts are 13th in run attempts. Their run ratio is 41.6 percent, in comparison with 35.7 percent last year and 39.9 percent in 2014.

“I don’t think we’ve been, overall, as effective as we could have been running the football,” Whisenhunt said this week. “We’re still a little bit of a work in progress.”

The key change in scheme is that Rivers is working under center more often, which provides Gordon more build-up room and expands the menu of run-play options.

Gordon is touching the ball more in the red zone, a trend that pre-dated the season-ending injury to running back Danny Woodhead in Week 2.


With six rushing touchdowns, Gordon is six ahead of his rookie-season total and two behind NFL leader David Johnson of the Arizona Cardinals.

As for the run game personnel, Gordon said he’s a more confident and comfortable runner this season. Slauson is an upgrade at center. The fitness and health of the whole offensive line is improved, resulting in better continuity.

Rookie tight end Hunter Henry has given Whisenhunt a movable piece who’s effective as a blocker and a pass-catcher, while rookie Derek Watt has provided him a fullback, forcing defenses to account for a piece that Bolts lacked in 2014-15.

Watt has had rough moments, but wiped out a Raiders safety in Week 5 to abet a 24-yard run by former Wisconsin teammate Gordon.


Versus Denver, the big run rewarded clever play design and sure blocking.

Left guard Orlando Franklin faked his opponent, Jared Crick, into believing the run would be wide left instead of short left. When Crick advanced wide, Franklin used his right hand to bum-rush the 6-foot-4, 285-pound out of Gordon’s rush lane and onto the ground before sealing him off for good.

Slauson and the right guard, D.J. Fluker, combined on a double-team block that Slauson told Fluker was their best tandem effort this season.

Wide receiver Dontrelle Inman, by veering left to right into the defensive backfield, in effect deleted two second-line defenders: a cornerback who over-reacted to Inman’s the pass-route threat; and a safety whom Inman impeded.


Henry’s left-to-right action into the heart of the run defense – a staple to this offense on successful runs to the right, such as Gordon’s 21-yard, Week 2 rush against the Jags -- moved a Broncos defender out of position, too.

Gordon did the rest.

When Broncos deep safety T.J. Ward swiped at the ball, Gordon, perhaps learning from his fumbles in the previous two games, protected it with both hands and powered ahead for another 10-plus yards.

Gordon’s jaunt, though it gave an early illusion of a perimeter run, wasn’t a lateral “stretch play” whereby blockers scampers wide to get defenders moving east-west.


In 2013, the stretch play became a driving force to the Chargers’ late-season surge into the playoffs.

“I would love to have that happen (this year) the way it did,” Whisenhunt said. “Some of it is a function of who you have up front and what they do well -- what your skill set is up front. We got into a little bit of a groove in 2013, and that was productive.”

As for what the Bolts’ ground game has in store for Atlanta, center Slauson spoke as if he’s mindful of the 11 rushes against Denver that netted two yards or fewer and the seven instances in which a Bronco hit Gordon in the backfield.

“We’re working on a lot of things,” he said. “We’re trying to get it fixed, and hopefully it goes a lot better on Sunday.”


Tom.Krasovic@SDUnionTribune.com; Twitter: SDUTKrasovic