San Diego not only became the first team in NFL history to rally from 4-8 and reach the postseason, but also the Chargers won the AFC West and secured a first-round home game today against Indianapolis, 12-4.

So even though the Chargers feasted on sweeping the Chiefs and Raiders, splitting with Denver and finishing just 3-7 outside the AFC West, they see the playoffs as a clean slate.

"I see what people are saying, but the thing is, we're not 8-8 anymore," Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers said. "I see us as 0-0 and them as 0-0. The 16 games previous tell a lot about who you are and what you've done, but when it comes down to one game, all those really don't matter."

While the Chargers are in the playoffs, two teams with better records -- New England, 11-5, and the New York Jets, 9-7 -- are sitting home, as are three NFC teams that finished 9-7.

But at least the Chargers can point to wins over both the Jets and Patriots. If either of those teams had beaten San Diego, they'd be in and the Chargers would be out.

"The league addressed that last year, and we met on it at the league meetings in March and talked a great deal about it," Chargers coach Norv Turner said of the current playoff system that assures division champions a playoff berth even if other nondivision winners with better records don't qualify. "It was voted to keep the system.

"The thinking was there's a reason you have divisions, and a team should be rewarded for winning their division. That's the way the scheduling is, and obviously we've played the NFC South and the AFC East. That makes our schedule unique to what someone else had or what the wild-card teams with a better record might have.

"Everyone's circumstances are different. When you start getting into records, I think that can be misleading. I hope it's an accurate look at what we are because when we played Indianapolis it was a three-point game. They played one schedule, we've played another. We won our division and we're at home."

The Chargers didn't exactly back into the AFC West championship. They won their last four games, including a 41-24 victory at Tampa Bay in the next-to-last game of the season, and a 52-21 triumph over Denver in a winner-take-all regular-season finale.

"It's critical that you keep improving," said Rivers, the AFC offensive player of the month for December. "It's hard to see it when you lose close games like we did. We lost a one-point game at Pittsburgh. There are some other people who have lost close games, very low-scoring games there. We lost a three-point game to Indy. They're the hottest team in Football right now. They've won nine straight.

"We have a lot of players that are playing their best Football of their career. That's important. It's obviously what we shoot for. We're getting ready to play a team that has a lot of guys that are playing their best Football of their careers or the best Football they've played this year."

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