Oh, how it must feel to be a Chargers fan. To be oh so persistently close, and yet always so far away.

Is it unhealthy, I wonder, to suffer heartbreak so consistently?

Sunday’s 27-24 overtime loss to the Tennessee Titans was the team’s third consecutive defeat in the closing minutes. That includes the Chargers’ season-opening 36-34 loss to the Miami Dolphins a week earlier and, before that, the epic 31-30 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in last season’s AFC wild-card playoff game, when they blew a 27-0 first-half lead.

But, no, insisted Coach Brandon Staley after Sunday’s defeat, this one had nothing to do with that one: “I’m not worried about the Jacksonville loss,” he snapped. “The Jacksonville loss has not carried onto the season whatsoever. … Our team has played its heart out in two games, and we’ve lost two tough games.”

But it’s been more than two tough ones. By the count of Tyler Schoon, one of the hosts of the “Guilty as Charged” podcast, eight of 36 games in the Staley Era have been lost in the fourth quarter or overtime.

“Basically,” he said after this latest letdown, “every four games I’ve watched, the Chargers blow it in this current era.”

Ouch, man.

My colleague Elliott Teaford, Southern California News Group’s Chargers beat writer, described Sunday how Chargers players were going through it too, in familiar fashion.

“The blank stares, the silence and the words from the Chargers’ postgame locker room could have been from last January in Jacksonville or last week in Inglewood,” he wrote. “But instead, they were from Sunday in Nashville. There was no difference in the Chargers’ reactions or their vows to put this one behind them and move on.”

What else can they do? You can’t go back in time, you can only put one foot in front of the other. Try, try again to make it your best foot.

Try, the team’s fans have to hope, to move forward differently.

Try to avoid getting burned by explosive plays like Ryan Tannehill’s 70- and 49-yard completions Sunday. Try to play with discipline more fitting for a veteran roster, after three especially costly penalties (Derwin James Jr.’s late hit along with Sebastian Joseph-Day and Kenneth Murray Jr.’s roughing-the-passer calls) messed things up against Tennessee.

Staley himself probably wouldn’t have to be so defensive at the podium – “We just lost a game in overtime, so how do you think the mood is?” – if he was more aggressive on the field.

In his first season with the Chargers, they went for it on fourth down 31.5% of the time, more than any other team in 2021, and quarterback Justin Herbert also was one of the NFL’s most prolific deep passers, completing 24 of 60 attempts of 20 or more yards for 882 yards.

Since then, having started 2022 and now 2023 with new offensive coordinators, the Chargers haven’t played with the same abandon. Injuries have contributed, surely, but it’s also as though perhaps all the blown chances have Staley protecting those precious leads rather than trying to run them up.

Herbert finished outside of the league’s top 10 deep passers last season, per Next Gen Stats’ ranking, and on Sunday, 35 of his 44 passing attempts were short-range deliveries. And most of those went to Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, neither of whom are regular yards-after-catch threats.

And what about Herbert? The mild-mannered QB who famously gets angry only when he sees someone abandon a grocery cart in a parking lot? Whose mom told ESPN’s Mina Kimes that he was devastated once when a fish jumped out of its aquarium and died while the family was away? Who grew up in Eugene, Oregon, trapping nutria, these big nasty-looking rodents that live near the streams and ponds up there?

They tell you to steer clear of those creatures because they can get fierce if they feel threatened – let’s see Herbert bring some of that energy, show his teeth in consequential late-game situations.

Because again Sunday, Herbert was good, throwing for more than 300 yards and two touchdowns without an interception for the fourth consecutive game. But he didn’t exactly display $262.5 million bite in crunch time; failing to convert on four consecutive possessions to win the game with a touchdown, including going three-and-out to start overtime.

That’s devastating when the Chargers’ defense is leaving it all up to the offense.

That so-far indefensible defense has been scorched for 63 points through two games, third-most in the league. The Chargers have allowed 12 plays of 20-plus yards this season, tied for most in the league.

First, Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa lit them up with 466 passing yards, the most ever against the Chargers. On Sunday, the Chargers gave up 27 points to a Titans team that hadn’t scored more than 22 since Week 11 last season.

Staley accentuated the positives Monday, as he’s apt to do. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Chargers are 0-2 for the first time since 2017 and already facing longer odds at playoff success than sports betting sites are giving Staley to keep his job.

In one instance, SportsBetting.ag gives it 2/1 odds that he’ll be the first coach fired this season.

In the other, of 23 teams to lose their first two games, only last season’s Cincinnati Bengals squad has reached the postseason since the NFL expanded the playoffs to seven teams per conference in 2020.

The Chargers, so far, don’t look anything like Super Bowl contenders. Rather like either the NFL’s best bad team or its worst good team. But they’re too talented for that, too talented to be causing their own fans so much pain and suffering.

For his part, Staley said Monday that he believes better days are ahead.

“This team knows that we’ve been through tough games, two tough games,” he said. “And I think that our guys know, ‘Hey, man, this group, top to bottom, one through 48, is playing the right way. Playing really, really hard.’ There’s a lot of pride in that room. Mistakes from our first two games are correctable. And we have the right people to correct them.”

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