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SAN DIEGO – Reviewing a photo sequence of Malcom Floyd’s catches during Sunday night’s practice provides a question rather than an answer.

Double teamed, hands jostling his helmet and ripping at the football, a wide grin stretches across Floyd’s face.

The next frame reveals the ball hovering in the air, coveted by six eyes. Then three players staring as the football rests in Floyd’s grasp.

How did he catch that?

“Some of those catches yesterday, I really don’t know how I came down with them,” Floyd said.

Don’t buy the aw, shucks routine, his quarterback cautioned.

“Malcom got lucky again, as we say in the locker room,” Philip Rivers said. “He’s so humble about it, saying he got lucky, but he seems to get lucky like that every day.

“Unbelievable talent playing the ball. When it’s up in the air, he thinks it’s his. The play’s never dead until the ball’s on the ground or in his hands. As a quarterback, it certainly gives you the confidence to keep throwing them when you see him in those positions.”

Nicknamed M-80, the 6-foot-5 receiver enjoyed the best season of his career last year, catching 45 passes for 776 yards. He’s primed to start and seeks even better numbers beginning with the Sept. 13 season opener at Kansas City.

“It’s something he’s been doing his entire career,” Head Coach Norv Turner said. “People got to see a lot more of it last year because he was a starter for nine weeks. I’d much rather see him catch the ball on the move and
about chest high and clean, but it doesn’t always work out that way. He makes a spectacular catch every day.”

That gives Rivers the aforementioned confidence to throw deep downfield into coverage, knowing Floyd has a high likelihood of catching the ball in traffic. He towers above most NFL cornerbacks and has good jumping ability, a mismatch difficult for defenses to counteract.

“I think that’s one of my strengths is to jump off two feet and attack the ball (in a crowd),” Floyd said. “You’re really trying to focus on the ball and track the ball as well as feel for other guys around you. Try and get good body position, similar to basketball. Gates goes out there and boxes out linebackers. It’s kind of the same mentality. You just carry it over to football.”

The final frame: Quentin Jammer squints into the sunlight, hands still outstretched. It’s a stretch to categorize his face as perplexed, but it would be acceptable if he was. The veteran Chargers cornerback skied with Floyd for the catch, clasped his hands around the football in midair and managed to dislodge it on the way to the ground. The combination of eye-hand coordination and athleticism required to make the play explains why Jammer has started 110 games since 2003.

But there’s Floyd, cradling the ball to his chest while his right elbow absorbs the ground.

As the axiom goes, sometimes you create your own luck.