Having experienced the negative consequences of a slow start during his brief tenure as the head coach of the Washington Redskins, with the team losing its first five contests of the 2001 season, Marty Schottenheimer is determined to prod his new franchise into a quicker break from the gate this year.

Problem is, the San Diego Chargers exploded out of the starting blocks with a 3-0 record in 2001, only to discover in the final two months of the year that the NFL season remains a marathon and not a sprint. The league scouts might measure functional football speed in increments of 40 yards but, for coaches, the stopwatch is secondary to staying power.

	Rich Gannon threw 27 touchdowns and only nine interceptions last season.

Indeed, there are times it seems that Aesop had the NFL in mind when he conjured up the parable of the tortoise and the hare. Slow might not always win the race, but steady isn't necessarily a bad thing to be, and perseverance is also a valued commodity.

"If you can reach a level of consistency, and then maintain it for most of the season, you will usually be in pretty good shape," said Schottenheimer, who was dismissed by Skins owner Daniel Snyder despite shepherding Washington to eight victories in the final 11 weeks of the '01 season. "But gaining that consistency is hard. And keeping it is even harder. The formula might seem pretty simple but, in application, it's hard to achieve."

That was especially true last season for the four holdover franchises that will comprise the AFC West in 2002.

When the playoff derby turned to the home stretch, the Chargers, Kansas City Chiefs, Oakland Raiders and Denver Broncos looked more like glue-factory nags than stately thoroughbreds. None of the four teams had a winning record in the second half of the season, compiling an aggregate 12-20 mark.

It was as if, when the calendar turned to November, the AFC West teams turned south.

Poised to grab homefield advantage in the AFC playoff bracket, the Raiders lost their last three regular-season games. San Diego, 5-3 at the halfway point of what looked to be a promising campaign, concluded a dismal season with eight consecutive defeats. Kansas City flashed improvement in the second half of the year, but not enough to overcome its 2-6 start. And the Broncos, touted as possessing the NFL's deepest roster in September, nonetheless proved incapable of overcoming their myriad physical maladies.

And so if there is a theme common to the four teams in the AFC West for 2002, it would be a shared resolve to start the season well, and to finish it even better. When the weather gets chilly, veterans from all four teams concurred, it is time to get hot.

"People underestimate how important a commodity momentum is in this league, and that is especially true at playoff time, because you want to go into (the postseason) kind of on an upswing," said Oakland offensive tackle Lincoln Kennedy. "The old adage about how it's a so-called 'second season' has some truth to it. But the playoffs are also an extension of what you did in the regular season. And if you're playing poorly, you just can't flip a switch and say, 'OK, that stuff's all behind us now because this is the playoffs.' There's a sense of urgency but there is also some carryover (from the regular season)."

Added veteran linebacker John Mobley of the Broncos: "You always want to gather some steam going into the playoffs. You want to be on a roll, not getting rolled over. And that's why the December games are so important. No, they don't count any more than the wins you get in September, but they do create momentum for you."

Losers to the New England Patriots in the surreal AFC divisional round game played in the snow at Foxboro, some Oakland players beat themselves up during the offseason by ruminating on how history might have been altered had they gained homefield advantage. Certainly the positive karma amassed in winning 10 of their first 13 games was negated by the costly season-ending three-game losing streak.

No one expected the Chargers to maintain the level of play that marked their early-season successes against a suspect schedule, but their fall from grace was more a plummet than a dip. Denver has traditionally been a strong second-half franchise, but the surprisingly bad play of quarterback Brian Griese and the offense in general overshadowed a solid effort by the defense. The Chiefs progressed a bit after the anticipating acclimation period under coach Dick Vermeil, but unsteady play at quarterback undid some of the gains.

	“	You always want to gather some steam going into the playoffs. You want to be on a roll, not getting rolled over. And that's why the December games are so important. No, they don't count any more than the wins you get in September, but they do create momentum for you. ”
		— John Mobley, Broncos linebacker

Notable about all four teams in a division characteristically won through the air is the new focus on the quarterback position. There is, indeed, some degree of skepticism about the position for all four teams.

Griese so far has paid little dividend on the $12.6 million signing bonus the Broncos awarded him and there are lifestyle concerns. Kansas City's Trent Green does not take care of the ball well enough. At age 36, Rich Gannon of Oakland is certainly in the dotage of his career and, while he remains a player who inspires teammates on the field, he was a no-show for a recent minicamp and wants a new contract. Doug Flutie will be challenged by second-year veteran Drew Brees in San Diego in what figures to be one of the most compelling of the training camp competitions throughout the league.

These are four teams whose offenses are better-balanced than in the rollicking days of the division, when air space over all the stadiums had to be cleared to make way for all the passing footballs. While only the Chiefs (Priest Holmes) and Chargers (LaDainian Tomlinson) had 1,000-yard rushers in 2001, the running games are solid enough for the Raiders and the Broncos as well.

That said, all four need more stability at quarterback, for the present and the long-term.

"You've got to be consistent at the most important position," said Raiders rookie head coach Bill Callahan, whose team will rank among the oldest in the NFL, with 20 players aged 30 or older. "We think we've got one of the game's truly great leaders (in Gannon), and we have to take advantage of that. Week in and week out he makes plays that help us win football games."

But not even Gannon, the master of improvisation, can help the Raiders stop the run, and they must improve in that most menial chore to challenge for a Super Bowl berth in '02. In fact, of the four AFC West teams, only Denver ranked in the top half of the NFL last season in run defense. And so it was not surprising that all the teams attempted to bolster their respective front sevens this spring.

But there was not wholesale alteration in the division -- Callahan will give Oakland a thread of continuity in replacing Jon Gruden and the veteran Schottenheimer has always won wherever he has gone -- and so much of the improvement will come from within. For the coaches within the division, that is just as well, since some significant lessons learned in 2001 will be reinforced in the minds of players who suffered through the ups and downs of uneven campaigns.

"You hate to ride that roller coaster," said Chargers linebacker Junior Seau. "All of those bumps make you crazy. I don't want to go through that again."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.