MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The Chargers leaned on a lot of backups Sunday, but with the game against the Miami Dolphins on the line, they turned to Mr. Reliable.

Cameron Dicker kicked a 35-yard field goal with five seconds remaining to lift his team to a 29-27 win, the final points in a game that included six lead changes.

It was the fifth field goal of the day for Dicker, who has never missed from 40 yards or closer.

Chargers safety Derwin James Jr. clinched the win with an interception on the final play, Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s third pick of the day.

The sparse crowd had erupted minutes earlier when Tagovailoa hit Darren Waller for a seven-yard touchdown, reclaiming the lead with 46 seconds on the clock.

But Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert answered with a lightning-quick drive downfield to set up the winning field goal.

The Chargers, ravaged by injuries, effectively leaned on their reserves to help pave the way for their first victory in three weeks.

Reserve running back Kimani Vidal rushed for 124 yards and turned a short pass into a touchdown. He was promoted from the practice squad last Wednesday after the Chargers lost rookie first-round pick Omarion Hampton to an ankle injury. Earlier this season, the team lost veteran running back Najee Harris to a torn Achilles tendon.

The performance marked the first 100-yard game by Vidal, drafted in the sixth round out of Troy University by the Chargers in 2024.

It was the second consecutive week the 1-5 Dolphins were burned by a little-known running back, as Carolina’s Rico Dowdle trampled them for 206 yards in Week 5. Miami came into the game with the NFL’s worst run defense.

On Sunday, the Chargers made seven trips to the red zone but failed to make the most of those, with two touchdowns and five field goals.

Giving the visiting defense all it could handle was Miami’s De’Von Archane, who had a 49-yard touchdown run in the first quarter and a four-yarder in the fourth. The Dolphins repeatedly fed him the ball down the stretch and scored on the touchdown catch by Waller, but they couldn’t hold off Herbert’s final drive.

Stopping the run has been an issue for the Chargers, too, as Washington’s Jacory Croskey-Merritt ran for 111 yards and two touchdowns against them the week before.

The Chargers won their first three games of the season, running the table against AFC West opponents, but lost the next two games at the New York Giants and home against the Washington Commanders.

Not only had the Chargers lost their two top running backs, but they have had to reshuffle their offensive line multiple times because of injuries. They have designed their offense to get the ball out of Justin Herbert’s hands quickly, as he has been hit more than any quarterback in the league this season.

That was the case in the first half of Sunday’s game as well, as Herbert was hit four times — and sacked once — by the Dolphins, who registered just 18 quarterback hits in the first five games combined.

Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert scrambles during the second half against the Dolphins.

(Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)

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But the Chargers came alive in the second half, overcoming a 13-9 halftime deficit, with a five-yard touchdown reception by Ladd McConkey, a seven-yard scoring catch by Vidal, and a fourth field goal by Dicker.

The Chargers, without injured receiver Quentin Johnston, leaned more heavily into rookie tight end Oronde Gadsden II, whose father played receiver for the Dolphins for six seasons.

The younger Gadsden caught seven passes Sunday but also had a fumble that set up Achane’s first touchdown.

Penn State returned to State College, Pennsylvania, looking to bounce back from last week’s upset loss against the UCLA Bruins. But the Northwestern Wildcats had other plans on Saturday.

Wildcats running back Caleb Komolafe sprinted for 72 yards and scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter to help lift Northwestern to a 22-21 win at Beaver Stadium. The narrow victory secured Northwestern’s third consecutive victory, while Penn State dropped its third straight.

“I truly believe that our football team expected to win today,” Northwestern coach David Braun said. “Ultimately, the message was you’ve got a football team that’s got their back up against the wall, but also a football team that may be questioning who they are.”

The Wildcats ended their 11-year windless drought at Beaver Stadium.

Penn State got the ball back with just under five minutes remaining following Komolafe’s touchdown, but quarterback Drew Allar suffered an apparent leg injury on a third-down play. 

After the game, Penn State coach James Franklin confirmed Allar would miss the remainder of the season with an unspecified injury. Backup Ethan Grunkemeyer replaced him, was stopped on a fourth-down run, and the Wildcats ran out the clock.

QB TY SIMPSON SHINES, ALABAMA OUTLASTS MISSOURI IN 3RD STRAIGHT RANKED SEC WIN

Backup Ethan Grunkemeyer replaced him and was immediately stopped on a fourth-down run and the Wildcats ran the clock out from there.

Allar finished 13 for 20 for 137 yards passing and added 25 yards rushing and a touchdown. Allar returned for his senior season to make better of the season-ending interception he threw in last season’s College Football Playoff semifinal against Notre Dame.

Penn State quarterback Drew Allar sits up on the field during an injury timeout Saturday at Beaver Stadium.  (Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images)

The Nittany Lions committed six penalties for 71 yards in the first half.

Franklin took responsibility for Penn State’s recent struggles. “I take full responsibility for all of it,” Franklin said. “I hired all the staff, I recruited all the players. I believe in all of them. But we’re not getting it done right now.”

Penn State Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin stands on the field following the game against the Northwestern Wildcats at Beaver Stadium on Saturday in State College, Pa. (Matthew O’Haren/Imagn Images)

Iowa will host Penn State next week, and Grunkemeyer is expected to start at quarterback for the Nittany Lions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Thirty-one days ago, Roki Sasaki arrived at Dodger Stadium, met with president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and general manager Brandon Gomes, and was presented a plan that required faith and trust.

It had been eight months since Sasaki signed with the Dodgers amid massive expectations, coming over from Japan as a 23-year-old phenom billed as possessing some of the best raw arm talent in the world.

It had been four months since his debut season took a dismal turn, landing on the injured list with a shoulder impingement following an opening month marred by poor performance and diminished stuff.

Less than two weeks earlier, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had all but written Sasaki off as a potential factor in the team’s postseason plans, after the pitcher had continued to struggle in a minor-league rehab stint.

But then, two days before his meeting with club brass, Sasaki had finally shown some signs of life, striking out eight batters during an auspicious start with triple-A Oklahoma City in which his fastball once again touched 100 mph and his trademark splitter was almost unhittable.

So, as the team began looking ahead to October, Friedman and Gomes sat Sasaki down alongside his interpreter, and presented what has proven to be a season-altering idea — for him, and his new team.

The Dodgers knew Sasaki was unlikely to feature as a starting pitcher in October, given their healthy and dominant rotation. But they saw an opportunity to use him as a reliever in the playoffs.

Only, however, if he were also open to it.

“We were just honest with him, that as things stood, the only real pathway — short of multiple injuries — was in the bullpen,” Friedman said. “But we wanted his full buy-in.”

Long-term, they promised him, he would still be a starter. In their view, he was assured, the team still saw him as a potential future ace.

But for now, they asked if he’d be open to making a temporary move to the bullpen; to taking on a relief role that they knew to him was completely foreign.

“We don’t want an answer right now,” Friedman told Sasaki. “We want you to take time and think through it.”

“We would not want to push this,” he added, “unless you’re totally on board.”

All year, the Dodgers had tried to build trust with their newest Japanese star. Now, they waited for an answer, as Sasaki went home and mulled things over alongside his agent.

As he later told the Japanese magazine Shukan Bunshun, he was initially “very hesitant” to such a switch. There was a time in middle school he’d been a closer, but during his ascent from high school to the pros, starting was all he’d ever known.

Several things, however, tipped the scales in his mind. He craved a chance to pitch in a postseason environment. He sensed an opportunity to boost a team in desperate need of relief depth. And, having finally found a comfort level with his club after a trying rookie season, he’d regained the confidence he was missing at the start of the campaign.

Thus, before the end of that day on Sept. 11, Sasaki gave the Dodgers his answer. He was in.

“Because they will let me try to start again next season,” he said, “it was a relatively easy decision to make.”

Thirty-one days — and 5 ⅓ scoreless, invaluable innings of postseason relief work from Sasaki — later, it was a moment that might have helped save the Dodgers season, and launch the rest of his MLB career.

From the day Sasaki signed with the Dodgers in January, his agent, Joel Wolfe of Wasserman Media Group, was quick to remind reporters that his young client was “not a finished product by any stretch.”

Turned out, he didn’t come to the majors completely healthy either.

During his final couple seasons in Japan, Sasaki’s fastball velocity had dipped while battling shoulder and oblique injuries. He couldn’t explode down the mound with his high leg kick the way he once did. He wasn’t consistently hitting 100 mph on the radar gun or dotting the strike zone with his typically pristine command.

His delivery, evaluators noticed, had begun to suffer. A throw built on generating torque from his legs to his hips and on through his shoulder and lengthy right arm, instead started to look inefficient and uncomfortable.

“I think a lot of it just came from his body changing the way he was throwing,” said Dodgers director of pitching Rob Hill, who had closely admired Sasaki during his Japanese career. “Due to kind of throwing hurt for probably a couple years.”

Once he joined the Dodgers this year, Sasaki hit rock bottom. His oblique no longer bothered him. But his shoulder remained sore and stiff. His fastball eclipsed triple-digits a couple times in his adrenaline-fueled MLB debut in Tokyo in March, but quickly plummeted upon returning stateside, averaging just 95.7 mph (and dipping all the way to 93 mph and below) over his seven subsequent starts.

When coupled with erratic control (he walked 22 batters in 34 ⅓ innings), and a flat pitch shape that made his four-seamer relatively easy to hit (lacking the vertical “ride” required to fool MLB batters long accustomed to combating big velo), opponents began teeing off. By the time Sasaki finally went on the injured list with a shoulder impingement in early May, he had a 4.72 ERA and some of the worst underlying metrics in the majors.

“We go back to the drawing board every week with him,” pitching coach Mark Prior said at the time. “We’re just trying to support him with everything we can.”

At first, Sasaki seemed slow to embrace it. Not only was there a language barrier between him and his new club, but the rookie also built walls around his personality. Quiet by nature and “very particular” in temperament, as Wolfe described him this winter, Sasaki tried to keep a steadfast routine. He didn’t want to alter his pitch mix. He searched for his own ways to iron out his mechanics.

But all he found instead was frustration, leaving him looking lost in his new surroundings — and sinking even lower when lingering shoulder pain in early June further delayed his recovery timeline and required a cortisone injection.

“I think like any new player that you acquire, it takes a little while to build up trust,” Friedman said. “We knew that he was a guy that was accustomed to doing things a certain way, and we were going to embrace that, [while] at the same time forging a relationship and building trust and getting to a place where we could partner together.”

It would take time for the two sides to get there.

As Sasaki tells it, the turning point in his season happened three days before that meeting with Friedman and Gomes; on the eve of the rehab start that triggered their suggestion to move to the bullpen.

Sitting in his Oklahoma City hotel room that night, Sasaki pulled up old video of his high school days and studied a delivery that, even then, enthralled evaluators around the sport.

He was looking to the past to find answers in the present.

“I felt,” he later recounted to Shukan Bunshun, “like I was about to notice something.”

So, he kept watching.

In the three months before then, Sasaki and the Dodgers had finally started making progress.

After his initial injury setback, he formed a connection with head team physician Dr. Neal ElAttrache — the renowned orthopedic surgeon who not only laid out a plan for Sasaki’s recovery, but more important allayed fears of continued problems through what Sasaki described as a “very educational” process.

As Sasaki’s shoulder calmed down, he took strides in the weight room as well, working with Dodgers strength coach Travis Smith to add explosiveness and strength (especially in his lower body) to his once-scrawny 6-foot-2 frame.

“I feel better about being able to throw harder,” Sasaki said in August, as he headed out on a long-awaited rehab assignment, “especially because I’m completely pain free.”

Sasaki’s first four starts in triple-A were still a mixed bag. His velocity gradually improved, but remained mostly struck in the mid-90s. He tinkered with new pitches, including a cutter and sinker, but still couldn’t execute his trademark splitter the way he wanted.

By early September, it was enough for Roberts to cast doubt on Sasaki’s return, saying bluntly that “the performance, the stuff hasn’t been there.”

“Roki has gone through a lot this year, and he still has a ton of talent,” Roberts added. “We just want to see more.”

One week later, they finally would.

During a trip to the team’s Arizona training complex in the following days, Sasaki met with Hill and his pitching development staff, spending several hours reviewing video of his throw.

As Hill described it last month, they weren’t so much “solving this master plan” with Sasaki as they were “helping him actualize the things” he was trying to do in his delivery. They suggested tweaks to Sasaki’s lower-half mechanics. They emphasized the way he fired his hips as he launched down the mound.

Sasaki listened, and agreed on what they identified as the root causes of his struggles. One day that week, he even tested some of the changes in what was one of his hardest bullpen sessions all year.

“The day of that bullpen, it was like, ‘Holy s—,’” Friedman recalled thinking. “Things are in a really good spot.”

Sasaki, however, hadn’t convinced himself of that yet. While Hill’s evaluation “matched up with what I thought wasn’t going well,” he said in Japanese last week, “the approach [to fixing it] was a different story.”

That’s why, when Sasaki returned to Oklahoma for his next start days later, he went back over more video, and waited for a revelation.

It was then, he said, “I noticed something about the use of my lower body.”

Like a high jumper with a disjointed sequence while lifting off the ground, Sasaki felt he was still losing too much power between his leg kick and release — drawing a contrast to what he saw in his old high school motion.

Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman gives the ball to pitcher Roki Sasaki after he closed out the ninth inning to preserve the win against the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 2 of the NLDS.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

So, for the rest of that night, he did dry throws in his room in search of a specific feel. All those months of work with the Dodgers’ medical team, training staff and pitching coaches suddenly tied together. For the first time all year, he felt like his old self again.

The next evening, he took the mound and hit 100 mph six times. He coupled it with extra life and movement on his knuckle-balling splitter. And he showed enough for Dodgers brass to call him back to Dodger Stadium and inquire about the bullpen.

“We think you can be really good in this role,” Friedman told him. “This is the potential pathway to help us in October.”

Of course, no one saw the level of dominance that was on the horizon. After completing his minor-league stint with two scoreless relief appearances, Sasaki rejoined the Dodgers for the final week of the regular season, showcased his improved stuff with two more scoreless innings of relief, then made a rapid ascent to de facto postseason closer — producing zero after zero when other relievers faltered around him.

He recorded the final outs of the team’s wild-card round sweep of the Cincinnati Reds. He picked up back-to-back saves in Games 1 and 2 of the National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, becoming the first pitcher to record his first two career saves in the playoffs. He spun three perfect innings in the club’s Game 4 clincher on Thursday.

“One of the great all-time appearances out of the ‘pen that I can remember,” Roberts called it.

“Since coming back, coming in from the bullpen,” added teammate Tyler Glasnow, “he’s honestly one of the best pitchers I’ve ever seen.”

It has all come with a renewed level of confidence too. After that Game 4 masterclass (in which he was so locked in he didn’t even remove his glove in the dugout between innings), Sasaki said he has felt no nerves in the playoffs, nor any hesitancy about attacking the strike zone.

All those frustrations from early in the season have evaporated. His process of building trust within the organization while rediscovering the best version of himself on the mound has come suddenly, electrifyingly complete.

“The stuff being there lines up with what our expectations were,” Friedman said. “But the poise and composure, you don’t know until someone’s out there. And I would say he has more than answered the bell.”