The December trends are holding: the Chargers and Philip Rivers are perfect, and the Cowboys and Tony Romo are miserable during the regular season’s most important month.

Rivers broke a tie in the fourth quarter with a touchdown pass of 14 yards to Antonio Gates. After that he followed things up with a drive eating up over seven minutes of the game clock that ended with a field goal, as the Chargers defeated the Cowboys on Sunday 20-17 keeping San Diego on a roll and Dallas reeling as the playoffs approach.

The Chargers (19-3) won their eighth game in a row and are right on the verge to clinching another AFC West title. Since Rivers became San Diego’s starting quarterback, San Diego has a 16-0 record in the month of December.

Rivers said, in December you want to peak not fade out. During the past several years we’ve done that. We just haven’t been able to keep that going in January. This year hopefully we will keep things going into 2010.

The last ll wins in December for San Diego have come with Norv Turner as their coach, the man Jerry Jones, Cowboys owner, decided against hiring last time the Dallas head coaching position was open. Instead Jones selected Wade Phillips. In December he hasn’t gotten what he paid for. After this loss they are 3-7 in December. Over three Novembers, Octobers and Septembers he lost seven games in total.

All week the players talked about wanting to get a win to boost the job security of Phillips. However during key points in the game they failed on both defense and offense.

Dallas (8-5) now for the very first time during the season have consecutive losses. They head to New Orleans for their show down on Saturday night with the undefeated Saints. They may have to play without DeMarcus Ware, their star linebacker. In the fourth quarter Ware sprained his neck and was hospitalized.

Romo said, it might not appear we are playing our best football, but that can get turned around quickly. I think out football team can do that.

Although the game did get decided late, things did tilt in the favor of San Diego during the first half. San Diego held Dallas to just one field goal over drives featuring first downs at the 27, 16 and 3 yard lines.

The first good scoring opportunity for Dallas ended with the Cowboys scoring a field goal to give them a 3-0 lead. On the next long drive for the Cowboys, Marion Barber was able to get to the one yard line on first down. However on three straight runs after that he was stuffed. On fourth down, Dallas moved him to halfback from fullback. However no one was fooled.

Tim Dobbins, Chargers linebacker who was part of all of the three tackles said, they don’t pay him to block. We knew the play would be a dive or flip. I don’t know what the Cowboys were thinking. Do they watch game film?

Rivers was intercepted while throwing inside his end zone, giving the Cowboys another scoring opportunity. It was wasted when a field goal attempt of 42 yards was missed by Folk. It’s the fifth game in the row that Folk has missed a field goal. This season he’s missed more field goals than he did during the first two years of his career combined.

Phillips said, you need to make a good percentage of those. He isn’t making the percentage.

On the third quarter’s final play, Dallas tied the score 10-10. The 99 yard drive was capped by Romo throwing a touchdown pass of 6 yards to Miles Austin. Play was halted soon after that for several minutes when Ware lay out on the turf following him ramming his helmet into a San Diego lineman’s leg while running at full speed.

As the stretcher neared the ambulance, Ware flashed the “W” using his fingers. The crowd of 90,552 got so loud with their cheering that a false start was called on the Chargers.

Rivers on third down and 12 at the 47 yards line connected on a pass of 39 yards to Vincent Jackson, before throwing the touchdown pass for the go ahead score to Gates.

After Romo and the Cowboys failed to respond, San Diego iced the win with a drive of 15 plays that lasted 7:17 minutes. It was capped by a Nate Kaeding field goal from 34 yards. Nine of LaDainian Tomlinson’s 21 carries, along with 27 of his total 50 yards came on the drive.

Tomlinson said, there’s nothing that is more satisfying then doing it like that.

With 1:56 remaining in the game and trailing by 10 points, Romo did manage a touchdown. However the Cowboys didn’t score until there were only 2 second remaining in the game. Gates then caught the onside kick attempt to prevent the Cowboys from getting a last opportunity.

Jones said, this pill is a bitter one to swallow.

Rivers went 21 for 32 for a total of 272 yards passing and had one touchdown. It was the 100th touchdown of his career. His interception was the first for him in five games.

Gates had 44 receiving yards, passing the 1,000 yard mark for the second time, while Jackson had seven catches for a total of 120 yards.

Tomlinson got his 10th touchdown for the season, extending his NFL record to nine consecutive years that he’s hit the mark. It occurred in just his second game played in Dallas. Tomlinson is native of Waco and played his college ball in Fort Worth at TCU.

Romo went 19 for 30 for a total of 249 yards passing and had two touchdowns and no interceptions. His December record still went to 5-10.

He did fine as a holder on extra points and field goals for the very first time since the January 2007 playoff game when he had his infamous flub.