PRO FOOTBALL REPORT : WEEKDAY UPDATE : CHARGERS : Harmon: Playing Time Out of My Hands

SAN DIEGO — Running back Ronnie Harmon’s guess is as good anyone’s why he’s not getting to carry the ball more often.

“I don’t have too many answers,” he said. “I can’t control things, so why worry about it? The only thing I can actually control is what I do on the field. And that’s that. Everything else is out of my hands.”

What’s out of his hands most these days is the football. A Plan B free agent acquired from the Buffalo Bills last April, Harmon has carried only 14 times for 59 yards in six games. In the Chargers’ 39-3 victory over the New York Jets Sunday, Harmon carried three times for 13 yards and caught four passes--all for first downs--for 58 yards.

Harmon is stuck in a stew of good running backs that includes Marion Butts, Darrin Nelson and Rod Bernstine. The situation was gnawing at Bernstine so much that he said he would be agreeable to a trade last week.

“You don’t know if you’re going to be playing one week to the next,” Harmon says. “You could play two or three games and then not play. So how do you set goals?”

So this becomes the goal: “You say, ‘Hey, I’m going to be sane at the end of the season.’ ”

Linebacker Billy Ray Smith, on injured reserve the past four games with an abdominal strain, is eligible to come off this week, but neither Smith nor Coach Dan Henning is sure he’ll be able. “It’s hard for me to say,” Smith said. “I haven’t even had a helmet on in four weeks.”

It took a while for linebacker Junior Seau to realize that his 62-yard interception return for a touchdown Sunday had been nullified because of an illegal contact penalty on cornerback Sam Seale.

“I took the ball back to the bench and they asked for the ball back,” he said. “Junior was holding onto the ball as if it was his. They were, like, taking it away. But that wasn’t the disappointment. The disappointment was I had to go out there and play another three downs after running all that way. I was kind of fatigued.”

Injuries: Safety Vencie Glenn pulled a muscle in his leg Sunday and it is uncertain whether he will return to practice Wednesday. Henning said he hopes to have receivers Nate Lewis (thigh) and Walter Wilson (ankle) back at full strength for the Raider game.